Resilience and Resistance: Native American Stakes In The Environmental Movement

Audience Analysis: My audience for this persuasive essay is young people who are interested/involved in the environmental movement already. My paper will probably be more accessible for those at a high-school age or older, and I want to focus on the age range between 15-25 to target a Gen-Z audience. However, I welcome all readers who are interested in climate change, indigenous issues, or human rights issues in the United States. Even someone who is interested in religion studies or cultural anthropology might be interested in my paper, as it discusses in part the spiritual relationship that Native Americans have with nature. My target audience is also one that is already familiar with some background information about climate change and global warming. My paper’s goal is not to convince an audience that climate change exists; I want them to have that information already. The main goal of my paper is to surprise young people with a new perspective on climate change, and to raise awareness about the lack of legal protections for indigenous people in the United States. I also want to share support for the upholding of tribal sovereignty (the right for tribes to govern themselves) and I hope to find an audience receptive to learning about Native struggles and strengths. 

We have much to learn from indigenous populations in the United States, who guard some of our continent’s oldest religions and traditions, are models of human resilience, and share a history of and potential for sustainable action. For thousands of years, indigenous people hunted, gathered, and planted on American soil, both as a means of survival and to serve their cultural and social practices. By no means did these different groups share one identity, or make up one single community, in their own eyes or in the eyes of colonizers. But they did share an experience of collective trauma under colonial expansion, and as a result Native Americans today suffer from higher rates of substance abuse, worse mental health, and poorer health in general than most other races (Burnette et al). Tribes’ cultural interconnectedness with nature made it especially disturbing to be displaced, but also helped them to become resilient in the face of oppression. Further, today this relationship of fierce resiliency tempered with acknowledged vulnerability could offer a new approach in reacting to climate change. 

Indigenous resilience during displacement and colonialist antagonism was and continues to be deeply connected to dependence on nature. Subsistence activities like hunting, gathering edible and medicinal plants, and using the land for transportation have helped combat the health crisis that many tribes are facing (Burnette et al). These activities also carry strong social significance for Native Americans whose religious and cultural practices have strong ties to natural themes and motifs. Many Native American tribes operate under the belief that human beings are intrinsically connected with nature, and this defines their relationship with the land, with each other, and with the rest of the world. A poem attributed to Skokomish Chief Seattle from the nineteenth century captures this sentiment (Morris 104): 

Whatever befalls the earth

Befalls the sons and daughters of the earth 

We did not weave the web of life; 

We are merely a strand in it. 

Whatever we do to the web, 

We do to ourselves. 

Recent studies have shown that displaced tribes were intentionally pushed into more environmentally extreme environments, making them more at risk to climate change, and confounding traditional subsistence methods (Flavelle 2021). For example, the Mojave on the Colorado River and the Hopi reservation are experiencing respectively, “an average of 117 days above 100 degrees or 62 more than on its historical lands” and “57 days above 100 degrees on average, compared with just two days on their historical lands” (Flavelle 2021). Higher temperatures means more money spent on electricity for cooling, and makes the land less arable for farming. Displacement is also correlated to lower rainfall, “According to the new data, the average precipitation on the [Pueblo of Laguna] tribe’s current land is about half of what its historical lands receive” (Flavelle 2021). Native communities across the United States and Canada are experiencing similar fluctuations in the environments they depend on for food, medicine, and transportation.  Many tribes are keeping track of the shifts they are seeing and coming up with methods for resisting climate change, like the Puyallup Tribe of Indians in Washington State, who recently published Climate Change Impact Assessment and Adaptation Options. This report projected that numerous tribal resources are being affected by climate change: fisheries and hatcheries, shellfish, wildlife, restoration sites, water quality, cultural resources and archaeological sites, transportation, and public health and safety (Puyallup Tribe of Indians, 7). 

