NAHM: Indigenous people and the environment

One of Indian Country Today's regular features is "Global Indigenous" with features not only about Canadian First Nations people and Native Americans in United States, but also the Maori in New Zealand, Aboriginal Australians, and more. 

Colonization had a far reach.

There is plenty to think about there, but that is not the point of today's post.

Featured stories often came from Mongabay, which I had assumed was a news source focusing on "Global Indigenous".

Mongabay.com focuses on environmental science and conservation.

If there are frequently stories about Indigenous people, it is generally because of environmental damage that they are fighting, or from which they are suffering.

Two books in my recent reading focused on this:

Wisdom of the Elders: Sacred Native Stories of Nature by Peter S. Knudtson, David Suzuki

Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous Peoples: The Cultural Politics of Law and Knowledge by Laurelyn Whitt

Of course, it has been a recurring theme. 

Both Indians in the Making and Seeing Red dealt with it in part as part of the legal issues.

https://sporkful.blogspot.com/2024/02/native-american-heritage-month.html

Indians in the Making was inspired by a legal case about fishing rights. 

I have also recently read these articles:

https://ictnews.org/news/the-50th-anniversary-of-the-boldt-decision-is-a-celebration-of-native-leadership?

https://www.yakimaherald.com/30-years-after-salmon-scam-trial-david-sohappy-is-still-on-the-river/article_5dc2f63e-27d6-11e7-9b2f-276b99f27bf6.html 

One interesting thing to note is that sometimes the attempts to limit treaty fishing rights were in the name of "conservation", but commercial fishers were taking 85% of the catch, compared to 5-7% by Native fishers.

One has to doubt the sincerity.

Seeing Red's focus on the "political economy of plunder" really helped me see that settler colonialism and extractive colonialism are not mutually exclusive.

As settlers, we should be invested in the land and its health, but greed gets in the way.

It has been shown time and time again that to successfully restore the environment, you need to involve local Indigenous people. That was not only demonstrated in the Wisdom of the Elders and Science, Colonialism, and Indigenous People, but was also featured in a recent World Economic Forum study, Embedding Indigenous Knowledge:

https://www.weforum.org/publications/embedding-indigenous-knowledge-in-the-conservation-and-restoration-of-landscapes/

As hard as residential schools and relocation and other factors tried to eliminate this knowledge, it is still there, and is still necessary.

Greed gets in the way.

One of the warnings in Embedding Indigenous Knowledge is that profit cannot be the only consideration or marker of success.

That will require many more people being wise.