Native Americans and EJ

This week's readings directly connect to many of the issues that Julie Sze discusses in "Noxious New York," but in the specific context of Native American experiences with the state apparatus and the environment's wellbeing.

Thomas Biolsi spends a significant amount of his article "The Birth of the Reservation" talking about the modes in which dominant and colonial gazes function to undermine Native American autonomy and agency. Through an examination of the state policies regarding the Lakota Nation, he analyzes the ways that the individual and individual property ownership was cultivated by the government, how the nuclear family and institutional marriages/unions were forced upon the Lakota people, and how the idea of progress became associated with marrying with white people and diluting native bloodlines. He says, "Lakota people internalized blood quantum as part of the way they saw themselves in the world or that they perceived full-bloods and mixed-bloods as being different, even mutually antagonistic, social groups" (Biolsi 42). The internalization of the ideas of incompotence and blood quantum that was produced by the American government, he concludes, is ultimately the most powerful weapon in furthering the subjugation of native peoples in this country.

Andrea Smith takes on the issue of Native people in America and land largely in terms of ecofeminism. She discusses the "greening of hate" as the pointing of blame towards people in the global south (especially women) for overpopulation that leads to environmental ills. This is problematic because it does not address--in fact it completely obliterates--the ways that women of color suffer through environmental injustice that often hurts their reproductive health. She talks about depleted uranium as an extreme example of the detrimental conditions that some people are living in and she explores the idea that is put out by some people that there are certain populations and groups of people in the world who are inherently "dirty."

The most interesting part of both articules to me was the discussion of mainstream environmental activism and its disconnect/hurtful stance towards Native American EJ issues. I would like to discuss this further and see if there are any mainstream organizations that are doing a good job of effectively showing solidarity with the struggles of Native Americans.