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October 2000
Environmental Justice for Native Americans

Book Review by Samantha Knowlden

 

 

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.


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