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For Earth Day 2019, I gave a very brief talk at SUNY New Paltz titled “Climate Change, Environmentalism, & Ethnocentrism: Why Activists Must Educate Themselves to Do No Harm.” We started the semester with that talk. The link below will take you to the audio.
Climate Change, Environmentalism, & Ethnocentrism: Why Activists Must Educate Themselves to Do No Harm
Some of the main ideas in this talk are:
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Ethnocentrism is the inherent belief that your culture is the best and that others, if not the entire world, would be better off if they were more like you. Ethnocentrism meets climate change when activists fail to realize that their causes and solutions may not align with others.
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We cannot leave intact the very power structures that produced environmental injustice or else we reinforce their legitimacy.
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From the indigenous perspective, saving the planet requires decolonizing our country.
References
Dhillon, Jaskiran
2016 Indigenous Youth are Building a Climate Justice Movement by Targeting Colonialism. Truthout, June 20, 2016. http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/36482-indigenous-youth-are-building-a-climate-justice-movement-by-targeting-colonialism.
Dhillon, Jaskiran
2017 “What Standing Rock Teaches Us About Environmental Justice.” Just Environments Series, Items (SSRC), December 5.
Estes, Nick
2019 Our History is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance. Verso, New York.
Gilio-Whitaker, Dina
2019 As Long as Grass Grows: The indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock. Beacon Press, Boston.
NYC Stands with Standing Rock Collective
2016StandingRockSyllabus. https://nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/.
Pellow, David N.
2016 Toward a Critical Environmental Justice Studies: Black Lives Matter as an Environmental Justice Challenge. Du Bois Review 1-16.
About April Beisaw
Dr. April M. Beisaw is an associate professor of anthropology at Vassar College. She teaches courses on archaeology and forensic anthropology.
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Righting the wrongs of Indian Country starts with non-Indigenous Americans understanding, not co-opting, Indigenous struggles. What we have learned from Indigenous environmental activism is that oil is not a problem in itself, the obsession with consuming goods and services is the problem that requires oil extraction and consumption at such a huge scale. Commodifying every aspect of the earth, nature, and ourselves is the problem.
I understand and take to heart all that you say here, and you are right about twisting their message to my needs as in using the Standing Rock action to serve my interest in stopping or slowing access to dirty oil. But at the end i am left with a sense of the wrongs but not any idea of how I can do anything to right the wrongs. I was at a conference where Winona LaDuke was asked how white people can help, her answer was “Stand beside us, not in front of us” I look forward to hearing more podcasts, thank you.