Environmental Justice = Land Back
Environmental Justice is a buzzword. In the times of the ever present impacts of global anthropogenic climate change, environmental justice has become a trendy topic. There are countless new Instagram accounts posting trendy graphics about “intersectional environmentalism,” news outlets running cover stories, and with the help of social media there is now a wide spread amplification of causes to donate to, support, and highlight the effects of global anthropogenic climate change. Which is awesome! Donʻt get me wrong on that one. Environmental justice is so incredibly important and is something that needs to be talked about, discussed, physically realized on a global level. But the thing is that environmental justice has always been a thing. After all, environmental justice is necessary for everyone to live, work, and play in a better world.
WHAT EXACTLY IS ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE?
When I was in college, I studied environmental issues with a focus in environmental justice. I learned about the incidents at Love Canal in the 1970s. About the environmental justice movements happening in the now-called, Applacian mountains of West Virginia, where people are fighting against mountain-top removal projects. Or about the on-going aftermaths that fracking can produce, when the groundwater is contaminated with fracking liquids. Recently, about the on-going fresh-water movement in what is now known as Flint, Michigan. These are all movements that can be filed under Environmental Justice movements. These are the hot-button issues that come to mind when most “educated” people hear the term environmental justice.
But as I sat in class and learned about the movements toward a more sustainable future and a better planet, I started to notice that there were people missing from the conversation. Or rather, they werenʻt missing, but their stories and experiences were not being given the same amplification and power as those of their counterparts. Apart from Miss Flint, I donʻt remember learning about any BIPOC activists and their communities' fight toward justice. It doesnʻt make any sense because we know that BIPOC communities experience higher rates of environmental racism. So why arenʻt we learning about what these communities are doing about it? Why is the conversation around environmental justice in academia white-centered and white-lead?
I am here to assure you that more movements surrounding “environmental justice” have been happening. There are movements that not only center BIPOC individuals and Black and Indigenous communities, but are led and created by BIPOC individuals and Black and Indigenous communities. There are movements created by Indigenous voices that center issues of Indigenous sovereignty and Indigenous rights to their own ancestral homelands.
Such as what is happening in Wet’suwet’en, where Land defenders are protecting their ancestral homelands from an oil pipeline that cuts through their land and will bring more violence upon their people (namely two-spirited individuals, and women and children). Or issues like what is happening at Mi’kmaq, where Water defenders are being attacked by non-Native fisherpeople who are invading ancestral fishing grounds. Or what happened and is still happening at Standing Rock, where Indigenous Land and Water defenders came and faced off against the Amerikkkan government, to protect sacred ground from yet another oil snake of a pipeline.
Or maybe closer to my heart, what is happening in the occupied and stolen Kingdom of Hawaiʻi. There are countless hewa loa activities happening there, but a big ticket item surrounds Moku o Keawe (the island of Hawaiʻi), on our sacred mauna, Mauna a Wākea. Where kiaʻi (protectors) are fighting against outside settler-interests to build yet another telescope on top of our sacred grounds.
SURFACE-LEVEL DEFINITIONS
According to several government agencies including the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Energy, environmental justice can be defined as “the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of race, color, national origin, or income, with respect to the development, implementation, and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations,and policies.” The EPA says that this can be achieved so that everyone is able to enjoy the “same degree of protection from environmental and health hazards, and equal access to the decision-making process to have a healthy environment in which to live, learn, and work.” Under this guise, fair treatment can mean that no population suffers disproportionately or “experiences negative environmental consequences resulting from industrial, municipal, and commercial operations or from the execution of federal, state, and local laws, regulations, and policies.”
Also under this definition of environmental justice, meaningful involvement “requires effective access to decision makers for all, and the ability in all communities to make informed decisions and take positive actions to produce environmental justice for themselves.” I will admit that on a surface level, these words seem meaningful. They sound nice. I mean, who wouldnʻt want to have their own self-determination when it comes to their communities and how they interact with the land and environment?
RECLAMATION OF A DEFINITION
But thatʻs just the thing. Under the western colonial government structure that has been forcibly applied to this Land and itʻs inhabitants, everything is surface level. True justice is community self-determination, fair treatment, and meaningful involvement, but these things interfere with the colonial agenda, the spread of the colonial agenda, or the white manʻs opportunity to make money. In my opinion, environmental justice needs to be all of those things mentioned before—community involvement and fair treatment.
