scholarly journals Conflict transformation in indigenous peoples’ territories: doing environmental justice with a ‘decolonial turn’

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 90-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iokiñe Rodríguez ◽  
Mirna Liz Inturias
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Conflict Transformation

Environmental Justice and Indigeneity

Anthropology ◽  
2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Analytical Framework ◽  
Knowledge Systems ◽  
Legal Traditions ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
Legal Context ◽  
Intellectual Traditions ◽  
Indigenous Perspectives ◽  
United Nations Declaration

Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ) is distinct from the broader EJ field, which has been found to exhibit certain limitations when applied to Indigenous contexts. Indigenous scholars have observed, for example, that EJ scholarship generally does not consider Indigenous sovereignty, laws, and governance. Attempts to ensure the relevance and applicability of EJ to Indigenous contexts and realities have resulted in what can be thought of as an “Indigenizing” of the EJ scholarship. Recent scholarship thus recognizes that Indigenous peoples occupy a unique position in terms of historical, political, and legal context, and that this requires specific recognition of their goals and aspirations, such as those outlined in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN General Assembly [UNGA] 2007). Achieving IEJ will require more than simply incorporating Indigenous perspectives into existing EJ theoretical and methodological frameworks, as valuable as these are for diagnosing injustice. IEJ offers a theoretical and analytical framework that goes beyond “Indigenizing” and “decolonizing” existing EJ scholarship and extends to frameworks informed by Indigenous intellectual traditions, knowledge systems, and laws. Indigenous nations and societies are diverse and no single IEJ framework will serve all contexts and situations. There are, however, commonalities among suggested frameworks as evidenced through various international environmental declarations prepared by Indigenous peoples over the past three decades that convey key concepts relating to IEJ. First, Indigenous knowledge systems should be utilized as a theoretical framework for analysis. In this frame, justice applies to all “relatives” in Creation, not just people. EJ is not just about rights to a safe environment, but it includes the duties and responsibilities of people to all beings and, conversely, their responsibilities to people. IEJ is regarded as a question of balance and harmony, of reciprocity and respect, among all beings in Creation; not just between humans, but among all “relatives,” as LaDuke 1999 and Kanngieser and Todd 2020 show. Second, Indigenous legal traditions should form the basis for achieving justice. Scholars have noted how Western legal systems continue to fail Indigenous peoples and the environment. In this sense, grounding conceptions of justice and injustice in Indigenous intellectual and legal traditions opens up possibilities for achieving justice. Finally, IEJ must acknowledge the historical and ongoing role colonialism has played in perpetuating injustices.

scholarly journals International and Domestic Law Dimensions of Climate Justice for Arctic Indigenous Peoples

2014 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
pp. 113-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Ann Kronk Warner ◽  
Randall S. Abate
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Arctic Region ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Indian Country ◽  
Indigenous Nations ◽  
Impacts Of Climate Change

The Arctic region is in crisis from the effects of climate change. The impacts of climate change pose a particular threat to Arctic indigenous communities. Because of the disproportionate impacts of climate change, these indigenous communities are environmental justice communities. Part I of this article discusses how indigenous nations are environmental justice communities and discusses the unique factors that may apply to environmental justice claims arising in Indian country. The article then presents two case studies to explore how, if at all, these concepts have been previously applied to environmental justice claims brought by various Arctic indigenous communities. Part II addresses the Inuit Circumpolar Conference’s petition to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. Part III considers the Native Village of Kivalina’s lawsuit against numerous private emitters of greenhouse gases. These case studies underscore the failure of international and domestic forums’ consideration of the special situation of Arctic indigenous peoples as environmental justice communities.

Notes on Becoming a Comrade: Indigenous Women, Leadership, and Movement(s) for Decolonization

2019 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Jaskiran Dhillon
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Communities ◽  
Indigenous Women ◽  
Gender Violence ◽  
Political Consciousness ◽  
Women Leadership ◽  
Indigenous Woman ◽  
The Arts

Written from the perspective of a non-Indigenous woman of color “standing with” Indigenous communities through politicized allyship, this article explores the politics of becoming a comrade to Indigenous peoples in their struggles for liberation in the settler-colonial present. Dhillon highlights key moments in the development of her political consciousness by centering the fundamental leadership, knowledge, and guidance of Indigenous women in decolonial activism and scholarship across a range of areas—including environmental justice, colonial gender violence, and the arts—that have been foundational to the anticolonial framework informing her scholarship and organizing.

Indigenous stewardship as a lifeway1

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natalie Avalos
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
The United States ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
Native Peoples ◽  
The World

As the decade closes, Indigenous peoples have re-emerged as a critical voice advocating not just for environmental justice but for an entirely different way of living and being with the world. As the descendants of the original inhabitants of lands now dominated by others, they are often entangled in ongoing struggles to protect their lands and sovereignty. Settler colonialism is now famously understood as a structure, not an event, meaning that colonial projects must be continually re-inscribed through discursive and juridical means in order to naturalize Indigenous dispossession. As a religious studies scholar, I am interested in the ways Native peoples in the United States operationalize religious action as an expression of refusal ‐ a refusal to acquiesce their religious lifeways and rights to their lands.

scholarly journals Paridade participativa no Estado de Direito Ecológico: a negação de reconhecimento aos povos indígenas no caso Belo Monte

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-35
Author(s):  
Paula Galbiatti Silveira
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Environmental Law ◽  
Negative Parity ◽  
Hydropower Plant ◽  
Ecological State ◽  
Construction Process ◽  
Deductive Method ◽  
Belo Monte