Not only are traditional Native subsistence practices at risk because of climate change, environmental antagonists like fossil fuel companies pose a great threat to tribal communities’ social safety. Pipelines like the Keystone XL have huge environmental detriments, from soil erosion, water contamination, and air pollution to loss of wildlife and vegetation in surrounding areas (Williams). But even more importantly, the all-male workforces drawn to these camps also bring higher rates or crime, drug use, and violence against women. According to an article for the Indian Journal of Women and Social Change, in the areas where the Dakota Access Pipeline was constructed “the rates for murders, aggravated assaults and robberies tripled, while the rates for sex crimes, forcible rape, prositution, and sex trafficking, increased by 20.2 per cent” (Adamson 25). This report notes that the victims of these murders and sex crimes are disproportionately Indigenous women. Oil companies are not being held responsible for their actions towards indigenous people, and tribal communities are not given enough political say to determine the fates of their own peoples and traditions. 

In this paper I will investigate how the North American environment and climate relate to and impact the geopolitical relationships between Native American tribes and the United States government. I posit that, beyond the mass slaughter of indigenous people in the colonial era and during settler expansion, continuing governmental decisions to displace Native Americans from tribal lands afflicts both their communities and those of non-Native Americans. These issues range from environmental degradation in areas used for subsistence hunting, to escalating climate disasters and irregular weather patterns that make infrastructure harder to plan, to fossil-fuel projects that endanger both the ecosystem and human lives. In part because of adherence to traditional practices in some tribes, and in part because of lack of resources in others, these communities are especially vulnerable to climate change. Further, they are often less equipped to fight against environmentally destructive and socially threatening projects that are happening on their land– like the Keystone XL pipeline. Despite this vulnerability, however, there are many ways that Native American tribes have learned to adapt to environmental changes, and the same traditions that make certain tribes vulnerable also offer a more sustainable and harmonious way of interacting with the environment. The United States government should respect tribal sovereignty– the right to self-government– but also bring Native American voices  into the climate conversation. 

    Native American cultures and religions were able to survive colonization in large part because of the deep connection they held with the environment. Many Native tribes practice a combination of religion, medicine, sport, and subsistence that is highly dependent on interaction with natural themes and physical resources. For example, Native American healing traditions draw on nature both physically from medicinal plants and herbs and thematically from a belief in the connectedness a human person has with the environment. A report on the well-being and resilience of Native Americans in the US explains that “The indigenous view of balance extends beyond the individual to include living in harmony with the community, others, and the spirit world. Sickness, in the indigenous worldview, is the absence of wellness or an imbalance….” (Burnette et al 5). Further, a study on Native American healing practices writes of “their relationship to the four constructs of spirituality (Creator, Mother Earth, Great Father), community (family, tribe), environment (daily life, nature, balance), and self (inner passions, thoughts, and values” (Garrett and Portman 455).  Garrett and Portman examined how indigenous concepts of wellbeing are dependent on this balance between the physical and the spiritual, and nature is often seen as the meeting point between the two realms. Psychologist Roma Morris wrote about Native American healing traditions that a key concept in Native belief systems is the “sacred circle of life” (Morris 96). This is the idea that behind individual and community growth there needs to be a consciousness of one’s place in the natural and spiritual world, that we should “take into account the consequences of our decisions on the multiple ecological systems that surround and nourish us, both visible and invisible, past, present, and future” (Morris 96). 

Indigenous awareness of the interconnectedness of human and natural systems has led Native peoples to protect the environment and helped Native traditions to survive violent disruptions during colonization and settler expansion. A study on indigenous resilience explains that for many Native cultures, “nature is viewed as a sentient being capable of reciprocity, collaboration, and/or harm. This closeness and intimacy to place promotes resilience to environmental change, thus underpinning moral relationships of responsibility to protect and care for nature” (Ford et al 533). The authors theorize that this relationship to nature makes indigenous communities more sensitive to environmental change, but also helps them adapt in constructive ways. A study conducted recently on the impact of nature on tribal youth in Canada showed that interaction with nature had positive effects on the mood and behavior of the participants. The study, based on interviews and documented self-reflection of participants, found that nature was important for three aspects of youth resilience: nature as a calming place, building metaphors of resilience, and providing a sense of hope (Hatala et al). For communities that struggle with the manifest legacy of oppression and trauma, positive coping mechanisms like those studied above, should not be underappreciated. Research has shown that indigenous people are at a higher risk for “substance abuse, posttraumatic stress disorder, deperession, and suicide” than non-indigneous people, linked to repressed anger from coping with opression their whole lives (Burnette et al 2,4). Thus this trend in positivity and hopefulness correlated to tribal member engagement with nature is well worth noting while considering indigenous futures. 

