Читать книгу Lessons in Environmental Justice - Группа авторов - Страница 32

Kyle Powys Whyte

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Diego G. Diaz / Shutterstock

Indigenous peoples are living societies who continue to exercise their own political and cultural self-determination despite facing conditions of invasion, exploitation, and colonization (Anaya, 2004; Sanders, 1977). Self-determination refers to a society’s capacity to pursue freely its own plans and future in ways that support the aspirations and needs of its members. Conditions of invasion, exploitation, and colonization are caused by groups from other societies. The groups include nations and for-profit and nonprofit organizations, such as multinational corporations, local industries, and conservationist groups. In very simple terms, invasion occurs when one society (or certain groups from it) forcefully seizes the lands and waters that another society lives on and flourishes from. The latter society is the Indigenous people. Seizure is likely aimed at several goals, including exploitation and colonization. Exploitation occurs when the invaders seek to earn economic profits at the expense of harming the Indigenous peoples. Colonization occurs when the invaders seek to create strategies to undermine the Indigenous peoples’ self-determination in preventing themselves from being exploited.

Colonial strategies for denying the colonized society’s self-determination often involve military protection of people who seek to engage in industries such as mining that take resources from Indigenous lands. Indigenous peoples do not profit from these industries and are often harmed by environmental consequences, such as pollution. Or colonial strategies involve the invading society actually forcing the creation of conditions for its members to live permanently in the new lands. In North America, the United States and Canada, as well as the European nations that preceded them, invaded Indigenous peoples’ lands and continue to exploit and colonize Indigenous peoples today. Corporations, operating with the sanction of these countries, have profited from dirty environments at the expense of Indigenous peoples’ health, cultural integrity, and economic well-being. Economic exploitation, stealing of resources, and polluting the land are all strategies to stop people from pursing their own plans and aspirations, that is, the self-determination of their societies.

For example, General Motors and Reynolds Metals dumped unacceptably high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxin, and mercury in the territories of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe (New York) and the Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne (Ontario) (Hoover, 2017; Tarbell & Arquette, 2000). In the 1980s and 1990s, numerous studies showed Mohawk persons suffered health problems, threats to their cultural practices, and decline of their fishing economy (Hoover, 2017). Moreover, U.S. and Canadian laws and policies restricted the capacity of the Mohawks to prevent their communities from suffering harms and living with unacceptable risks. Alice Tarbell and Mary Arquette (2000), who have played critical roles in this issue, have written that the laws and policies involved “relax[ed] treatment standards and promot[ed] substandard, temporary cleanups at Superfund sites.” The governments' responses were much too slow to address “environmental problems [at Akwesasne] and [lacked] the will and support to enforce their own decisions.” In failing to “[respect] the decisions of governments like those of Akwesasne,” the U.S. and Canadian governments have been “biased toward industry and the local economy at the expense of Native peoples” (Tarbell & Arquette, 2000, p. 99).

Indigenous peoples are among the leading groups that are working to address environmental injustice. At Akwesasne, Mohawk peoples founded projects, such as the Akwesasne Task Force on the Environment, the Environmental Division of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe, and the Mother’s Milk Project, that revived their own traditions in order to exercise self-determination in how they cleaned up the environment and protected their community members’ safety. The Mother’s Milk project, for example, led by Katsi Cook, involved creating strategies for women affected by pollution to study their own exposure and implement their own solutions (Tarbell & Arquette, 2000). The Akwesasne Task Force, among other key roles, offers alternatives that protect health, cultural integrity, and economic vitality, such as aquaculture projects. The Traditional Mohawk Nation Council of Chiefs has advocated at the level of the United Nations, presenting in 1995 a document called Haudenosaunee Environmental Restoration: An Indigenous Strategy for Human Sustainability (Tarbell & Arquette, 2000).

Indigenous peoples have never consented to the pollution of their lands. That is, they have never consented to invasion, exploitation, and colonization. When someone consents to an action by someone else that affects them, it means they have willingly accepted that action. An action can be acceptable when those affected by it understand and are “okay” with the risks, see the action as having impacts that are in their best interests, and are secure in knowing that they have the chance to influence and monitor how the action is carried out and completed. When someone dissents to an action, it means they neither understand the risks sufficiently (to consent confidently) nor wish to shoulder them, do not see any converging interests, and have reason to believe they will have no role in influencing or monitoring how the action is carried out. For the people of Akwesasne, they clearly did not consent to the presence of and pollution caused by the dirty industries in their region. The U.S. and Canada, and the corporations and communities benefiting from the industries, exploited the health, cultural integrity, and economic vitality of Mohawk peoples. They colonized Mohawk peoples by limiting Indigenous self-determination to prevent these harms and risks.

Denial of consent is one important factor causing environmental injustice across a number of cases. Broadly, environmental injustice refers to the problem that there are some groups or societies who suffer more harms and shoulder greater risks, such as the health problems of pollution. What really makes a particular situation an injustice is when the prevalence of harm or risk is a product of another group’s or society’s seeking their own benefits by taking advantage of others. Hence, the Mohawks, because they are Indigenous, suffered more harms and shouldered greater risks for the benefit of corporations, communities, and individuals of U.S. and Canadian societies. Colonialism, then, is an environmental injustice since it undermines self-determination through land dispossession, pollution, and other environmental threats. A key strategy of colonialism is the denial of consent, which can produce environmental injustice. Nations and corporations often consider groups of people, such as Indigenous peoples, as not worthy of consent.

This chapter examines Indigenous environmental justice issues through the lens of consent. In it, I seek to show why environmental injustices against Indigenous peoples are problems of consent. I compare the current situation of consent today with Indigenous traditions that privilege consent in terms of how a society is organized. Part of colonialism in contexts like the United States and Canada has been the reorganizing of societies in North America to undermine Indigenous consent. The dismantling of traditions of consent is one way to understand how colonialism attacks self-determination. Although the United States is a unique context, many of the consent issues in relation to environmental justice arise in other contexts around the world. Readers should come away from this chapter with a good sense of why consent matters in relation to injustice, and why affirming consent is a strategy for achieving environmental justice for the sake of future generations.