Fair treatment needs to take into account the years and generations of colonization, violence, and theft of Indigenous land and life. Environmental justice must be equitable and restorative. It needs to take into account the trauma of stolen land and stolen relatives. It needs to acknowledge the planned genocide of Indigenous peoples and the purposeful theft of their land.
When the colonizers first came to the land in search of God, gold and glory, they divided up the land and gave it numerical value. This was the first aspect of colonization. The colonizers knew what they were doing.
To many Indigenous People, we come from the Land. The Land is seen as a Mother, a friend, our caregiver, our sustainer. Some Natives I know say the Land and Water are the things that connect all Natives around the globe. We all have a reverence for the Land and the provision that it grants us. And when the colonizers came, they knew this. They knew that in order to generate wealth and capital, they needed the Land. They needed space and the production value that came with it. They needed to separate the People from the Land. And what better way to do that than with genocide?!
The colonizers viewed, and still view, the land as a resource. They view land as a means to an end, an instrument, a thing to be used, to be conquered, to be tamed. They do not view the land as a living, breathing, entity that supports the livelihood of humans. They do not place any other value on the land, other than the value that has been defined by capital. However, to Indigenous people, our Land, the Land cannot be converted into a numerical value.
How can one place a numerical value on the rolling hills that once provided life for your people? How can one place a numerical value on the rushing river that ancestors used a means of travel and trade? How can one place a numerical value on the mighty mountains that surround us, mountains that used to be our ancestors? How can one place a numerical value on the fertile plains that sustained communities and their people for thousands of years? How can one place a numerical value on the deep and vast ocean that provided sustenance for thousands of years?
Under a decolonized and Indigenized lens of environmental justice, environmental justice would take into account the great injustice of land ownership and address the issue of commodification of land head on.
A decolonized and Indigenized lens of environmental justice directly refutes and opposes the traditional nation-state model where natural resources are viewed as commodities that only exist for human benefit. A decolonized and Indigenized lens of environmental justices takes into account the generational trauma done at the hands of colonizers and works equitability to restore justice and rightful ownership of the Land to the First and rightful Stewards.
DREAMS OF DECOLONIZATION
Decolonization is a dream of mine. I, along with my other Native and Indigenous relatives, dream of a day when our nations will be sovereign. When we are connected with each other and our ancestors. When no person of any nation is in diaspora from their people and their homelands. We dream of a day when we will be reunited with the Land and Water, and all of Creation will rejoice because there once again is the sacred unity.
Decolonization looks different to different Indigenous individuals. Some view decolonization as the rewriting of a single story imposed on us by our white oppressors. For others, decolonization is the remembrance of your roots and the realization that we are conditioned to think and act a certain way. For others, it is the reframing of colonial narratives and the unpacking of generations upon generations of trauma due to colonization. And yet for others, decolonization is in the sovereignty and independence of Indigenous nations.
All of these are true, and all of these would be the ultimate goal of decolonization. To me, decolonization is the outright rejection of the white supremacist idea of settler-state. Decolonization is the outright rejection of the western colonial tradition and the many areas that the colonial mindset has leached into and poisoned.
Decolonization can only happen when Western society as a whole is able to recognize and acknowledge the intergenerational physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and sexual abuse and trauma that oppressed Peoples have been experiencing since 1492. Decolonization is tireless and hard. It is not pretty. It is working on yourself every single day. It is deconstructing literally everything that you know and questioning why we know what we know.
Decolonization is abandoning the previous ways of knowing and listening to the power of the people that came before you. Decolonization is the realization that white people are wrong. Itʻs the realization that Land is not capital. Itʻs the realization that money is fake and holds no power over people. Decolonization is the destruction of all current ways of knowing and being. It is inexplicably tied to the Land and the connection that Indigenous People have to the Land.
Decolonization is the first true step towards environmental justice.
LAND BACK
The LAND BACK movement is beginning to catch fire.
July 2020 was a big month for the Natives of Turtle Island, what is now known as the United States of America.
