Indigenous Ecologies and Environmental Justice

Catalog description

Throughout history, settler colonial and industrial extractive projects have displaced Native American and Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands and instigated the environmental crises that plague our current world and threaten future survival. Indigenous peoples in the Americas and beyond have long been at the forefront of resistance movements against environmentally exploitative projects and engaged in an ongoing struggle that links Indigenous sovereignty with care for the natural world. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we will explore the humanistic concerns and ethics at stake regarding people’s role in ecosystems, our collective responsibility to protect the natural world, and the necessary work toward environmental and climate justice as intimately linked to Indigenous ecological knowledge, governance, and rights. This course will include readings on Native American and Indigenous oral history; land dispossession, displacement, and migration; ecological knowledge, practices, and biodiversity; decolonizing food systems, agriculture, and sustainability; health, medicine, and healing; resistance movements and social alliances; and the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, climate change, and environmental justice. We will look to case studies covering topics such as the links between language and land in Arctic environmental education; regenerative food systems in New Zealand, Mexico, and Peru; the effects of oil drilling in Ecuador and uranium mining in Navajo country; and resistance movements like Standing Rock/NoDAPL. Our texts will include poetry, interviews, multimedia pieces, book chapters, and journal articles primarily authored by Indigenous scholars and artists. We will explore Indigenous knowledge and decolonizing approaches as we re-envision an ethical path to a sustainable future that integrates environmental protection with social…