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Is a \u201crace\u201d to go to the Moon and beyond the best perspective for space exploration? (credit: ESA\/P. Carril)<\/p>\n
by Art Cotterell and William Grant
Monday, September 22, 2025<\/p>\n
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\nAt an internal staff briefing<\/a> earlier this month, acting NASA administrator Sean Duffy declared the United States has a \u201cmanifest destiny to the stars\u201d, linking this to the need to win the \u201cspace race.\u201d\n<\/p>\n An Indigenous-inspired lens can help us envision and build a future with stewardship and shared responsibility, not competition and conquest.<\/p>\n \nThis rhetoric is not new: it directly echoes US President Donald Trump\u2019s inaugural address<\/a> from earlier this year. The phrasing invokes US nationalism that\u2019s historically been used to justify colonial expansion and empire-building.\n<\/p>\n \nLanguage matters. How we talk about space exploration shapes the futures we imagine and build. As two space governance specialists working together\u2014one non-Indigenous<\/a>, one Indigenous<\/a>\u2014we see an urgent need for a different way to view space.\n<\/p>\n \nAn Indigenous-inspired lens can help us envision and build a future with stewardship and shared responsibility, not competition and conquest.\n<\/p>\n We\u2019re still talking about the \u201cspace race\u201d<\/p>\n \nThat space is a \u201crace\u201d has become a common, and sometimes contested<\/a>, refrain. The US<\/a> and China<\/a> are leading missions to the Moon\u2019s south pole, each looking to land on prime sites<\/a> where they could establish bases and access scarce resources such as water ice<\/a> and light<\/a>, essential for staying on the lunar surface for longer periods of time.\n<\/p>\n \nThe first arrival could influence space governance and a future lunar economy<\/a> for private companies. This has prompted talk of an \u201cinfrastructure arms race\u201d<\/a> or \u201ctrade war.\u201d<\/a>\n<\/p>\n \nThis \u201crace\u201d isn\u2019t only about nations. Interlune<\/a>, a US-based startup, is \u201cracing to be the first to mine helium on the Moon\u201d for potential uses in everything from quantum computing to nuclear fusion. Helium-3 is a rare non-radioactive isotope on Earth but more common on the lunar surface, valued at US$19 million per kilogram.\n<\/p>\n \nOther commercial entrants are looking to asteroid mining<\/a>, with hyped claims that the \u201cfirst trillionaire\u201d<\/a> will be whoever returns with rare minerals. We also see talk that this is a \u201cbillionaires\u2019 space race\u201d<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nThe expressions used to understand, engage with, and think about space aren\u2019t neutral. They still carry the ideas of coloniality<\/a>: the power structures and attitudes that persist as a legacy of colonization.\n<\/p>\n \u201cColonization\u201d is not an empty metaphor<\/p>\n \nWhen space is described in terms of \u201ccolonization,\u201d \u201cconquest,\u201d \u201cmanifest destiny,\u201d or the prize in a \u201crace,\u201d these words are not empty metaphors.\n<\/p>\n \nThey echo imperialist ideals<\/a>. Such mindsets push for taking more power and extending dominance<\/a> into new \u201cfrontiers\u201d of control, racism, and erasure of other forms of knowledge. They also simultaneously exclude voices<\/a> that don\u2019t align with them, preserving the dominant narrative.\n<\/p>\n \nThe idea of a \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d is driven by a human-centric approach to the environment. The Moon or other celestial bodies are seen as resources to be conquered by first arrivals. Phrases such as \u201cfinal frontier\u201d and \u201cwild west\u201d have similarly colonial origins<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nHistorically, \u201cmanifest destiny\u201d was used to legitimize US nationalism and the violent expansion<\/a> that dispossessed Indigenous peoples from tribal lands and territories as the so-called American frontier expanded westward.\n<\/p>\n \nThe same logic first infused US space policy<\/a> during the Cold War, as the US and Soviet Union vied to take that first \u201cone small step\u201d on the Moon and assert leadership as the preeminent global superpower.\n<\/p>\n How we talk about space affects the futures we create off-Earth, and a better framing already exists in Indigenous perspectives.<\/p>\n \nSuch perspectives of dominance have not gone uncontested. During Cold War era negotiations for the United Nations\u2019 international space law treaties<\/a> that still stand today, Global South nations<\/a>\u2014many of which had endured painful experiences of colonial rule\u2014advocated for a more equitable approach<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nFoundational principles in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967<\/a> seek to safeguard outer space<\/a> as the province of all humankind and for the benefit of all nations, not only the powerful and privileged few.\n<\/p>\n \nYet a gap between principles and practice remains. How we talk about space affects the futures we create off-Earth, and a better framing already exists in Indigenous perspectives.\n<\/p>\n An alternative, inclusive future<\/p>\n \nThe M\u0101ori ethic of kaitiakitanga<\/a>, which broadly encompasses the concept of stewardship, envisions a future grounded in reciprocity and shared responsibility. It extends beyond the human to embrace the more-than-human world.\n<\/p>\n \nRather than treating space as an empty \u201cfrontier\u201d to conquer and exploit, kaitiakitanga recognizes that celestial bodies, Earth, and humankind are not separate domains, but part of an interconnected system.\n<\/p>\n \nThis perspective challenges the assumptions that only people hold moral standing. Instead, the night sky and celestial bodies have value in and of themselves.\n<\/p>\n \nKaitiakitanga also maintains intergenerational responsibilities: ensuring that decisions made today honor past, present, and future relationships. Such obligations also support nascent calls for an Indigenous right to space<\/a>.\n<\/p>\n \nLikewise, collaborative research by Bawaka Country<\/a> under the guidance of the Yol\u014bu songspiral Guwak \u201crefuses the idea of space, portrayed by would-be space colonizers as a dead, empty stock of resources awaiting exploitation\u201d.\n<\/p>\n \nInstead, it recognizes space as an ancestral domain for Indigenous and some non-Indigenous peoples globally. It explains how \u201cspace colonization\u201d risks disrupting and harming enduring, millennia-old connections and ethical obligations of care to the sky and beyond.\n<\/p>\n \nThese and other Indigenous perspectives<\/a> offer lessons<\/a> that benefit everyone.\n<\/p>\n Reclaiming the narrative<\/p>\n \nWhen we shift the conversation away from the human-centric logic of exploitation and empire-building, we also expand who has a relationship with and a responsibility to space.\n<\/p>\n