On July 9, 2020 the Supreme Court of the United States ruled in McGirt vs. Oklahoma, that nearly half of what is now known as Oklahoma, is stolen Indigenous land taken from the Creek Nation. Later on that month, the Esselen People of what is now Big Sur, California were able to reclaim a 1,200 acre swath of land. In 2019, the City of Eureka in what is now Northern California, gave the 280 acre Duluwat Island back to the Wiyot People. And earlier in that same year, a United Methodist Church in what is now Upper Sandusky, Ohio returned a mission church and other parts of their property back to the Wyandotte Nation.
LAND BACK is a step in the right direction. Returning ancestral homelands and Native territory to the rightful caretakers is about honoring treaties that were once broken. In so many instances across Turtle Island, the taking of Native land was and remains illegal. States and militants within the states took the Land away from the Natives and Indigenous habitants, breaking treaties formed with those Indigenous Nations and the US government. By violating countless treaties and the US government not sticking to their words, thus became the starting point for the creation of a settler-colonial empire.
With the disconnect that colonizers and settlers feel from the Land, there is no question as to why the Land was given numerical value. With colonization came the introduction of wealth and the implementation of capital. Wealth is based on the finite and tangible. Itʻs how many acres of land can produce how much money.
When we talk about LAND BACK, Land is all encompassing. It is not just about the physical land, but also the resources and ecosystems that are encapsulated in the Land.
Itʻs the creeks and rivers that flow.
Itʻs the foods, fruits, and vegetables grown naturally.
Itʻs the minerals beneath the ground and the animal friends that roam.
LAND BACK is the movement in which Indigenous People have the power over their ancestral homelands and the right to govern and sustain those homelands as they are called to.
LAND BACK is the movement for colonizers and settlers to recognize the colonization and theft of ancestral homelands, the appropriation, depletion, and misuse of natural resources, and also the erasure and exclusion of Native and Indigenous sovereignty, culture, way of life, and personhood.
LAND BACK is the call for the return of what was forcibly stolen.
When imagining a future, I see a future where things are good. I envision a future where needs are met and people live in harmony with each other and the Land that they inhabit. I see a delicate balance between the acknowledgement of the horrible of the past and the bright hope for what is yet to come. I see Indigenous ways of being at the forefront in efforts to create an equitable world. I see a unity between human and nature.
I see a whole new world, where money is not power, where we do not rely on the destruction of the planet for the advancement of humankind. I see understanding and compassion. I see a future where we live. I see a future where there is value placed on life. Where people do not have to work themselves to a tireless pit just to survive. Where there are no children in cages and no families are separated. Where people do not have to walk in fear for being who they are, or loving who they love.
I see a future where the sun shines and everyone knows the color blue. Where we aren't worried about the melting of the ice caps, the rising sea levels, or the destruction of trees. I see a future where people are collaborating with each other, learning from and with each other, learning from the Land that surrounds us.
I see a respect and appreciation for the Land. And not just because the Land provides for us and sustains us, or because of the production value it has, but just because the Land is Land, in and of itself.
STATEMENT OF POSITIONALITY:
ʻO Ariel koʻu inoa. He Kānaka ʻŌiwi a me ka māhū au. Kākau au e hoʻohanohano koʻu kūpuna a me ka hana o kekahi Kānaka.
My name is Ariel. I am Kānaka ʻŌiwi. I am Māhū. I write to honor my ancestors and the work of the many other Kānaka that have come before me. While writing, I acknowledge the privileges and power that I hold in this world. I come from a middle-class family and benefit from economic privilege. I benefit from anti-Blackness in a world so deeply embedded with hate for Black people. I am able-bodied in a world that was designed by able-bodied people for able-bodied people. I have experience in white-supremacist serving academia and higher education and benefit from being a university graduate. I realize that my definitions and insight into this piece are my own. I do not speak for other Kānaka. I do not speak for all Indigenous People. My thoughts are shaped by my experiences in this world as a colonized person and someone who is tirelessly working to know their culture, their identity, and know their people. I acknowledge that I am also human. I am not a wealth-source of knowledge. I know what I know because of the people that have done the work and paved the way.
Header Photo: Robert Quinones / Flickr, design: Katey Williams
