October
2000
Environmental
Justice for Native Americans
Book Review by Samantha Knowlden
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All Our Relations: Native Struggles for
Land and Life by Winona LaDuke (Boston:
South End Press and Honor the Earth, 1999). $16 paperback. 246 pages.
Despite the fact that tens of thousands of people
were standing outside the Republican convention doors in Philadelphia
this past August, trying to convey messages that were just as political
and relevant to the American public as what was going on inside, no
one in the mainstream media turned their cameras outwards to find out
what the people were saying. Every day we get to hear the latest from
George W. Bush and Al Gore—from swear words to petty arguments
about who doesn’t want to debate who. What about the other candidates
and the issues that Bush and Gore are not talking about? With this
severe
information blackout from mainstream media, it is necessary for people
to find alternative sources of information. South End Press presents
us with such a resource: All Our Relations, the words of Green
Party vice presidential candidate Winona LaDuke and the stories of Native
American environmental justice movements around the country.
Each chapter presents a compelling look at a different group of Native
American people fighting hard to regain the integrity of their culture
by regaining the integrity of the land around them. For many, the process
of regenerating the environment is a process of healing the individual
and group spirit. The descriptions LaDuke gives of historical and present
day government and corporate exploitation of people and the environment
in the U.S. and Canada are powerful. And so are her descriptions of
the people who are standing up and fighting and creating viable alternatives—from
the Independent Traditional Seminole Nation in Florida fighting to
protect
the Everglades, to the Innu in Canada fighting against the militaries
who test fighter planes over their homelands and disrupt the lives
of
every being for miles around, to the Hopis in Arizona who have developed
their own solar power company in order to maintain their independence
from polluting and exploiting utility companies.
All Our Relations is an eye opener to what is happening with
the environment and people in the U.S. It shows us the essence of the
environmental justice movement. It uncovers things about daily life
that most people probably do not consider, prompting questions. How
is your daily glass of orange juice affecting the well being of the
Everglades in Florida and contributing to the extinction of the Florida
panther? Where does our electricity come from and is hydroelectric
power
really "green"? Where does much of our lumber come from and
where does our waste end up? Where are our fossil fuels and nuclear
resources being unearthed and at what expense? How do these issues affect
people, the environment and animals? To give you a clue, LaDuke writes
that out of over 500 federally recognized tribes, "317 reservations
in the U.S. are threatened by environmental hazards, ranging from toxic
waste to clearcuts." These are not past injustices that these Native
Americans are trying to recover from. This is going on today, right
now. It makes you think: if the U.S. government and corporations can
continue doing this to people in our own country, imagine what is happening
in other countries where we have even less of an ability to "see" what
is going on.
What does it take to inspire you or to move you to action in response
to harm being done to people, the environment and animals? The stories
in this book produce a number of emotions fit to inspire: anger, sadness,
outrage, hope. It provides a thorough background of history and the
issues, as well as examples of courage, endurance and success—perfect
fuel for inspiration and knowledge to fight with.
One aspect of All Our Relations and LaDuke’s own views that
trouble people concerned with animal advocacy and vegetarianism is her
focus on the right and necessity of Native Americans to hunt. A July
press release from the Washington State Citizen’s Coastal Alliance
criticized LaDuke and condemned the Green Party for supporting the Makah
Indians and their campaign to hunt whales off the coast of Washington.
For some (perhaps more than a few) animal rights people, it may be simple
to dismiss LaDuke and these Native American groups for this belief.
This may not be the best strategy, however, considering the fact that
we can connect with them on so many other points. We can either treat
it as a wedge issue and let it keep us divided (I’m sure that’s
exactly what the forces we are fighting would want) or we can find
a
way to get past it and work together on environmental and social justice
issues. This book provides the opportunity to learn more about their
point of view on this issue and others that may differ from our approach
to environmentalism and our relations with animals.
Winona LaDuke begins All Our Relations with the statement that
in the last 150 years, "Over 2,000 nations of Indigenous peoples
have gone extinct in the western hemisphere, and one nation disappears
from the Amazon rainforest every year. There is a direct relationship
between the loss of cultural diversity and the loss of biodiversity.
Wherever Indigenous peoples still remain, there is also a corresponding
enclave of biodiversity." The relevancy of this statement reaches
far and wide—wherever corporations and governments respect the
people, they will be more likely to respect the environment and animals.
And vice versa: any corporation, government or community which respects
the environment most likely respects the people there. In the end this
is the fundamental connection between the environmental, animal rights
and social justice movements, an overall respect for living beings.
That is what All Our Relations is about.
