Environmental defenders’ erasure of indigenous peoples constitutes a recognition injustice

Evidence

A key statement by the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous People’s Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) insists that both governments and NGOs ‘must recognize the existence of the population’ indigenous to the region (quoted in Conca and Dabelko 1998: 338). Indigenous groups such as COICA work to get both governments and NGOs to understand that nature is not empty and devoid of peoples and culture—that indigenous peoples exist and occupy their own territory, and this should be recognized and respected. A vision of the natural world devoid of the indigenous peoples that populate it simply makes those cultures invisible. — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 304

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to settler-colonial critique thread and the ‘nature is empty’ framing that recurs across Eco-Justice readings — directly usable in the polyad. — connects to: Allies’ narrow environmental framing preserves the land structures causing injustice — Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and…, 91; Environmental review documents omit or erase the communities they harm — Luke W. Cole and Sheila R. Foster, From the Ground Up: Environmental…, 1071; Environmental degradation of sacred land constitutes a recognition injustice — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 236 (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Environmental justice comprises recognition and participation as well as distribution #expands (0.88) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 12
• Indigenous movements frame environmental injustice primarily as misrecognition, not inequity #expands (0.85) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 305
• Global environmental justice movements target misrecognition, exclusion, and incapacity alongside inequity #corroborates (0.85) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 298
• Misrecognition of identities drives environmental justice groups to demand recognition. #corroborates (0.82) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 226
• Cultural-erasure denial licensed apartheid and Native American dispossession #exemplifies (0.75) — Michael A. Sells, The Bridge Betrayed, 385