    Tribes that use traditional subsistence methods are closely dependent on nature for these practices, making them sensitive and alert to environmental changes. Indigenous hunters are in close contact with the land almost daily, and are prime candidates for observing and reporting climate change patterns. A report detailing climate change’s impact on indigenous people in Alaska shows that Native hunters have noticed “thinning sea and river ice that makes harvests of wild food more dangerous, changes to permafrost that alter spring run-off patterns, changes in seasonality of vegetation and animal movements... and rising sea levels with more extreme tidal fluctuations” (Cochran et al 559-560). On Alaska’s North Slope specifically, annual per capita income cannot keep up with the high cost of living, forcing tribes like the Inupiaq to subsist from hunting and gathering. According to the National Research Council,  about 68.7% of Inupiaq households reported that “at least one-half of their annual food came from subsistence activities”, mainly hunting the bowhead whale. Oil and gas extraction on the North Slope have had three results on subsistence hunting: “traditional hunting areas within active oil fields are now closed to hunting. Second, offshore activities alters bowhead migration routes. Third... calving caribou tend to avoid intensive oil-field activity, shifting to less disturbed areas” (National Research Council 136). Similarly, the Weenusk First Nation in Canada found that their subsistence habits have been interrupted by climate change over the past few decades. Researchers conducted numerous interviews with the Weenusk in 2007, finding that tribal members were noticing “changes in snow and ice conditions, shifts in the seasons, and unusual animal behavior all exceed the familiar range of variability in their experience” (Koster et al 7). These changes impaired the Weenusk’s hunting, gathering, and transportation practices as water levels and erosion reshaped their travel routes and traditionally hunted species populations were thinning out or even disappearing (Koster et al). 

Environmental policies that contradict tribal rights to sovereignty also have negative implications for the safety of indigenous women. Company-provided housing for workers at oil and gas pipeline construction sites leads to development of “man camps”, which are linked to upticks in crime and violence against women in nearby areas, disproportionately against indigenous women. Indigenous women are an easy target for male assailants because reservations are not allowed to try non-Indians who have committed crimes on tribal land. This legal barrier is especially perverse considering the data surrounding violence against indigenous women: “one in three Native American women are raped during their lifetimes… and in 86 percent of the cases, the assailant is non-Indian” (Crane-Murdoch). A study on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) found 411 cases occurring within the four states through which the Keystone XL pipeline is proposed to be built (Sovereign Bodies Institute 7). According to their research, 4/5 of these cases have not been solved or had any charges laid, and ⅔ have no “publicly available information on alleged perpetrator or leads in investigation” (Sovereign Bodies Institute 7). Most cases fall into a gray area between tribal, state, and federal jurisdictions, making it difficult for tribes to conduct formal investigations, and local police departments often aren’t motivated to help. This phenomenon has already been studied by academics, yet few policies to protect Native women have appeared in response. This is why tribes need more acting power and funding to conduct their own research, and they must have returned to them the right to try non-Native Americans that commit crimes against Native women or on reservations. 