RESUMO:O objetivo do presente artigo é estudar a justiça ambiental como objetivo do Estado de Direito Ecológico, justiça essa incluindo o conceito de paridade participativa como elemento do reconhecimento, a partir do estudo do caso da Usina Hidrelétrica de Belo Monte. Especificamente, objetiva-se compreender a teoria do Estado de Direito Ecológico e a justiça ambiental como seu objetivo, com o método dedutivo e a técnica de pesquisa bibliográfica e documental, cujo documento é a Declaração Mundial para o Estado de Direito Ambiental. Em seguida, busca-se discutir o conceito de justiça ambiental, a partir da teoria do reconhecimento de Honneth e de sua crítica feita por Fraser com o conceito de paridade participativa. Para tanto, utiliza-se da técnica de revisão bibliográfica, utilizando-se dos próprios termos trazidos pelos autores em citação direta. Por fim, estuda-se o caso de Belo Monte, em um relatório sucinto de como foi seu processo de construção, discussão e licenciamento ambiental, com foco no desrespeito aos povos indígenas, em um verdadeiro contexto de não-reconhecimento e de, portanto, grave injustiça ambiental por negativa de paridade participativa.  ABSTRACT:The aim of this article is to study the environmental justice as an objective of the Ecological State of Law, including the concept of participatory parity as an element of recognition, based on the case study of the Belo Monte hydropower plant. Specifically, the objective is to understand the theory of the Ecological State of Law and environmental justice as its objective, with the deductive method and the bibliographical and documentary research technique, whose document is the World Declaration for the State of Environmental Law. Then, it discussed the concept of environmental justice, based on the theory of recognition of Honneth and his criticism made by Fraser with the concept of participatory parity. For this, it is used the technique of bibliographical revision, using the direct citation. Finally, the case of Belo Monte is studied in a succinct report of its construction process, discussion and environmental licensing, with a focus on disrespect of indigenous peoples, in a true context of non-recognition and, therefore, serious environmental injustice due to negative parity. 

Obvious but Invisible: Ways of Knowing Health, Environment, and Colonialism in a West Coast Indigenous Community

2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-273
Author(s):  
Paige Raibmon
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
West Coast ◽  
Environmental Science ◽  
Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Indigenous Studies ◽  
The State ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Indigenous Ways Of Knowing ◽  
Slow Violence

AbstractThis paper interrogates the specific workings and stakes of slow violence on Indigenous ground. It argues that despite similarities with other environmental justice struggles, Indigenous ones are fundamentally distinct because of Indigenous peoples' unique relationship to the polluted or damaged entity, to the state, and to capital. It draws from Indigenous studies, history, anthropology, geography, sensory studies, and STS, to present results from research with the Mowachaht Muchalaht First Nation, an Indigenous people on the west coast of British Columbia. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, this community used successive strategies to try to render its knowledge about health, environment, and authority visible to the settler state. Each strategy entailed particular configurations of risk, perceptibility, and uncertainty; each involved translation between epistemologies; and each implicated a distinct subject position for Indigenous peoples vis-à-vis the state. The community's initial anti-colonial, environmental justice campaign attempted to translate local, Indigenous ways of knowing into the epistemologies of environmental science and public health. After this strategy failed, community leaders launched another that leveraged the state's legal epistemology. This second strategy shifted the balance of risk and uncertainty such that state actors felt compelled to act. The community achieved victory, but at a price. Where the first strategy positioned the community as a self-determined, sovereign actor; the second positioned it as a ward of the state. This outcome illustrates the costs that modern states extract from Indigenous peoples who seek remedial action, and more generally, the mechanisms through which the colonial present is (re)produced.

scholarly journals Legal and Ontological Pluralism: Recognising Rivers as More-Than-Human Entities

2021 ◽  
pp. 235-282
Author(s):  
Meg Parsons ◽  
Karen Fisher ◽  
Roa Petra Crease
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Environmental Governance ◽  
Ontological Pluralism ◽  
Aotearoa New Zealand ◽  
Indigenous Knowledge Systems ◽  
Settler Societies ◽  
Definition Of

AbstractWe explore the ways in which the formal recognition (to some extent) of Indigenous knowledge systems within environmental governance and the role of reconcilition in achieving environmental justice. We examine whether recent agreements between the New Zealand Crown (Crown) and Māori tribal groups (iwi), known as Treaty ‘settlements’, to establish shared co-governance and management over rivers encapsulate and are capable of achieving environmental justice for Māori. We draw on schoalrship on legal and ontological pluralism to consider questions of how to remedy environmental injustice and what reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples means in settler societies. Rather than seek to provide a singular definition of Indigenous environmental justice (IEJ), we instead examine how Indigenous peoples in Aotearoa New Zealand and other colonial societies are engaged in efforts to negotiate with and challenge the colonial legal orders, develop their laws, policies, and governance frameworks to achieve justice within the freshwater realm.

scholarly journals Transforming River Governance: The Co-Governance Arrangements in the Waikato and Waipaˉ Rivers

2021 ◽  
pp. 283-323
Author(s):  
Meg Parsons ◽  
Karen Fisher ◽  
Roa Petra Crease
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Environmental Justice ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
New Governance ◽  
Freshwater Systems ◽  
The World ◽  
Ways Of Life ◽  
Governance Arrangements

AbstractAround the world, many societies are trying to create and apply apparatuses that recognise Indigenous interests in freshwater systems. Such policies and strategies often acknowledge Indigenous peoples’ rights and values they attached to specific waterways, and take the form of new legal agreements which are directed at reconciling diverse worldviews, values, and ways of life within particular environments. In this chapter we review one such arrangement: the co-governance arrangements between the Māori iwi (tribe) Ngāti Maniapoto and the New Zealand (Government) to co-govern and co-manage the Waipā River. We analysis where the new governance arrangements are enabling Ngāti Maniapoto to achieve environmental justice and find substantive faults most notably distributive inequities, lack of participatory parity, and inadequate recognition of Māori governance approaches.

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