For too long, colonial language has dominated space exploration. There is a better way

At an internal staff briefing last week, acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy declared the United States has a “manifest destiny to the stars”, linking this to the need to win the “space race”.

This rhetoric is not new – it directly echoes US President Donald Trump’s inaugural address from earlier this year.

The phrasing invokes US nationalism that’s historically been used to justify colonial expansion and empire-building.

Language matters. How we talk about space exploration shapes the futures we imagine and build. As two space governance specialists working together – one non-Indigenous, one Indigenous – we see an urgent need for a different way to view space.

An Indigenous-inspired lens can help us envision and build a future with stewardship and shared responsibility, not competition and conquest.

We’re still talking about the ‘space race’

That space is a “race” has become a common, and sometimes contested, refrain. The US and China are leading missions to the Moon’s south pole, each looking to land on prime sites where they could establish bases and access scarce resources such as water ice and light, essential for staying on the lunar surface for longer periods of time.

The first arrival could influence space governance and a future lunar economy for private companies. This has prompted talk of an “infrastructure arms race” or “trade war”.

This “race” isn’t only about nations. This past week saw headlines that Interlune, a US-based startup, is “racing to be the first to mine helium on the Moon”, 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.

Other commercial entrants are looking to asteroid mining, with hyped claims that the “first trillionaire” will be whoever returns with rare minerals. We also see talk that this is a “billionares’ space race”.

The expressions used to understand, engage with and think about space aren’t neutral. They still carry the ideas of coloniality: the power structures and attitudes that persist as a legacy of colonisation.

‘Colonisation’ is not an empty metaphor

When space is described in terms of “colonisation”, “conquest”, “manifest destiny” or the prize in a “race”, these words are not empty metaphors.

They echo imperialist ideals. Such mindsets push for taking more power and extending dominance into new “frontiers” of control, racism and erasure of other forms of knowledge. They also simultaneously exclude voices that don’t align with them, preserving the dominant narrative.

The idea of a “manifest destiny” 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 “final frontier” and “wild west” have similarly colonial origins.

Historically, “manifest destiny” was used to legitimise US nationalism and the violent expansion that dispossessed Indigenous peoples from tribal lands and territories as the so-called American frontier expanded westward.

The same logic first infused US space policy during the Cold War, as the US and Soviet Union vied to take that first “one small step” on the Moon and assert leadership as the preeminent global superpower.

Such perspectives of dominance have not gone uncontested. During Cold War era negotiations for the United Nations’ international space law treaties that still stand today, Global South nations – many of which had endured painful experiences of colonial rule – advocated for a more equitable approach.

Foundational principles in the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 seek to safeguard outer space as the province of all humankind and for the benefit of all nations, not only the powerful and privileged few.

Yet 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.

An alternative, inclusive future

The Māori ethic of kaitiakitanga – 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.

Rather than treating space as an empty “frontier” to conquer and exploit, kaitiakitanga recognises that celestial bodies, Earth and humankind are not separate domains, but part of an interconnected system.

This perspective challenges the assumptions that only people hold moral standing. Instead, the night sky and celestial bodies have value in and of themselves.

Kaitiakitanga also maintains intergenerational responsibilities: ensuring that decisions made today honour past, present and future relationships. Such obligations also support nascent calls for an Indigenous right to space.

Likewise, collaborative research by Bawaka Country under the guidance of the Yolŋu songspiral Guwak “refuses the idea of space, portrayed by would-be space colonisers as a dead, empty stock of resources awaiting exploitation”.

Instead, it recognises space as an ancestral domain for Indigenous and some non-Indigenous peoples globally. It explains how “space colonisation” risks disrupting and harming enduring, millennia-old connections and ethical obligations of care to the sky and beyond.

These and other Indigenous perspectives offer lessons that benefit everyone.

Reclaiming the narrative

When 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.

We all do. In effect, we are all “space citizens”. That means space must not be left to dominant nations and tech titans alone.

To realise this future, we must reclaim the narrative around outer space from powerful actors who use exclusionary language grounded in coloniality. Instead, we should move towards a more inclusive, relational and sustainable ethic of stewardship.

Otherwise, we risk repeating history and launching injustices into the cosmos, one rocket at a time.