Even with a heavy video camera I couldn’t resist walking straight into the aggressive waves with her.

I was filming Jalobayu (climate in Bengali), Monica Jahan Bose’s collective performance piece, at Select Art Fair in Miami Beach.  The performance started indoors with a group of women who all quietly carried 216 feet of sari to a ritual site outside on the beach. After a series of symbolic activities on the sand, Bose eventually wraps herself in a red sari and enters and battles the ocean in a breathtaking statement on climate change.

Bose uses the sari—18 feet of unstitched handwoven fabric that is commonly worn by women in South Asia—to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet.  The sari is perhaps the real star of the show. But not just any sari. The sari she uses in the show is written on and worn by the coastal women in Bangladesh. “JALOBAYU juxtaposes women’s words and their worn saris against the backdrop of the rising ocean in Miami Beach,” says Bose. “The intent is to raise awareness of climate change and link Miami Beach to coastal Bangladesh, both of which face devastation due to climate change.”

Bose uses the sari—18 feet of unstitched handwoven fabric that is commonly worn by women in South Asia—to represent women’s lives and the cycle of life on our planet.
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I was trying to do the math on how Bose went from 18 feet of fabric to 216 feet for the performance, and found out the sari that was communally carried is made up of 12 saris worn for 8 months by 12 women from her ancestral village—Katakhali Village in Barobaishdia Island.  “Those saris were covered in woodblock and handwriting done collaboratively by the 12 women and myself back in 2013. After they wore them and used them, they were brought to the US and my daughter, Tuli, helped me sew them together to make this massive sari,” she explained. This just made me even more curious how she got the sari over to the states. “The worn saris were actually transported from the village to Dhaka by boat, and then my mother brought them to me in the US in her luggage.”  That same 216-foot sari has been in performances at DUMBO arts festival (called Sublime Virtue), (e)merge art fair DC (Unwrapped), and more.

Bose was born in Britain to Bangladeshi parents, and uses participatory installation, film, printmaking, painting, advocacy, and performance to speak to women’s experiences, recently around the disparate impacts from climate change. It’s part of a larger collaborative art and advocacy project called Storytelling with Saris. Bose’s maternal roots are in Katakhali, an island community in Bangladesh on the frontlines of climate change. She collaborates with a dozen women in the community who have acquired literacy and climate adaptation skills to share their personal stories. These women have lost repeated homes to cyclones.  

The idea is by seeing and hearing these stories, via saris, people in the US and Europe will be inspired to act on climate change.  “Americans are learning about climate change through the project and making written commitments on saris to reduce their carbon footprint in an act of cross-border solidarity. The U.S. climate pledge saris will be returned to Bangladesh and worn by the women of Katakhali.”  Storytelling with Saris engagements have taken place in California, Hawai’i, Iowa, Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Wisconsin in the U.S.; Dhaka and Katakhali in Bangladesh; Paris, France; and Athens, Greece. But of course the real power is connecting these stories back to the women’s lived experiences in Bangladesh.

The effects of rising sea levels disproportionally falls on the shoulders of poor, marginalized communities of color. According to a MercyCorps piece, one-third of the planet’s land is no longer fertile enough to grow food, but more than 1.3 billion people live on this deteriorating agricultural land. And they’re also the same communities facing more disasters than ever. The number of people affected by natural disasters doubled from approximately 102 million in 2015 to 204 million in 2016, although there were fewer natural disasters.

Women in these communities are particularly affected. We can see this in the climate survivors of Bangladesh Bose connects us with. Women disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change because of cultural norms and the inequitable distribution of resources and power, especially in developing countries. One study also found that 90% of the dead from the 1991 cyclone in Bangladesh were women. Women also at risk of sexual assault and trafficking after extreme weather events where they are rendered homeless.

Likewise, women’s leadership is also critical to addressing climate. The project presents and preserves women’s stories from a remote community (with negligible carbon footprint) that may disappear unless we take action. The project both informs and empowers them to be those leaders. One of the women in the community, Noor Sehera said, “Yes, it made us scared to hear about why the planet is hotter and why there is so much rain.  But we are glad to know, so that we can decide what to do about it. We have a right to know what is going on.”