Many Native American tribes model sustainable programs that offer creative solutions in adapting to climate change, yet they have gone underfunded for years. A report from the National Wildlife Federation purports: “Tribes have a good foundation to build on, including long standing connections to and reverence for the land, traditions of sustainability, historical knowledge of the land and resources that cannot be matched, and expertise in natural resource and wildlife management.” (National Wildlife Federation 22). However, they also point out that the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), which is responsible for allocating funds from the United States government, has not been matching tribal funding to price inflation in America. This means that, in 2011, “Tribes have more than $356 million of unmet annual needs for natural resource management and conservation.” (National Wildlife Federation 22). Despite this roadblock to sustainable infrastructure, tribes have still managed– through collaboration– to come up with solutions. The report again emphasizes the constructiveness of tribal organizations regarding climate adaptation:“Traditional Tribal natural resource management practices are inherently place-based, time-tested, climate-resilient, collectively managed, cost-effective, and sustainable” (National Wildlife Federation 24). An article from Yale School of the Environment follows the Swinomish tribe, who have implemented practices that improved the health of the coastal ecosystem in Washington state. This included building rock walls to make clam gardens for increased shellfish population, creating spawning areas for the salmon on the Skagit River, and fighting to block a mining operation at the head of the Skagit in British Columbia (Jones, 2020). Hundreds of tribal associations across the United States are doing the same, and given more funding their operations could not only expand in action, but also reach a wider audience of people to join in and collaborate.  

    Some skeptics of my topic might say that the government has already created acts that recognize tribal rights and provide them with enough protections. While it is true that the United States government has at times endorsed the concept of tribal sovereignty, many of the most important provisions have been reversed or made irrelevant by Supreme Court rulings. For example, one might point to the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968 to claim that tribes already have the right to self rule. Yet this “Bill of Rights” was undermined just a decade later in the Supreme Court case Oliphant v. Suquamish Indian Tribe, where tribes lost the right to try non-Indians for crimes committed on reservation land (Barsh and Henderson 609). In another example, the 1988 Indian Gaming Regulatory Act pledged to “promote economic development, tribal self-sufficiency and strong tribal government” (Justia). It would have been a step forward for tribal sovereignty were their sentiment actually upheld, but the 2005 decision in City of Sherrill v. Oneida Nation suspended this progress. In this case, the Oneida Nation of New York was attempting to buy back land they had lost in unfair trade deals over the past century, in order to build a casino to generate revenue for their reservation. The Supreme Court upheld that the Oneida’s claim to the land was void because they had waited too long to buy it back, even though they had lost it unfairly in the first place (Goldberg 1027). This denial of tribal sovereignty and land rights makes it difficult for tribes to subsist as independent nations and preserve their cultural traditions. 

    Some lawmakers might ask that if tribes are supposedly independent and “sovereign” nations, why do we have a responsibility to help them? To answer, I would simply point to the history of the United States’ treatment of Native Americans, and make the argument that we owe them reparations for the devastating impact US expansion has had on their communities. When the United States finally won the Revolutionary War in 1783, they assumed that all the Native land in America was theirs for the taking. By the early 1800s, settler expansion pushed pioneers up to the front of Indian lines, where Native peoples felt the pressures of an expanding American civilization. The US government forced Native Americans to choose between assimilation to white culture— dependent on abandoning their own cultures, traditions, and religions— or leaving their homes and being pushed into the Western desert, where thousands died along the way (Zinn). The government has many times over tried to extinguish the cultural traditions of Native American people. Examples range from the Boarding School policy in 1870 that forced tribes to send their children to schools where they would be taught to forget their customs and traditions, to the “Termination Policy” that dissolved many tribal reservations in the 1950s, to recent decisions to open up tribal lands to destructive oil and gas extractive projects (Walters). We owe it to the Native peoples remaining in North America today to make up for the decisions of our government that devastated their cultural traditions, tribal economics, and livelihoods in general. Beyond being a racial issue, governmental interference with tribal sovereignty is also a feminist conflict, a topic of religious freedom, and human rights concern. Further, we should care about preserving Native tribes because of the invaluable knowledge and experience that they have on environmental matters, something that non-Indigenous people can learn and benefit from. 

