May 2024: Indigenous peoples’ perspectives on Environmental Justice
“When Indigenous peoples are allowed leadership roles in land management a better future is assured for all people in the human and nonhuman world.”
From Gilio-Whitaker’s website: https://dgwconsulting.org/
Environmental Justice:
“We have this history of having the land being unjustly taken. It’s not just that we’re being dumped on by toxic industry, or smokestacks, or air pollution or anything like that, that’s just a small piece, we experience all of that as well. But that’s a much smaller piece of this larger history of being pushed off our lands, and then all of the impacts that happen to our communities as a result of that. So, environmental justice for Native people has to encompass and take into account how those processes of dispossession happened, and then shape our existence from there. It’s not just about environmental racism, it’s about the taking of land and the constructing of an entire legal structure that keeps us separated from our land.”
— From: “Reclaiming identity after genocide: How one woman works to restore Native rights” Leading Consciously
Blog #102, Dina Gilio-Whitaker in conversation with Dr. Jean Latting, Nov. 10. 2023.
https://www.leadingconsciously.com/blog/reclaiming-identity-after-genocide-one-woman-works-restore-
native-rights-102
“Children, language, lands: almost everything was stripped away, stolen when you weren’t looking because you were trying to stay alive. In the face of such loss, one thing our people could not surrender was the meaning of land. In the settler mind, land was property, real estate, capital, or natural resources. But to our people, it was everything: identity, the connection to our ancestors, the home of our nonhuman kinfolk, our pharmacy, our library, the source of all that sustained us. Our lands were where our responsibility to the world was enacted, sacred ground. It belonged to itself; it was a gift, not a commodity, so it could never be bought or sold. These are the meanings people took with them when they were forced from their ancient homelands to new places.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (p16-17)
Western science vs Dominant science
“I use the term dominant science instead of Western science for two reasons. First, dominant keeps the power relations front and centre, and it’s these power relations I am usually discussing. Western science is a cultural tradition where ways of knowing start with the Ancient Greeks, get influenced by various forms of Christianity and Judaism [and Islam], and move through the Enlightenment. Generally, I have no problem with that culture. The problem is when it becomes dominant to the point that other ways of knowing, doing, and being are deemed illegitimate or are erased. Second, not all Western science is dominant. Midwifery, alchemy, and preventative medicine are part of Western science that suffer at the hands of dominant science.” (Max Liboiron 2021: 20-21.)
“In the Western tradition there is a recognized hierarchy of beings, with, of course, the human being on top—the pinnacle of evolution, the darling of Creation—and the plants at the bottom. But in Native ways of knowing, human people are often referred to as “the younger brothers of Creation.” We say that humans have the least experience with how to live and thus the most to learn—we must look to our teachers among the other species for guidance. Their wisdom is apparent in the way that they live. They teach us by example. They’ve been on the earth far longer than we have been, and have had time to figure things out.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, 2013, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants (p9)
“…” “modern capitalist societies, however richly endowed, dedicate themselves to the proposition of scarcity. Inadequacy of economic means is the first principle of the world’s wealthiest peoples.[4]” The shortage is due not to how much material wealth there actually is, but to the way in which it is exchanged or circulated. The market system artificially creates scarcity by blocking the flow between the source and the consumer. Grain may rot in the warehouse while hungry people starve because they cannot pay for it. The result is famine for some and diseases of excess for others. The very earth that sustains us is being destroyed to fuel injustice.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of PlantsU (p376)
Views of Land:
“… Native people have very different views of land and environment. They don’t view land in the same way that dominant society does. In terms of commodification, for example. In the US, land is just a commodity. It’s something that is bought and sold, it’s traded. It has monetary value. It’s not valued for the life that it gives.
For Native people that’s the difference, Native people understand themselves as emerging from these very particular ecosystems. And because of that this relationship, so it’s a kinship, it creates a different set of values about reciprocity, about respect, about responsibility. And those are not the kinds of values that dominant society places on land and in environment because of this commodification of the natural world…This framework of thinking is what created sustainable societies on this continent for thousands of years. And it’s looking to that, to the difference in values that hold the keys for sustainability, human sustainability in the future.”
From: “Reclaiming identity after genocide: How one woman works to restore Native rights” Leading Consciously Blog #102, Dina Gilio-Whitaker in conversation with Dr. Jean Latting, Nov. 10. 2023.
Restoration
“We need acts of restoration, not only for polluted waters and degraded lands, but also for our relationship to the world. We need to restore honor to the way we live, so that when we walk through the world we don’t have to avert our eyes with shame, so that we can hold our heads up high and receive the respectful acknowledgment of the rest of the earth’s beings.”
― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants
Want to know more?
Books
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. Beacon Press, 2019
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. Milkweed Editions, 2013, 2020.
Max Liboiron, Pollution is Colonialism. Duke University Press, 2021
Includes other books about the critical role of Indigenous people and knowledge in the global environmental justice movement.
https://www.firstnations.org/stewarding-native-lands-resources/
YouTube videos
“Environmental Justice in Indian Country: A virtual talk with Dina Gilio-Whitaker”
Racial Justice Initiative, Pitzer College
Talk covers key points in As Long As Grass Grows (55 minutes)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8Ru0l2lkZ8
“Robin Wall Kimmerer, Plant Ecologist, Educator, and Writer” (2 min.)
MacArthur Foundation
Kimmerer talks about her vision of environmental stewardship informed by traditional ecological knowledge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BiVvl-p_6O8
“The Honorable Harvest” (3.5 min) Kimmerer narrates this video about the covenant of reciprocity between humans and the living world
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEm7gbIax0o
“2021 Inclusive SciComm Symposium: Dr. Max Liboiron” (56 min.)
Metcalf Institute, University of Rhode Island
In this nuanced and thoughtful talk, Liboiron foregrounds land relations. For example, many aspects of environmental work (think solar or wind farms) often involve colonial land relations. Liboiron also calls out ways in which scientific communication maintains colonial practices, such as rewarding being first to find, do, or publish about something.
Note: The talk has an ASL interpreter, throughout.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2bJIWWbdhLk
Indigenous Activism
Introduces Indigenous leaders in Massachusetts
Map
Use this Interactive map to begin an exploration of which Indigenous lands you live on
Want to do more?
Create an Indigenous land acknowledgment
Guidelines for land acknowledgments from the Native Governance Center
https://nativegov.org/news/a-guide-to-indigenous-land-acknowledgment/
Try to write a land acknowledgment that you can use at public meetings and events. If you have questions, you can contact LWVMA member Felina Silver (Brookline League), who has expertise in this area and has graciously offered to help. You can reach her at poetsareangels1963@gmail.com
“So you began your event with an Indigenous land acknowledgment. Now what?”
NPR article and podcast (5 min)
The pros and cons of land acknowledgments and how to go beyond them
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/15/1160204144/indigenous-land-acknowledgments