Indigenous Politics and Climate Change

Waziyatawin’s Indigenous Survival in the Coming Collapse offers an honest look at the state of environment politics within indigenous communities. Environmental politics is an issue that represents the challenges faced by indigenous communities surrounding the effects of colonialism, the influences of capitalism, and best paths to offer resistance. Changes due to colonialism have been so complete that as Waziyatawin states, the immobilization of communities in responding to development and other environmental forces is significant. The ubiquity of fossil fuels and the integration of capitalism has so strongly changed perceptions and daily habits that the impact of peak oil will be significant. Currently the heavy use of fossil fuels has generated such a precipitous buildup of waste products that the disastrous effects are happening now and may result in catastrophic effects in the future. If either one of these outcomes is likely, it means, that “the world as we know it is coming to an end” (11). Waziyatawin argues that indigenous peoples need to renew their role as land defenders, and this means not only confronting environmental destruction but also confronting the changes wrought by colonialism on indigenous peoples with regard to their view of the environment. For example the discussion: “What will be your legacy? What will you leave behind?...Will your legacy be a world who is healthier, stronger, more resilient, more diverse, than had you never lived?” When they pose these questions, they do not mean in a cultural, spiritual, or intellectual sense. In other words, they are not asking us if we have positively affected the lives of other human beings, through our love, kindness, charity, or whether we have made significant contributions to humankind through our benevolent actions. Rather, they are asking us, in a very physical sense, if we have left the world in a better condition because we lived. “If not,” they tell us, “then the world would have been better off without you. If not, then the world would have been better off had you never been born.” (19) Waziyatawin discuses means of resistance including building “lifeboats” to prepare for environmental collapse (clean water, seeds, food, preserving habitats, etc), instilling revolution among themselves, building a sufficient land base, dismantling existing structures, and other means of resistance. In short Waziyatawin states that “we must now live the meaning of indigeneity. We need no longer exist as if we are separate from the land, as if our fates are not intertwined” (38). Cheyfitz’s Balancing the Earth: Native American Philosophies and the Environmental Crisis focuses on deconstructing the formulations of colonialism including the development of the ethos infusing capitalism (control and limitation), and religious traditions fostering individualism and an alienation from nature. Contrasting these epistemologies with indigenous developed ones, Cheyfitz uses the relation of indigenous peoples as part of nature to reformulate the perception of the environment. When humans are as an integral part of nature and not separate from it, the “Native way of knowing” of nature is “as ceremonial, intended to strengthen kinship ties through the maintenance of balance” (151). Aligning indigenous critiques of capitalism to a degree with Marxist, Cheyfitz uses the example of the effects of NAFTA on Mexican farmers, seed corn, agricultural practices, and Zapatista resistance to show how capitalism has destabilized people and nature. In order to change the destruction of nature, Cheyfitz argues one must confront the true costs of individualism, capitalism, and the human/nature divide. Many of the authors this week have described how indigenous peoples can refocus and reshape conceptions of nature and resistance to environmental destruction. What are the benefits and costs of aligning indigenous resistance to other environmental movements? Many authors also advocated resistance using violence and arming oneself. Are these methods too polarizing to have effect or has non-violence been essentially disrupted by the structures and methods of environmental exploiters to be effective? Are there other means for indigenous people to reframe the minds of the non-indigenous to disrupt the human/nature dichotomy?