06/11/2021

An Indigenous Systems Approach to the Climate Crisis

Climate justice means and Indigenous communities are closely linked

A colleague recently told me that climate justice is about building ties between people, their land and their traditional, ancestral ways. In all my years of doing environmental work, this is one of most succinct ways I’ve heard to describe what climate justice means for Indigenous People and communities: Reconnecting to our land is an integral piece of addressing climate change, for both our Nations and our wider communities.

To understand why, we need to take a closer look at how the last few generations of Indigenous peoples have been removed from our lands and lifeways, and how far reaching the consequences of those actions have been. When settlers arrived and colonization began, as NDN Foundation Program Officer PennElys Droz explains, our economic systems were targeted for disruption and destruction:

“Removing a peoples’ means of providing for themselves is a cunning way to suppress and control them. George Washington famously led the burning of Haudenosaunee seed houses. The United States encouraged the slaughter of buffalo to destroy the ability of the Plains Nations to provide for themselves. And in California, settlers methodically destroyed the Oak trees that the people depended upon. A state of dependency was intentionally created, with the Nations having to look to their colonizers for survival assistance.”

Please select this link to read the complete article from SSIR.