Environmental Justice & Native American Communities

“ For Native people, pollution problems also result in lost relationships with the natural world, something that can only be likened to mourning. The people actually mourn the loss of the natural world...The loss of place, relationships and balance can be culturally devastating.”

- Akwesasne Environment Research Advisory Committee

As of 2017, Native American communities lived near approximately 600 of 1,338 Superfund sites across the country Hoover, 2017, p.8). Close to 25% of all Superfund sites in the USA are in Indian Country, and 16% of all Native Americans live within three miles of such sites. Over 600,000 Native Americans live near nuclear test sites, uranium mines, power plants and dumpsites for toxic waste. This has led to the disruption of traditional economies of fishing, hunting, foraging and gardening cutting off access to sources of healthy food. Traci Voyles points to a particular facet of the connection between contamination and race in the case of Native Americans, whereby “even the phrase ‘environmental racism’ can seem to lose the whole meaning in a tribal context, simply because ‘racism’ has always meant environmental violence for native peoples” (Voyles, 2015, p.23).

Ramapough Lunaape Clan Mother Michaeline Picaro at the Munsee Three Sisters Medicinal Farm

“ Indigenous peoples up and down the Eastern Seaboard of North America and far inland maintained large farms where they grew corn, beans, squash, and other foods, while also practicing subsistence hunting and gathering. Successful game hunting was guaranteed by the deliberate maintenance of forest landscapes through management techniques like controlled burning.”

- Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Colville Confederated Tribes

Environmental Justice is a term that was first used in 1982 when activists in Warren County, North Carolina, a predominantly African American community, protested the construction of a hazardous waste dump in their neighborhood. Several studies have outlined the connection between environmental contamination and race. A 1983 study by the US General Accounting Office and a 1987 national study by the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice concluded that race was a strong predicator of the location of hazardous waste facilities. One study found that the percentage of racial minorities living near incinerators was 89% higher than the national median (Rothstein, 2017 pp.54-55). A report issued by the EPA in 1991 confirmed that a disproportionate amount of toxic waste facilities were found in African American communities around the nation.