Dina Gilio-Whitaker: As long as grass grows: the Indigenous fight for environmental justice, from colonization to standing rock

Abstract

As Long as Grass Grows is an important call to action for all environmental justice activists and scholars. The book not only highlights the traditional distributive environmental injustices faced by Indigenous peoples but also more importantly questions the basic premises on which US environmental movements and environmental justice distributive principles are based. It is critical reading for all non-Native environmentalists. The genocide and removal of Indigenous peoples from land is an environmental injustice that needs to be recognized. This Indigenous erasure became the premise on which the White settler conservation movement seeking to protect wild, “open spaces.” The genocide and removal of Indigenous peoples also blocked and obstructed Indigenous peoples from sacred spaces, traditional food, and water sources, and other “culturally affirming resources.” This important and specific history is why centering Indigenous perspectives in environmental justice is critical. While the book does address the Standing Rock protests, it is not the central focus of the book. Standing Rock is used, in part, to describe what is not uncommon historically in conflicts between Indigenous peoples and White settler colonializers; broken treaties, unrecognized rights and responsibilities, cultural appropriation, and a lack of respect and understanding of Indigenous values. Standing Rock underscores the conflicts between Indigenous peoples and often well-intended, non-Native activists who do not center cultural respect and deference to coalition building in their activism. In Chapter One, Gilio-Whitaker clearly articulates how the current distributive model of environmental justice omits the history and conditions underlying the present unequal distributions. Gilio-Whitaker also questions the very premise of a distributive model of environmental justice, which seeks to poison us all equally. Indigenous perspectives including the original dispossession of land and the specific complexities of sovereignty, in addition to alternative conceptions of justice which generally include restorative and reparative perspectives, are critical additions to the environmental justice conversation. Chapter Two of the book unpacks what, for some readers, may be a deeper understanding of the effects of White settler colonialism. Discussed less frequently in the history of Indigenous genocide is the dispossession of land which blocked Indigenous people from traditional food and water sources as well as trade routes, which had devastating impacts on Indigenous peoples. Furthermore, the concept that the precolonized landscape was wild and uninhabited is debunked. These landscapes were in fact cultural landscapes that only became uninhabited after the removal of Indigenous peoples. Chapter Three reviews the critical difference between Indigenous values of land relationships and White settler colonial and capitalist views of land as a resource. It then outlines the ways the settler colonialist, capitalist system has used land “resources” in projects such as railroads, dams, and extraction which have had tremendous negative impacts on Indigenous populations. Gilio-Whitaker describes exposures and health effects related to resource extraction on Indigenous peoples and then further unpacks the Indigenous connections to land and water, not only in relation to food but also medicine and health, life, and culture throughout Chapter Four. Chapter Five outlines the rocky and contentious history of the environmental movement in the USA as it relates to Indigenous peoples. As noted in Chapter Two, much of the early preservation and conservation movement in the USA was built on the 1 It is important to acknowledge my status as a White environmental justice scholar in reviewing this text. This is to identify not only the perspective of the reviewer but also the perspective that is not represented within this review.