The environmental justice movement is creating possibilities for some dramatic shifts in perspectives, and action toward addressing global environmental injustice. We are now forced to solve environmental challenges with more global coordination. Priorities include living sustainably with our natural resources, preserving wilderness areas, and maintaining or restoring biodiversity. Those priorities have inevitably led to a focus on the ways of life and knowledge of Indigenous Peoples.

As a result of colonization, Indigenous Peoples make up only 5 percent of the population worldwide. But they manage and support 80 percent of global biodiversity (Raygorodetsky 2018). While the traditions, languages, and beliefs of Indigenous Peoples vary tremendously across the world, there is a common value that is seen in Indigenous cultures: the emphasis on protecting and stewarding of their environments.

For centuries, most Indigenous Peoples across the world have been stewarding the land of their ancestors while simultaneously creating complicated and developed cultures, civilizations, and traditions. These societies and ways of life coexisted and continue to coexist with the natural world around them. As a result, many Indigenous cultures have intimate connections to the land, water, and ecosystems they live with. They prioritize the ability for future generations to live in prosperity, preserving their cultures and traditions. This leads to a deep understanding of their environment and their own impacts on the systems that they rely on.

At the same time, as we discussed in Chapter 1, Indigenous Peoples are often impacted by climate change and harmful environmental actions more profoundly. Today there are thousands of resistance mobilizations led by Indigenous people to protect the ecosystems where they reside.

In response, many organizations recognize that an effective way of actualizing environmental justice is to support the many Indigenous-led environmental justice movements that exist today. For example, the organization Amazon Watch supports and promotes Indigenous-led alternative solutions to climate change, natural resource extraction, and industrial development.

Watch the 1:53-minute video “Achuar of Peruvian Amazon Say NO to GeoPark” [Streaming Video] (figure 10.47). It describes the leadership of the Achuar people in Ecuador as they stand up to extraction of oil in their territory and how Amazon Watch is getting involved. What do you notice about the values around well-being that the Achuar express?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAI0MJ0XeEQ&t=2s

As the Achuar take the lead in defending the health of their environment, and as they are supported by Amazon Watch, they have a better chance of remaining on their territory. If they can remain in their territory, they can maintain their ways of life: ones that provide for their health and well-being in ways that are meaningful to them.

Initiatives like these exist throughout the world, with regional and global coalitions organizing rapidly. As Indigenous land rights are protected, it also gives Indigenous Peoples a platform to share their values of living as stewards of the natural world.

Participants in these movements are making crucial shifts in institutions such as education, politics, law, and the market system. Let’s look at four main ideas to illustrate the transformative nature of Indigenous-led environmental justice movements. They can be categorized as values, knowledge, rights, and action.

Values

Indigenous communities are increasingly voicing their values around living as part of nature’s living systems. As they do, they are sparking shifts in how we think and shape many of our systems. Those shifts include questioning how our global economy operates and the ways we are encouraging development. They include re-evaluating dominant meanings attached to development, such as progress, poverty, and well-being. As Indigenous-led environmental justice movements advance, these values become woven into the priorities of social institutions (figure 10.48).

Professor Kyle Whyte, a member of the Potawatomi Nation explains that Indigenous-led environmental movements have played an important role in global environmental politics. (Optional: Read more about the Potawatomi Nation [Website].) They “open important intellectual spaces for thinking about the function of environmental governance institutions in addressing complex environmental issues.” They provide an alternate perspective about how institutions should be run concerning nature.

Instead of basing decisions on market interests, such as the sale of timber, they encourage that institutions function to reflect the “reciprocal responsibilities across relatives as diverse as humans, non-human beings such as plants, entities such as water, and collectives such as forests” (Whyte 2016).

For example, the government of Australia is required by law to produce a “State of the Environment Report.” It is designed to help shape environmental policy and action and influence behaviors. The 2021 report was created in partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people, and Indigenous voices are prominent throughout. In one section, the authors explain how they value heritage:

Australia’s heritage tells our story and is irreplaceable. Our heritage is those aspects of the natural and cultural environment that we wish to look after and pass on to future generations. This means that decisions that might damage or destroy Australia’s heritage need to be made with the greatest of care and with a clear understanding of their impact (McConnell 2021b).

Natural heritage includes significant landforms and features and significant plant and animal populations and habitats. Cultural heritage can be data collected from Indigenous communities, songs, stories, rituals, visual art, dance, knowledge of traditional food and medicine, or environmental and ecological knowledge (McConnell 2021a; “Cultural Heritage in Australia.” n.d.). The contribution brought forth by the Indigenous partners in the drafting of Australia’s “State of the Environment Report” points to the value of protecting both natural and cultural heritage.

Knowledge

As Indigenous Peoples coexist intimately with the natural world around them, and determinedly pass knowledge through generations, they obtain deep knowledge of ecological systems. As a result, Indigenous communities are uniquely equipped to understand the impacts of climate change, and they are especially prepared to forge solutions.