Indigenous relationships with nature are known to be less destructive and more sustainable than the majority of  profit-centered approaches we see in the United States today, and there is a lot to learn from tribes about medicine, food subsistence, and community design from Native American tribes. One report defines Indigenous Knowledge as “the understanding, skills, and philosophies developed by societies with long histories of interaction with their natural surroundings” (Ford et al 537). Indigenous knowledge is invaluable not just for tribal reservations in North America, but also for the rest of the continent to learn from. For example, Native infrastructures have been shown to result in “more efficient forest management, lower-intensity use, and higher biodiversity than non-Indigenous management practices” (Ford et al 537). Subsistent living also results in eating healthier foods than most Western diets, relating to overall better health (Burnette 6). Further, Indigenous understanding of health as not just physical, but also related to connection with community and environment takes a more well-rounded approach than the philosophies governing a lot of modern medicines, which divorce physical health from other aspects of one's life. Overall, loss of Indigenous Knowledge is a huge cultural loss for the whole country, and for Native American people it has resulted in “desensitizing individuals to environmental conditions, undermined collective action… and disrupted learning by reducing exposure to the environment.” (Ford et al 540). Research has shown that these losses are counteracted where tribal sovereignty is upheld and there are “efforts to reclaim, revive, re-establish, and protect links to place” (Ford et al 540). Avoiding these losses and benefiting from indigenous knowledge requires upholding tribal sovereignty and consulting indigenous people in conversations about sustainability and conservation.  

We should work to ensure that Native American voices are listened to and heard, and that Native tribes and individuals are kept safe in the same way that the US government is supposed to look after all its citizens. The crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women is preventable, addressable, the issue just needs enough attention and funding for a full investigation and resulting legislation. On the issue of tribal jurisdiction, Joseph Mantegani argues that recent legislation passed to strengthen the authority of tribal courts still failed to address the problem of inadequate infrastructure for tracking cases: “The underreporting problem is so widespread that an Urban Indian Health Institute [study] found that of 5,712 reproted missing Native women and girls in 2016, only 116 had been logged in [the Department of Justice’s] database” (331). The best way to protect Native women, and Native Americans in general, is to respect the tribal right to sovereignty– which includes allowing them to try non-Native offenders– and providing adequate funding to tribes to ensure this sovereignty.

Tribes also need funding to adequately prepare against and respond to the effects of climate change. Many are already doing so, as can be discovered on the Tribal Climate Change Guide: Adaptation Plans; and their financial requests range from “reduced cost bear spray” to mitigate conflicts between humans and wildlife, to larger restoration projects that involve removing harmful infrastructure from natural ecosystems (Pacific Northwest Tribal Climate Change Project). The National Congress of American Indians lists dozens of tribal initiatives for climate assessment and action, that range from particular local issues to larger collaborations, like the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, where 11 tribes surrounding the Great Lakes area joined forces to research changing biodiversity in the lakes (NCAI Policy Research Center). These projects ranged from gathering environmental data, to analyzing and making projections about said data, to coming up with theoretical solutions, and to performing concrete action. One such project, led by the Skokomish Indian tribe, restored an estuary in Puget Sound, with positive results for the whole surrounding community: “It’s the tribes that are putting the fish back in the waters. It’s our people doing that to make sure our livelihood will carry on, that our children will have this opportunity to get into a boat and go fishing so that they can eat what they need” (Native Knowledge). 

Overall, including Native American people in the environmental policy decisions that are affecting them the most will help make reparations for historic damages, and non-indigenous people will benefit in turn from the preservation of indigenous knowledge. Many Native American tribes have valuable information and experience about how to construct sustainable and healthy societies that work with, rather than against, the environment. Today, as we are seeing the effects of climate change ramp up with more frequent and violent storms, increasing droughts and wildfires, and more people affected by air and water pollution, we need new ideas to achieve sustainability more than ever. Traditional Native American cultures have some of the solutions that we are looking for: how to harvest food and practice agriculture sustainably, and even alternative construction methods that are less destructive of the environment (Ford et al 537). State officials are already working with tribal leaders to fight climate disasters like the California wildfires, using traditional controlled burns to sculpt the landscape in prevention of worse fires (Sommer, 2020). Thinking and talking about these issues, and forcing them into the public eye will help push policy-makers to make decisions in consideration of Native American interests. Including indigenous voices in the climate conversation will aid in ending a human rights crisis and will propel the environmentalism movement forward into new avenues and opportunities for sustainability.