Photo credit: Tom Whitaker
For many years now I have been studying, writing, and thinking about what environmental justice means for Indigenous peoples. In my most recent book,
As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice From Colonization to Standing Rock, I take on the topic in very broad but specific ways. I see United States settler colonialism as a history of environmental injustice; in other words, colonization and environmental injustice go hand in hand for Native people.
In general, the field of environmental justice (EJ) refers to injustice as the ways people of color are disproportionately exposed to toxic development and other processes that place them at higher risk of illness and other attendant harms (such as lower property values and gentrification). EJ is based on the concept of environmental racism...