Often under recognized in the climate change movement  is how artists are contributing to advance awareness of environmental issues.  Monica’s work around saris and climate change embrace symbols: the sari represents the female body, and women’s place in the world, and water speaks to life and renewal.  She also incorporates wind, sand, rice and water into the performance to represent cyclones, sea level rise, and the loss of heritage and food caused by climate change. They also reference narratives: Jaloboyu references the Indian myth of Draupadi, the eternal virgin who was married to five brothers, as well as the true story of Bose’s grandmother who was married at age seven and years later swept away by a cyclone.

Women disproportionately suffer the impacts of climate change because of cultural norms and the inequitable distribution of resources and power, especially in developing countries.
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One of the most impressive parts of her art is her ability to move across media and disciplines and incorporate science and policy into her work.  Her performance art makes a direct statement on the current state of climate change with the specific perspective of marginalized communities of color.  Since 2015, Bose has started making saris with women (and a few men) in the US, France and Greece as part of Sari Climate Pledge Workshops. The participants work on a sari with her for two hours while they learn about climate change and how women in Bangladesh are impacted.  She teaches woodblock technique and her participants make specific promises that will reduce their carbon footprint. The saris are first exhibited and then returned to Bangladesh for the women in her village to wear. 

While I will continue to be mesmerized by Bose’s ability to master so many different art forms and connect them to today’s issues, I’m most touched by how she’s been able to give a space for her community in Bangladesh to connect to this global issue. Like one of her participants, Zakia, said:  “Coming to the cooperative and working on the sari art and the performance is what I love most. We want to do more and more of it. It was the greatest joy of my life to be part of the performance by the Darchira River.” And that’s the only way we’ll ever be able to confront climate change—working cooperative with communities across the world.

In the wetlands of the Northern Great Lakes, the sacred grows on the water. Centuries ago, wild rice growing in watersheds and along slow moving rivers in the region marked the final home of a migrating people. The Ojibwe, who often call themselves the Anishinaabe or the “true people,” followed a prophecy from the Atlantic coast to the Great Lakes, and have harvested manoomin (wild rice) in the late summer ever since.

​Now, climate change threatens the survival of the crop in their ancient homelands of Northern Wisconsin.

Warmer winters, disease, and floods have caused entire crops of rice to fail in the last decade along Bad River and in watersheds along Lake Superior. For the people who have always relied on it for physical and spiritual sustenance, the loss of this sacred rice reflects the loss of wild places all over the world.​

“I’ve been hearing these stories since I was a kid” said Joe Rose, looking into the middle distance. Rose is a Bad River Ojibwe elder, professor emeritus and former director of Native American Studies at Northland College for forty years. He’s an environmental scientist and an Ojibwe storyteller.

In an unused conference room at the Bad River reservation lodge, Rose passed a Styrofoam cup of coffee from one weathered hand to the other, and told me about a prophecy that has guided the Ojibwe for hundreds of years. He told the story of the Seventh Fire.

The dreams of eight prophets some 500 years ago revealed the Ojibwe journey from the Atlantic coast through the centuries to their current moment in history. These dreams told of Seven Fires or epochs in the story of the Ojibwe. The first three prophets compelled a migration from the east coast, and provided stopping places along the way to their final stopping place. That place would be marked by a sign, it would be “where food grows on the water.”  This is the link between the Anishinaabe and wild rice—it signified their final destination—their home.

The next three fires foretold the arrival of French with whom the Ojibwe traded and became more powerful, and then the rise of the United States and its anti-native policies. As the United States grew and pushed westward, the Ojibwe were forced to cede territory, their religion was outlawed, an attempt to forcibly relocate them resulted in the death of 400 Ojibwe in the Sandy Lake Tragedy, also known as the Wisconsin Death March, and eventually 19th century boarding schools would strip their children of their tribal identities. Later epochs foretell the power and devastation the white invaders would have over not just native land and lives, but also on the future of the human race itself.

And then there was the Seventh Fire.

