Colonialism and Environmental Justice - Intro to Social Justice

Dakota Access Pipeline

an oil pipeline that was protested by the Standing Rock Sioux Nation because it cuts through their land, violating a treaty between the tribe and the US gov’t and was eventually completed in 2017. This is an example of settler colonialism

colonialism

the practice by which a powerful country directly controls less powerful counties and uses their resources to increase its own power and wealth.

settler colonialism

a distinct type of colonialism and system of oppression based on genocide and colonialism that aims to replace the native population with a settler population and extract the resources of the land; is more of a structure than an event and is characterized by relationships of domination and subjugation woven into the fabric of society

Native people in what is now New Jersey

Nanticoke Lenni Lenape Tribal Nation

climate change and settler colonialism

colonial system of capitalism that turns land into property, making it a “land as profit” model which causes a decline in the health of the environment, imposes an economic system that depends on extractive industries

extractive industries

industries which take from the land and see it solely as property and a resource, like oil, mineral, natural gas, and other industries

climate change

refers to long-term shifts in temperatures and weather patterns and the current trends are caused by humans

indigenous environmental justice

associates environmental justice with decolonization, freedom from colonial rule and seeks to end the structural relationship of domination and subordination between settlers and indigenous communities

environmental racism

a type of institutional racism that refers to any environmental policy, practice, or directive that disproportionately disadvantages low income non-white communities

environmental injustice

recognizes that economically disadvantaged groups are adversely affected by environmental hazards more than other groups

DAPL and environmental racism

exposure of indigenous communities to environmental hazards

environmental equity and water

water is essential to life and health, and the destruction of water sources means the destruction of communities

violence against the land and the women

men brought to work in oil companies brought violence and sex trafficking to indigenous communities, settler colonialism also means a disregard for the land and its inhabitants, particularly women