Today is International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples. In honor of the celebration, here’s an explainer on why Indigenous peoples are essential to the climate fight. The article frequently quotes the work of Indigenous scholar Kyle Whyte.
It’s important to recognize that there is tremendous diversity beneath the umbrella term that is ‘Indigenous’. Indigenous communities have had different experiences with colonialism and will have varying positionalities. Making generalizations, therefore, can be dangerous. We need to ensure that the discourse we engage in is sensitive to nuances. We want to offer genuine solidarity, not oversimplifications. With that in mind, let’s move forward.
Indigenous peoples are those who, prior to a period of colonization, exercised collective self-determination according to their own cultural and political systems. Self-determination refers to having their own government and maintaining particular cultural practices. Today, Indigenous peoples live as nondominant populations in countries like the US.
The Indigenous way of life
Indigenous institutions are designed to approximate and respect the dynamics of changing ecological conditions, with an eye towards maintaining a sufficient abundance of plants and animals. They are explicitly designed to constantly adapt to environmental change. Whyte recalls how “the purpose, organization and size of ceremonies, villages, and bands changed throughout the year, depending on what plants and animals needed to be harvested, monitored, stored or honored”.
Indigenous peoples maintain kinship and harvesting relationships with nature. Although they comprise only 5% of the world’s population, they safeguard 80% of its biodiversity. Some Indigenous societies are even ‘multispecies’, in that clan animals are parts of their identities. In Whyte’s words, “Indigenous peoples generally are not surprised by the idea that their history consists of the adaptive interplay between their institutions and environmental change.”
What is colonialism?
Colonialism is the practice of a country maintaining control over another country by exploiting its resources. Colonizers repurpose land to provide raw materials, food, energy supplies, labor and consumer demand. Because of this, colonization inherently involves the commodification, marketization, and financialization of nature.
The result? Deforestation, water pollution, and ecosystem disruption in the colonized country. In this sense, colonialism can be understood as one country inflicting burdensome anthropogenic environmental change on another.
What is settler colonialism?
Settler colonialism involves one society settling the territories of another society. For the colonizer to do so, it must establish its own cultural and political systems. This requires erasing the Indigenous population.
The excuse for this? Enter the concept of ‘terra nullis’ – the idea that Indigenous lands were vacant, barren, open for conquest, a blank slate to be reconfigured as the colonizers wished. This has dangerous implications because places can only be considered ‘vacant’ if they are devoid of humans. Thus, the colonizers were able to systematically decimate and evict Indigenous populations.
As a result of its approach of rigidity and containment, settler colonialism targets the ecologically mobile, adaptive systems of Indigenous peoples. It does this by destroying closely related ecological conditions.
Examples of settler colonialism:
The establishment of extractive and polluting industries, such as coal mining, agriculture, and the creation of urban areas, on Indigenous lands. These industries claimed the right to own, extract, and exploit the environment as personal property - much in the same way that they viewed Indigenous peoples as either obstacles or slaves.
Inflexible land treaties. Settlers occupied the treaty areas, limiting where Indigenous peoples could harvest. Indigenous people were removed and contained in reservation areas. Settlers then stigmatized this containment, casting reservations as bad places.
Boarding schools, which stripped Indigenous peoples of languages that express nature-related knowledge. Forcing Indigenous people to adopt English limited the range of meanings, knowledge, and skill-sets that Indigenous persons could draw on for sustenance.
Legislation like the U.S. Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 created Tribal governments that mimicked corporate structures by investing in carbon-intensive activities. Communities were forced to become profit-dependent entities.
The legacy of colonialism. The resulting socio-economic conditions – lack of infrastructure, poverty, social invisibility, discrimination – simply don’t withstand climate change well.
Adapting to environmental change is not a new concept to Indigenous peoples. But settler colonialism imposes environmental change so rapid that they simply can’t keep up.
Indigenous knowledge
Indigenous knowledge is “an accumulated knowledge: ancient, contemporary, micro and macro, making it local and cosmic. In many ways, it is beyond time” (Earthrise). It is constantly evolving as a result of Indigenous peoples’ intimate relationship with nature.
Sadly, this knowledge is often excluded from discourse on climate change. Historically, environmentalism has been driven by Eurocentric belief structures that emphasize a distinct separation of "Man" and "Nature" — an ideology that does not mesh well with the belief structures of Indigenous communities. This has made collaboration between mainstream environmentalists and Indigenous people difficult and has caused many conservation efforts to go awry.
How are indigenous people suffering from climate change?
Indigenous peoples live lifestyles of great dependence on nature, which are thus more vulnerable to climate change. It is said that nature narrates the colonial story through its desecrated and emaciated territories. Here are just a few examples.
Warming waters and sea ice loss are affecting fish populations which many Indigenous people rely on. Food insecurity results.
Droughts in Africa are preventing the Maasai from performing many of their rain ceremonies.
Sexual violence is being brought against Indigenous women and girls in the Arctic. This is because work camps for fracking are being set up, bringing in male contractors in the process.
The Indigenous climate movement
Around the world, Indigenous climate defenders are under attack for protecting the nature they love. Take defenders of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. Human Rights Watch has reported how "criminal networks engaged in illegal deforestation use intimidation, threats, and violence against anyone who stands in their way by reporting their illegal activities – including indigenous activists."
Conclusion: Deja vu?
For many Indigenous peoples, climate change is simply part of a long history of environmental damage caused by colonialism. These communities do not date climate change to ‘the age of the human’ - they date it to far earlier than that.
Many Indigenous people see colonialism as cyclical in nature. Colonial institutions facilitated carbon-intensive economic activities that produced adverse environmental impacts, while simultaneously complicating the ability of Indigenous peoples to cope with these adverse impacts. This has continued into the present day. This is why Whyte claims that the nature of climate injustice against Indigenous peoples is “more like the experience of déjà vu.”
Addressing climate change, therefore, is a matter of breaking this cycle and not letting it interfere with Indigenous peoples’ environmental responsibilities. Addressing climate change, fundamentally, also means decolonization.
Have a read of this interview, featuring Archana Soreng of the Kharia tribe in eastern India.