This is the link between the Anishinaabe and wild rice—it signified their final destination—their home.
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“We are in the eleventh hour of a very serious environmental crisis,” Rose said.  He placed the coffee cup on the table and leaned forward. He swept his hand over the table and outlined two roads diverging. “And that is where we are, at the fork in the road.”

Down one road, was the Eighth Fire, a peaceful final world. Down the other, was catastrophe.

“It was prophesied that in the age of the Seventh Fire, a new people would arise and retrace their footsteps and learn the way of the ancestors,” Rose said. “If Ma’iingan (the wolf) no longer has a place to retreat, if there is no wilderness, Ma’iingan will soon pass out of existence. Then soon after, the Anishinaabe will pass out of existence. And then so too will all of humankind.”

Bad River, Wisconsin, winds along a stretch of Highway 2, deep in the forests of Northern Wisconsin. Tall, thin pine trees and bone-white birches crowd in from just beyond the road, and a view of Lake Superior slices through them, only a few weeks free from its partial blanket of ice. Snow still hides in the forest on the shadowy side of the road in mid-May. With snow melt, Bad River  ran swollen and fast through the reservation.

In June, wild rice begins to grow, floating and fragile where water moves slowly, spawning from winter dormancy in the wetlands. But there’s no telling if it will be healthy enough to make it to the end of the season with the flash floods and hot spells of a warming planet.

There have always been good and bad years for wild rice. Peter David from Wisconsin’s Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLFWIC) knows you can expect to have a thin harvest every four years or so. But in the past eight years, the crop has failed as many times as it’s been successful.

Twice, a brown-spot fungus broke out and swept the entire region. The crop couldn’t germinate and respawn the following year; no rice grew at all. In 2016, a massive flood that took out part of Highway 2 and stranded residents without power for four days also wiped out the wild rice.

In GLFWIC’s office, Peter and his wife Lisa, showed me photos of the rice beds on possibly the oldest laptop still in use, with a handle on the top to serve as  its own briefcase. In a healthy year, almost all the water in Dean Lake is carpeted in a verdant green. But then the next year, the same lake isa sickly pale brown. It’s the fungus. The entire crop is dead. He clicks on the next photo of a blue lake. There is no rice at all.​

By his estimation, there isn’t much long-term hope for rice in the region. And when the rice fails, the ecosystem ripples with the effects. The rice beds don’t just supply the Ojibwe with a sacred and vital source of food, but they also serve as a habitat for countless species, from the muskrat to the moose. Migrating swans, geese, and ducks rely on the rice beds for cover and food along their journeys.

As the climate warms, wild rice may continue to survive farther north, moving into Canada where the winters will continue to be cold. Attempts to save the wild rice are also complicated by the sacredness of the plant itself. David explained that genetic mutation or otherwise altering wild rice to make it more durable in warmer climates isn’t an option because of the importance rice holds for the Ojibwe and their migration story.

“That doesn’t help anyone in Bad River,” David said.

Joe Rose grew up ricing in the late summers in the Kakagon Sloughs, processing it the traditional way: drying, parching, hulling, and winnowing the rice all by hand. The first time I met him, he was coming back from three days of sapping maple sugar in the bush, just like his grandparents taught him when he was young.

His relationship to the reservation and the traditions of the Ojibwe informed his environmental activism. Anishinaabe teachings rely on the balance between the human world and the natural, represented by the wolf, or ma’iingan. Ma’iingan’s territory is ever-shrinking due to the influence of humanity and the Anishinaabe have long fought to retain the wild places.

By his estimation, there isn’t much long-term hope for rice in the region.
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Rose organized and spoke out against potential mining operations and toxic waste dumps that could harm the local ecosystem. In 2012, Bad River helped beat a proposed open-pit iron-ore mine in the neighboring Iron County. Runoff from the mine would have threatened the rice. But non-native members of the neighboring Iron County—eager for the mining jobs—struggled to see the significance of the plant, Rose said.

Mary Annette Pember wrote in Indian Country Today about an incident during a tribal presentation on the importance of wild rice at a county board meeting. A county board member interrupted the presentation to ask what economic value wild rice had to the region.​

“All the white man thinks about is money,” Rose remarked afterward.