For example, in Panama, members of the Bundorgan Women’s Network have used their ancestral knowledge to reduce soil salinity. They are members of the Indigenous Guna community and understand clearly that too much saline in soil destabilizes its chemical balance, decreasing the production of most crops. Soil salinity is a major problem in coastal areas where they live, and it is becoming exacerbated as seas rise due to planetary warming (figure 10.49). Members of the network created a solution that included cultivating eucalyptus and planting them in conjunction with medicinal plants (Athar 2023). (Optional: Read more about the Guna [or Kuna] people [Website].)

This soil restoration project is an example of the actions of a widespread Indigenous-led environmental justice movement: Indigenous food system restoration. Indigenous people have always valued their ancestral foods. Their food systems have been in place over countless generations, in some cases for millennia, and have supported relatively dense populations, especially along the Northwest Coast of North America (Suttles 1990).

Complex social and ceremonial systems were developed over time, helping to assure equitable distribution of food, as well as sustaining and enhancing the food species and their habitats (Ksan, People of 1980; Atleo 2004; Deur and Turner 2005; Turner et al. 2013b; Joseph 2020). Potlatches are an example of a ceremonial complex in which the serving and distribution of nutritious, culturally valued food has always been a central element (Brown and Brown 2009).

However, their access to ancestral foods has not always been easy or available. The arrival of Europeans in the region, beginning in the late 1700s, initiated significant changes in the lifeways of First Nations, including the introduction of new foods. Soon colonial forces instigated a systematic dismantling of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems through banning access to important cultivation and harvesting landscapes, imposing restrictions on fishing practices and on landscape burning to maintain particular habitats, privatizing land, and, ultimately, through food-related abuses carried out through residential schools and Indian hospitals (Turner and Turner 2008).

These actions were similar to those experienced by Indigenous Peoples worldwide as their homelands were taken over by colonial forces. The new wage economy impacted Indigenous seasonal harvesting rounds and resulted in loss of learning opportunities for children and youth (Thomas et al. 2016). The decline in harvesting and use of Indigenous foods, both regionally and worldwide (Kuhnlein et al. 2009), has been generally detrimental to people’s health and has also resulted in significant cultural losses (Turner et al. 2008a).

The targeting and appropriation of Indigenous foods created what Simpson (2017) calls an “imposed poverty” where culturally important foods exist but they are either not accessible to Indigenous Peoples, or they are being commercially exploited, raising their monetary value to the point where Indigenous people are unable to afford their own ancestral foods.

The health and well-being of Indigenous Peoples throughout the world, including their ability to access healthy Indigenous food is not only a recognized right, it is essential to their lives. As Kwakwaka’wakw cultural expert Kim Recalma-Clutesi (pers. comm. to NT 2002) stated, “It’s very hard to practice the culture accurately and properly without proper food… we are not going to survive as a People if we do not have access [to traditional foods]. Our bodies have not adapted yet to this new food… the culture and the food are linked hand in hand.”

Over the last few decades there have been many initiatives throughout the region to restore and revitalize these original foods, and to re-learn Indigenous methods of processing and harvesting them. These initiatives are often connected with language revitalization and cultural resurgence programs. Led by Indigenous communities, they are undertaken with support of academic, government, and other partners. In all, they have resulted in stronger, more vibrant cultures and generally healthier communities.

Authors Swiderska and Ryan point out two more benefits of indigenous food systems restoration. First, our western and modern farming systems contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as the degradation of water and soil, making agricultural production difficult to sustain. The foundations of our food source under this system is increasingly vulnerable to climate change as air and water temperatures rise, as sea levels rise, and rainfall patterns shift. Second, as control of modern agricultural production is primarily held by a few large corporations, our modern food systems are very inequitable (2020).

In comparison, the food systems of the world’s 476 million Indigenous People are highly productive, sustainable, and equitable. They preserve rich biodiversity and are low carbon emitters. Many Indigenous People are reviving their agroecological food systems because they are more resilient to climate change and provide more nutritious diets than modern food systems. Quechua communities in the high Andes are able to ensure food security despite climate change and sustain exceptionally high potato diversity. This is due to their ancestral values of reciprocity, solidarity, and maintaining balance (both in society and with nature) (Swiderska and Ryan) (figure 10.50).

Research by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has shown that Indigenous food systems are already achieving zero hunger for many Indigenous Peoples (Kuhnlein et al. 2013). As indigenous food systems are restored, and as they are built from a worldview that considers generations to come, they are better equipped to ensure food security.

Rights and Action

There are challenges to the survival of Indigenous Peoples’ food systems. Swiderska and Ryan note some key examples. In northern Thailand, Indigenous Karen farmers risk imprisonment for their practice of rotational farming. (Optional: Read more about the Karen people [Website].) In Northeast India, Lepcha people are subject to policies that restrict their use of ancestral forests. (Optional: Read more about the Lepcha people [Website].)

Due to land sales, pastoralists in Chad are becoming displaced from their territories that have traditionally served their highly resilient and biodiverse food systems. And the essential food culture that surrounds hunting and fishing in Russia’s Arctic region has almost been destroyed due to industrial development (2020).

