Indigenous Sovereignty Research Paper

Celia Wheeler Professor Zahi Zalloua IRES 220 29 March 2024 Synthesis of Environmentalism and Indigenous Sovereignty As our planet continues to be increasingly changed by rising temperatures, interest, and participation in environmentalism has increased as well. Oftentimes, this environmentalism comes with little to no regard for Indigenous sovereignty, which can be thought of as Indigenous belonging, dignity, and justice as opposed to settler sovereignty, which is thought of as supreme power. The environmentalist movement has at times coexisted with, and opposed, Indigenous sovereignty. In this paper I will discuss the future synthesis of environmentalism and Indigenous sovereignty, instead of merely an instrumental relationship. In the mainstream …show more content…
On the other, it distances itself from the cities, denying that they are part of the environment’." (pg. 542 K. DeLuca & A. Demo) This blatant erasure of native peoples historical use of land is problematic in many ways and the term wilderness only helps to amplify this. The settler view of wilderness creates a binary of what is seen as civilization as opposed to nature. This can be tied in with aspects of urbanization and capitalism, and how dependent western society is on structures and cities. Often, people will go into the ‘wilderness’ for a break from city life, they only see it as a break though, not a place capable of sustained living. This can be seen in the Thoreau’s retreat, "Reflecting on Thoreau’s retreat into the woods surrounding Walden Pond, canonically depicted as exchanging civil society for ‘nature’, Rifkin points to the encompassing sovereignty that licensed Thoreau’s access to a space that could induce a sensation of unruledness. Thoreau’s sanctioned reprieve was conditional on the Indians’ removal and continuing …show more content…
Tuck and K.W. Yang, pg.15) The settler claims the land as his by removing the native through dispossession of land, erasure of culture, and forced assimilation. The settler then needs to reconcile with his guilt, and one way of doing that is the fantasy of adoption, “to become without becoming.” One of these ways of adoption is through “love of the land,” which connects heavily to the concept of environmentalism. Environmentalism, in the sense of protecting the land, stems from an appreciation or love of the land. Without a settler colonial narrative, this can all too easily erase the existence of native people, and give way to the settler thinking HE “belongs to the land.” This is a false sense of “belonging” though, as the settler can only think of “belonging” in a sense of patriotism, the land “belongs” to the settler, not the other way around. Even if the settler believes this, his other beliefs oppose this. To move forward in a more synthetic manner, the environmentalist movement must recognize indigenous sovereignty and act from a decolonial perspective. This can be done by recognizing indigenous ways of living and education, and utilizing this knowledge in legislatures and

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