While the Ojibwe continued to fight environmental threats to Bad River, the United States emitted roughly 15 trillion pounds of greenhouse gases annually, and the fossil fuel industry grew to be worth over $5 trillion. All the while, global temperatures continue to rise.

“We’ve been successful in fighting these attempts to harm the land,” Rose said.  But the threats to wild rice due to climate change don’t come from one industrial source the tribe can rally against – it comes from all industrialized areas of the globe  The tribe has had to go to extreme measures just to try and keep wild rice alive in the region. A hot dry summer can prove deadly. “In 2007, the Lake Superior level was about two feet lower than normal, and the rice was sitting in mudflats rather than floating. So for the first time in history, the tribal council closed the sloughs to ricing. And then it happened again.”

Non-native members of the neighboring Iron County—eager for the mining jobs—struggled to see the significance of the plant
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The flooding poses another deadly threat. In the summer of 2016, when the wild rice was beginning to form roots to attach itself to the bottom of lakes and rivers,  a massive storm hit. Ten inches of rain flooded the river, the highway, and the homes and workplaces on the reservation, destroying ten homes completely. It took four days for power to return to the area. It cut off the tribe from normally routed supplies of food, water, and medicine. The storm affected a huge part of northern Wisconsin, leaving three people dead.

The tribe once again closed the sloughs to ricing as so little of the plant survived the flooding.​

The World Resources Institute explained that climate change will cause a greater number of extreme weather events, including heat waves, storms, droughts and wildfires. The Great Lakes themselves are warming, which creates a problem for an entire ecosystem built for long winters. Earlier retreats of lake ice could not only devastate the rice, but nearly every part of the region’s wildlife.

Bad River isn’t the only native community under threat. These threats are made more pressing by the current administration’s attitude towards climate change. By removing the U.S. from the international Paris climate accord and encouraging a “Second Renaissance” of oil and gas sector expansion, the Trump administration is backing away from the critical global goal scientists have set to stay within two degrees of warming.

Native American environmentalism has long led movements against mining, drilling, and pollution, with the Dakota Access Pipeline multi-tribal protest just a recent example of a long history of activism. Four tribal nations, including the Quinault, even announced an intention to follow the Paris agreement. Native traditional relationships between people and the natural, wild world has influenced the larger environmentalism movement. And for the Ojibwe, that looking backward was prophesied all along.

The choice of which path to take, the Eighth Fire or annihilation, isn’t just for the Ojibwe to make—the Seventh Fire specifies that it will be the “light-skinned race,” the same people who caused the destruction of the environment, who will be the ones to determine the fate of the world.

Sacred wild rice is withering and dying in the changing climate at Bad River, but stories like this are unfolding in every place on earth where the people live close enough to the land for the impact to be unavoidable. And while Rose still retains hope, the time to make this choice is now. According to Rose, we entered into the age of the Seventh Fire several decades ago, and our window is closing.

“So,” Rose said, placing his hands flat on the table. “Wild rice is only symbolic of what could happen to everything.”

By Maya Lewis

Originally published on Everyday Feminism.

It’s safe to say that 2017 was a wild year for us all — but it was even worse for our planet.

In America alone, there were record-breaking weather events all year. 2017 was one of the hottest years on record, which intensified hurricanes, wildfires and other natural disasters to catastrophic proportions.

Add to that a president and administration who downplays the danger of climate change — removing any mention of the word from government websites — and has de-funded many of our federal environmental organizations, you get what looks like a pretty concerning year for the environment.

But like most things, a closer look will show a slightly different story.

Though 2017 may have felt particularly awful, environmental justice organizations all over the country did some amazing work, and most of them did so long before. Now, it’s up to us to uplift them this new year.

Many organizations are doing everything they can to fight for the environmental and climate justice in a time when we need it most. That didn’t change just because Trump got elected (though it gave them a pretty big common enemy).

They’ve launched new funds, projects and programs, empowered and educated the public. For this, they deserve our acknowledgment and thanks.

Here are 7 environmental justice projects and programs — some big, some small — doing everything they can to make 2018 a better year not just for the planet but all of us as well.

