How do you restore Indigenous authority to their ancestral places? By considering all kinds of possibilities and alternative land arrangements, inclu… - Dina Gilio-Whitaker

we have this concept of privilege that we understand through the lens of race, which again is also highly inadequate because the settler-colonial project was not about racism. It includes it, it involves it, but land theft and genocide was for acquiring land for the sake of land itself, not for the exploitation of bodies in the same way that chattel slavery was. So, these are really two big, different animals, and the problem is that they get conflated. When we talk about subsuming Native issues of justice under this umbrella of race, it is in a way that does harm and disservice to Native people and makes illegible Indigenous struggles for decolonization and justice.

We have to talk about policy and specifics as we look at the big picture of Indigenous liberation, because ultimately we have to engage with the hegemonic powers. Thereʼs no getting around that. Plus, how are you going to implement all these great ideas without tribal governments?

This concept of “indigenizing” environmental justice acknowledges that the way we understand environmental justice is far too narrow to fit for Native Americans. Environmental justice is about the fair and equal distribution of environmental risks and harms that disproportionately expose communities of color. But that depends on understanding all communities as equal as ethnic minority communities. And this just does not fit for American Indian people and communities because American Indians are not ethnic minorities. American Indians are nations with territories, sovereignty, and jurisdiction and entirely different histories that go back millennia on the land as well as histories of colonization, which is not true for any other population on this continent.