Indigenous rights are threatened beyond those related to practicing their food systems. Due to their direct reliance on nature to survive and their spiritual connection to lands, most Indigenous Peoples are especially threatened by environmental degradation. As they are displaced due to land grabs, their ways of life, and cultures, including languages are under threat. Social cohesion is extremely difficult to maintain among these communities already experiencing marginalization and racial discrimination.

As the Chapter Story of the Maasai introduced, the conservation movement has also been damaging to Indigenous Peoples. Professor Kyle Whyte relays that national parks, ecological restoration projects, and conservation zones have all created violations in the form of forced displacement of Indigenous communities, economic marginalization, or denial of their cultural and political rights. “Almost every environmental achievement in the United States—such as the Clean Air or Clean Water acts—has required Indigenous Peoples to work hard to reform these laws to gain fair access to the protections” (Whyte 2018).

Indigenous-led movements respond to all these circumstances and violations. As Indigenous Peoples are largely left out of policy discussions, key to most of these movements is insisting that governments uphold or expand treaty responsibilities. Indigenous activists also organize for Indigenous rights in politics and law, or through direct action, resisting destructive development, pollution, or extraction projects.

One good example is the #NoDAPL movement we introduced in Chapter 7 that opposed the Dakota Access Pipeline (figure 10.51). In legal challenges and public demonstrations, members of the Tribe and their supporters have argued that they were not adequately consulted about the route. Running the pipeline under a Missouri River reservoir called Lake Oahe, members say, would jeopardize the primary water source for the reservation, and construction would further damage sacred sites near the lake, violating Tribal treaty rights. NoDAPL paved the way for many contemporary Indigenous resistance movements in North America.

Another example of the organizations related to Indigenous-led environmental movements is the National Association of Indigenous Women Ancestral Warriors. They are an association of Indigenous women from all over Brazil who organize to guarantee Indigenous rights. In 2023 they hosted the Third March of Indigenous Women: Biome Women in Defense of Biodiversity through Ancestral Roots (figure 10.52). Part of their manifesto reads:

We, Indigenous Women, are in many struggles at national and international level. We are seeds planted through our songs for social justice, for the demarcation of territory, for the standing forest, for health, for education, to contain climate change and for the ‘Healing of the Earth.’ Our voices have already broken silences imputed to us since the invasion of our territory (Manifesto of the First Brazilian Women n.d.).

Indigenous Peoples tend to reside in territory that is coveted for its natural resources. As a result, they are targeted for harassment and killing by people with economic interests (often miners and loggers operating illegally). Sometimes those actors have the support of members of government. Making matters worse, Indigenous Peoples often reside in remote areas with little legal oversight or law enforcement to prevent or prosecute human rights violations.

As they stand up for the rights of nature and for their own rights, Indigenous Peoples become even more vulnerable to violations. The London-based NGO Global Witness released a report in 2021 revealing that at least 1,733 murders of environmental and land-defense activists had occurred in the decade since 2012. That equates to about one murder every two days (Hines 2022).

All of these issues apply to the practice of environmental justice, and they are further exacerbated due to climate change. Indigenous knowledge, the protection of Indigenous rights, and the defense of natural ecosystems are integrally connected. Therefore, Indigenous-led environmental movements, as they center the struggles and values of Indigenous Peoples, are crucial for creating a world that is environmentally just.

Licenses and Attributions for Indigenous-Led Environmental Movements

Open Content, Original

“Indigenous Led Environmental Movements” by Aimee Samara Krouskop is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Open Content, Shared Previously

The first four paragraphs of “Indigenous-Led Environmental Movements” are a remix of “Indigenous Struggle and Knowledge” in “1.5. Environmental Justice & Indigenous Struggles” by Avery Temple, found in Terrestrial Environment, licensed under CC BY 4.0.

The introductory paragraph and the first paragraph of “Values” are adapted from sections of “1.5 Environmental Justice & Indigenous Struggles” by Avery Temple, in Terrestrial Environment, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Image added.

“Knowledge” is a remix of “1.5 Environmental Justice & Indigenous Struggles” by Avery Temple, in Terrestrial Environment, licensed under CC BY 4.0 and “‘The Old Foods Are the New Foods!’: Erosion and Revitalization of Indigenous Food Systems in Northwestern North America” by Leigh Joseph and Nancy J. Turner and published by Frontiers, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Content on Bundorgan Women’s Network, images, and video added.

Open Content, Shared Previously

Figure 10.48. Participants in a meeting during a session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues is on Flickr and licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Figure 10.49. Screenshots of, and video, “Between the Forest and the Sea, Pt. 1: Life and Climate Change in Guna Yala” is licensed under the Standard YouTube License.

Figure 10.50. A farmer and children in the Potato Park, Peru is on Flickr and licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Figure 10.51. horseback rider observes a Standing Rock Sioux camp is on Flickr and licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.

Open Content, All Rights Reserved

Figure 5.47. “Achuar of Peruvian Amazon Say NO to GeoPark” by AmazonWatch is licensed under the Standard YouTube License.

Figure 10.52. Image of the Third March of Indigenous Women: Ancestral Women: Healing Minds for the Healing of the Earth is a screenshot from the web page of National Association of Indigenous Women Ancestral Warriors and is included here under fair use.