1. Run 4 Salmon

A 300-mile march along the waterways from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta to the Winnemem. That was the goal of organizers and participants of Run 4 Salmon, a “prayerful journey” that took place over 15 days this past September.

Lead by the Winnemem Wintu Chief Caleen Sisk, a collective of Indigenous women, along with activists and allies brought attention to the state of the waterways, fish and indigenous way of life in California.

Over 70 years ago, wild chinook salmon (Nur) roamed free in the water the Winnemem’s ancestral watershed, but when the Shasta Dam was built it cut them off from their home waters. Not only that, it directly affected the Winnemem Wintu Tribe who have deep connections to the water, river and salmon. The Run 4 Salmon hopes to change that.

2. Undocufund

They’re helping undocumented residents displaced by the devastating wildfires that have been sweeping through California. Many residents have lost all of their physical possessions, their homes, cars and, in some cases, jobs from being away from work.

In response to the record-breaking wildfires, there have been huge amounts of assistance given to those residents who have been most affected, though funds and aid organizations. But the founders of Undocufund sought to fill an all-too-often forgotten group of victims: undocumented residents.

Undocumented peoples are particularly vulnerable to natural disasters because they do not qualify for FEMA Aid and often speak little English.

“When there’s a crisis and there’s chaos, regardless of your documentation status, it’s disorienting,” said Mara Ventura, a co-founder of the fund and Lead Organizer with North Bay Jobs. “But if you already live in fear, in the shadows, and English is not your first language, there’s a fear of seeking resources.”

Undocufund is the only fund specifically dedicated to undocumented folks and mixed-status families and, through the support of thousands of donations, the mostly volunteer-run organization has been able to help over 400 people and more than 100 families get back on their feet.

3. Cooperation Jackson

Every city faces their own particular challenges in making sure residents have everything they need to succeed. In Jackson, Miss. (like many other cities) those challenges include income and racial inequality, healthcare access and a slew of other issues keeping the community from both environmental and communal stability. To fight back residents started Cooperation Jackson, both a movement and program, meant to combat these issues.

Through a network of local interconnected and interdependent institutions, the organization hosts programs and events to help educate their community on taking back their economic power and fight for equity in all of its forms. Last year saw a start in their journey to crafting a Just Transition for Jackson, Miss.

4. Movement Generation: Justice and Ecology Project

What does a just transition look like on the community level? To Oakland, Calif.’s Movement Generation, a just transition means healthy and resilient local economies and environments. It means a move away from pollution and profit, investment in our culture, labor and land; it means empowering low-income and people of color to lead.

Movement Generation is working to teach everyday residents how to play a more active role in the future of their communities. Small non-profit organizations like Movement Generation don’t have huge offices and enormous grants, but they manage to do a lot with a little and they need our support to help further that.

To Movement Generation, a just transition means healthy and resilient local economies and environments.

They’ve empowered activists, residents and participants to connect with their environment and the systems that impact them. In their Environmental Skills Training, the organization also helps Bay Area organizers and community members learn how to interact with, develop and restore the land around them. The organization also wrapped up 2017 with an extensive breakdown and framework for a Just Recovery, covering everything that impacted our environment this past year.

5. NY Renews

Made up of over 130 different New York community organizations, environmental activists, labor unions and more, NY Renews is using legislation to tackle climate change equity and reform through the “The Climate and Community Protection Act,” taking the climate change fight to senators’ doors.

The Act they hope to get passed in New York would not only push the state toward 100% renewable energy but also look to protect workers, create jobs and support those most impacted by climate change: low-income people and people of color.

We Can’t Talk Climate Change Without Talking Environmental Racism

“We aim to make New York State the nation’s leader in tackling the climate crisis while protecting workers and lifting up communities,” NY Renews said.

Whether or not the bill will achieve everything it hopes to still remains to be seen. Last year, the bill passed the New York State Assembly for the second year in a row. It has yet to pass the New York State Senate, but if it does it would be a groundbreaking change. Fingers crossed 2018 will be the year.

