Decolonizing Tropical Environments: Awakening Nigeria’s Indigenous Dance Theatre

Abstract

The projected apocalypse triggered by centuries of consistent environmental abuse has attracted multidisciplinary attention which has intensified in the last few years. Scholarship largely figures colonial mechanisms and their variables such as imperialism, industrialization and militarism as responsible for the wasting of tropical bodies in the guise of development. The focus of this paper is threefold. Firstly, to establish that colonialism and neocolonialism is at the center of ecosystem degradation in the tropics and examine concepts of development as colonial constructs to sustain polluting rights in Nigeria. Colonialism remains at the center of the toxicity and wasting of humans and the environment in Nigeria, hence the call for decolonization of environmental discourses. Secondly, foreground the need to dismantle the tropes of development, civilization, and industrialization, as colonial installations to sustain the toxicity of the tropics. Thirdly, to investigate the necessity to return to Indigenous knowledge resources in order to forge new mindsets for envisioning sustainable futures. The rich multiethnic culture of Nigeria points to the potential of Indigenous dance theatre as an Indigenous knowledge resource to provoke much-needed conversations and change towards decolonization and posthuman consciousness. Towards this future, the paper addresses the present challenges of Indigenous dance theatre as well as the modalities for engaging it for effective results in rewriting the Nigerian stanza in the colonial-enforced tragedy of the tropics.