Abstract
Indigenous peoples have long held intimate relationships with the species and places often called ‘nature.’ Across our present location in North America, Indigenous land management practices shaped ecological systems at the same time as they organized social, political, spiritual and epistemological systems. Although highly varied, Indigenous ethical systems and understandings of society center relationships with and responsibilities to both human and ‘more than human’ relatives (e.g., Coulthard, 2014; Grande, 2004; Whyte, 2013). Despite longstanding and general public awareness that Indigenous ecologies, epistemologies, values and social arrangements look quite different from those in so-called western societies, the potential for an Indigenous environmental sociology is only recently taking hold. Indigenous perspectives on society, nature, state power, health, justice and more hold the potential to powerfully reframe conversations integral to environmental sociology. Indigenous perspectives on environmental justice expand understanding of the origins of the environmental and environmental justice movements, whether the state is conceived as a potential ally or explicit foe, and especially the desired goals and outcomes of social action. Taken together, Indigenous scholars and voices from Indigenous communities point to a deep reframing of “the other worlds that are possible” beyond either capitalism or colonialism (Fenelon & Hall, 2008; Grey & Patel, 2015; Norgaard, 2019; Simpson, 2017; Whyte, 2015).
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Notes
- 1.
Whereas U.S. environmental sociologists have been particularly slow in engaging settler-colonial theory, Canadian and Australian environmental sociologists are further along (e.g., the Canadian Sociological Association has had a research cluster on Indigenous-Settler Relations and Decolonization since 2014). Additionally, the related fields of Anthropology, Geography and Ethnic Studies—not to mention the rapidly growing field of Native Studies—con-tribute key perspectives upon which some environmental sociologists are be-ginning to draw.
- 2.
More specifically, the authors found that Indigenous cultural burning and agricultural practices across the Americas were so extensive that their interruption through the genocide of the late 1500s and early 1600 caused a 7–10 ppm decline in the global atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration and a global lowering of surface air temperature by 0.15 °C. Note that this does not mean that Indigenous management practices had a negative impact on the cli-mate. Rather, as plants and trees grow they take up carbon, as they die it is re-leased. Within this context, fires are natural parts of ecological systems and they too play a role in carbon storage and cycling since when fires occur stored carbon is temporarily released. Indigenous burning, like all fire, releases carbon. Indigenous use of fire is a key component of mixed severity fire regimes, which release less carbon than under a suppression/high severity fire regime scenario. The near total interruption of Indigenous land management practices including agriculture, traditional burning and more resulted in a temporary increase in terrestrial carbon storage across the Americas.
- 3.
Note that fire suppression was mandated as well by the first Spanish governors- an event that was especially important in the southern part of the state. See Timbrook et al. 1993: 129 Veg. Burning by the Chumash “Arrillaga’s Proclimation May 31, 1793 in Before the Wilderness Blackburn and Anderson eds and Dr. Frank K Lake (2007). Traditional ecological knowledge to develop and maintain fire regimes in northwestern California, Klamath-Siskiyou bioregion: management and restoration of culturally significant habitats. Oregon State University.
- 4.
Indigenous perspectives are under-represented in academia and very necessary to advance accurate understandings of Indigenous experiences and the processes of colonialism. Online see Guidelines for Considering Traditional Knowledge in Climate Change Initiatives: https://climatetkw.wordpress.com/ and NIEHS Resources on TEK: https://www.niehs.nih.gov/research/supported/translational/peph/webinars/tribal/index.cfm
- 5.
- 6.
However, Chomsky credits countries with large Indigenous populations, such as Ecuador or Bolivia, rather than the Indigenous societies themselves creating alternative social patterns. This perspective runs the risk of ignoring the anti-ecological and anti-Indigenous policies of those nation-states. For example, Ecuador tried to auction Amazonian oil reserves to China, while Bolivia sought to build highways in “undeveloped” regions without consulting Indigenous governance.
- 7.
Guide to Indigenous Land and Territorial Acknowledgements for Cultural Institutions, http://landacknowledgements.org/
- 8.
While there are some moments in time and space where this success with sustainable adaptation may have been otherwise (e.g. the potential relationship of human hunting to megafaunal extinction in North America), such instances if true are notable for their rarity. Instead, it is clear from the high human population levels that the profoundly abundant ecological systems in North America supported very large human populations until Euro-invasion.
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Norgaard, K.M., Fenelon, J.V. (2021). Towards an Indigenous Environmental Sociology. In: Schaefer Caniglia, B., Jorgenson, A., Malin, S.A., Peek, L., Pellow, D.N., Huang, X. (eds) Handbook of Environmental Sociology. Handbooks of Sociology and Social Research. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-77712-8_23
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