Joyce Onoromhenre Agofure

A comparative ecocritical study of selected Nigerian and American Indian poetry provides critical perceptions on how issues of racial oppression, resistance, displacement, militancy, toxicity, extreme exploitation of natural resources and environmental annihilation intertwine. Consequently, the connection between repressive social structures and environmental contradictions within the Nigerian and American Indian communities illustrate how domestic and international enclaves are manipulated and exploited. To explicate cross-cultural ecological problems, post-colonial ecocriticism with ideas on trans-corporeality- “which decenters the human in preference of the non-human in relation to objects, bodies, geophysical systems and the environment” offers insights to appraise forms of eco-degradation in the quest for petroleum resources and precious minerals. This study highlights the specific ways the Nigerian poets Ogaga Ifowodo, Nnimmo Bassey, Tanure Ojaide as well as American Indian poets Linda Hogan, Simon Ortiz articulate contemporary socio-environmental disquiets of ecologically polluted regions in their poetic outputs.