Indigenous communities frame environmental harms as threats to cultural survival, not ecology
Evidence
For these communities, and many others in the environmental justice movement, this defense of community is nothing less than a matter of cultural survival. This is certainly central to Native American and other indigenous communities and activists. Lance Hughes, the director of Native Americans for a Clean Environment, made clear the reason for his organization’s focus on environmental issues: ‘We are not an environmental organization, and this is not an environmental issue. This is about our survival’ (quoted in Johnson 1993: 12). LaDuke cites sovereignty issues and cultural survival as key reasons for her participation in the environmental justice movement (Di Chiro 1992: 117). — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 233
Categorization
- XREF: Directly serves indigenous sovereignty and recognition themes across Eco-Justice readings. — connects to: Indigenous and Chicana women frame toxic contamination as systematic genocide — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice:…, 233; Environmental education can alienate resource-dependent rural communities when it condemns local livelihoods. — David Sobel, Place-Based Education: Connecting…, 68; Land allotment and dam flooding drive current Lakota social pathology — Winona LaDuke, All Our Relations: Native Struggles for…, 747 (+8 more)
- recurring: this claim recurs 2 times within its source
Broader Connections
- Indigenous movements frame environmental injustice primarily as misrecognition, not inequity
#corroborates(0.92) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 305 - Environmental degradation of a place is experienced as an attack on community identity
#corroborates(0.90) — David Schlosberg, Defining Environmental Justice, 232 - Settler violation of reciprocal land ethics caused cascading ecological and cultural loss
#corroborates(0.80) — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, 763 - A people’s survival in struggle depends on its own cultural terms, not borrowed abstractions
#corroborates(0.80) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 106 - ‘Indigenous’ is an ecodeterminant tying belonging to place and time.
#expands(0.75) — Frans Dokman, Beyond Bantu Philosophy_…, 376 - Wilderness is a cultural construct, not a place that exists apart from humanity
#expands(0.75) — William Cronon, The Trouble with Wilderness; or,…, 5