Chronic federal underfunding of Indian environmental programs is deliberate colonial design

Evidence

Goldtooth, who had come of age in an era of Indian activism and had been involved with IEN since 1991, was at the time the environmental director of the Red Lakes Band of Chippewa. Through his work he had come to the realization that the chronic underfunding of Indian environmental programs by the federal government occurred not by accident but by design. “I started to look at this as another colonial action of the government,” he explains. “I’ve always had this feeling that the government is in cahoots with corporations, and that it’s the corporations that want to take advantage of our resources. Surely, corporations don’t want tribes to have strong environmental protection infrastructures; they don’t want tribes to be exercising full sovereignty to implement their own enforcement laws, because if the tribes did do that, it may limit or fully restrict the ability of these corporations to continue to tap the tender resources, the water resources, the mineral resources.” — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 629 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Feeding those whom the government had deprived of food and sustenance became a major business and a new commercial opportunity for the fledgling western cattle industries. The Indian Department purchased a large amount of beef from western ranchers, setting the precedent for future price supports. This relationship continues to this day. The federal commodity program (a.k.a. “commods”) allocates canned beef, pork, and other food to Indian families. Ironically, many of these products originate from livestock raised on Native lands. This intergenerational distortion of subsistence, and its replacement with industrialized dependency, continues today. — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 722 (#expands, via linked claim)

At the Dilkon gathering, a moment of realization took place in some participants’ minds. CARE members were aware of the United Church of Christ’s Toxic Wastes and Race report, and they connected the national pattern of unequal distribution of toxic waste facilities to the targeting of their community for the toxic waste incinerator. Nevertheless, they and others were surprised to see the same issues—outside interests seeking to place undesirable land uses on Indian reservations— arise in a variety of guises, from nuclear waste storage facilities to toxic waste landfills to garbage dumps. — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 616 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Federal-state jurisdictional gaps exposed Native lands to toxic waste siting; Chronic federal underfunding of tribal environmental programs is deliberate, not accidental — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 629; Federal commodity food programs perpetuate colonial dependency on Native lands — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 722 (+1 more)

Related

• Chronic federal underfunding of tribal environmental programs is deliberate, not accidental (similarity 0.86)
• Federal commodity food programs perpetuate colonial dependency on Native lands (similarity 0.80)
• Diverse waste proposals surfaced as a shared single pattern of Indian land targeting (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Chronic federal underfunding of tribal environmental programs is deliberate, not accidental #corroborates (0.98) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 629
• Federal commodity food programs perpetuate colonial dependency on Native lands #expands (0.78) — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations, 722
• Diverse waste proposals surfaced as a shared single pattern of Indian land targeting #complicates (0.72) — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up, 616