Allies’ narrow environmental framing preserves the land structures causing injustice

Evidence

At the same time, vicious sedimentation explains why certain allies are unable to advocate eff ectively for Indigenous peoples. Some allies of the tribe also mistakenly reduced the issue to that of the immediate threat to water and cultural heritage of a single pipeline. So these allies’ advocacy does not engage the longer and larger issues pertaining to mechanisms of colonial power that engendered and maintain land dispossession and the denial of self-determination. Bonita Lawrence and Enakshi Dua (2005) and Tuck and Yang (2012) have written about innocence, in which privileged persons feel that their daily actions and aspirations for justice are not implicated in settler colonial domination. Hence, these persons get to feel good about advocating for Indigenous peoples without having to take on the hard work of doing anything that will change the underlying land-based structures of domination that secure Indigenous disempowerment. — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 91

Categorization

• XREF: The critique of allies reducing struggle to ‘immediate water threat of a single pipeline’ speaks directly to eco-justice pedagogy teaching environmental racism as systemic — pairs with Tuck and Yang’s ‘settler moves to innocence.’ — connects to: Overlaid settler landscapes make settlers unable to perceive Indigenous presence. — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 83; Environmental defenders’ erasure of indigenous peoples constitutes a recognition injustice — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 304; Revolutionary movements fail when foreign allies restrain land reform that could win rural support

Related

• Environmental defenders’ erasure of indigenous peoples constitutes a recognition injustice (similarity 0.82)
• Indigenous communities frame environmental harms as threats to cultural survival, not ecology (similarity 0.78)
• Overlaid settler landscapes make settlers unable to perceive Indigenous presence. (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Environmental defenders’ erasure of indigenous peoples constitutes a recognition injustice #expands (0.72) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 304