6. Trans Disaster Relief Fund

The Trans Disaster Relief Fund (TDRF) is giving much-needed support to trans, intersex, and genderqueer folks that have been impacted by the years many natural disasters.

Started by the Transgender Foundation for America, the fund was originally meant to help victims of Hurricane Harvey. But as the disasters kept coming, the fund was opened up to help as many in need as possible, whether they were impacted by wildfires in California, earthquakes in Mexico or hurricanes in Puerto Rico.

The trans community is often underserved and particularly vulnerable to natural disasters. Often emergency staff are trained in create inclusive and equality safe environments for everyone.

The trans community is often underserved and particularly vulnerable to natural disasters.

“Transgender people may not be able to access shelter appropriate to their affirmed gender identity or to receive culturally sensitive health care,” said National LGBT Health Education Center in their emergency preparedness resource.

7. Got Green

Climate Justice is about a lot more than climate change, and Got Green is proving it. It’s about those everyday issues that you may not realize are directly connected to your environment, such as your race, gender and economic status.

With a focus on food access, empowering young environmental leaders and battling climate injustice in all its forms, the organization is changing the narrative of the green movement, often thought to be white and wealthy.

Last year, Got Green hosted programs, panels and events on everything for tenant rights and climate resilience to food security. They successfully fought and won a battle to make Seattle the first city to use revenue from their Sugary Drink Tax to close the food security gap. They also launched the movement #DontDisplaceDove to support a local displaced resident and educate the community on how to fight displacement.

The organization has invested big time in its communities’ environmental education and power and it’s paying off.

I hope you’re as excited about all this amazing environmental work as I am.

Maybe you’d never heard of any of the organizations on this list, maybe you knew every one, or know even more (there are honestly so many!)

But just think about how wonderful that is. Despite our grim environmental status, there are so many great organizations doing important work. We need to remember that and support them in any way we can.

Last year was certainly rough, but just like the planet we live on, we’re resilient.

By Kimberly Fanshier

Recently, public lands in the U.S. have gotten a lot of attention. After Inauguration Day, someone at the helm of the National Park Service’s Twitter account got a bit sassy. They shared a comparison of two photos, demonstrating the rather remarkable difference in attendance for Obama’s 2009 inauguration and the events this January.

Inaugurations take place at the National Mall in Washington, DC, which is, in fact, one of our national parks.

As the administration was brazenly and visibly lying to us all about what happened on land our tax dollars maintain, they also began removing any mention of climate change from government websites and issued orders preventing environmental agencies from communicating directly with the public — and punishing those that resisted.

While this — alongside a barrage of attacks on human and constitutional rights across the country — went on, the president announced plans to start drilling for oil in the Grand Tetons and the Everglades.

Then, Rep. Jason Chaffetz pulled a high profile bill soon after its introduction. The title of H.R. 621, “Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2017,” makes it sound like the federal government has a bunch of extra, useless tracts of land hanging off the sides of the country, and that we’d better get rid of them as fast as possible for everybody’s good.

What the bill actually aims to do is direct the secretary of the interior to transfer federal land across the western U.S. to state governments.

Whether or not that sounds super threatening to you considering all of the other nefarious, aggressive, dehumanizing courses taken by the federal government in the past two weeks, you should know:

Something like this makes a lot of people who live in those states real mad. So folks from all over said something about it.

Threatening to sell federal lands — which aren’t so much ‘federal’ lands in practice — threatens people across the political spectrum.

Threatening to sell federal lands — which aren’t so much “federal” lands in practice, but lands managed with federal money, held in trust by the federal government for the people of the U.S. — threatens people across the political spectrum.

When it wasn’t just the usual crew of environmentalists and tribal leaders shouting at Congress, but anglers and hunters with conservative, moderate, and liberal politics as well, representatives noticed.

So why is public land such an intense, emotional issue in the West?

And why is it such a big deal to “sell-off” federal lands, or transfer them back to state control at a time when we have so many terrifying realities to deal with?

1. Conflicts of Private and Public Land Are an Intrinsic Part of Western America’s Identity

The creation of the U.S. was a massive project in speculation.

From the 18th century through the end of the 19th century, mapmakers and surveyors carved up the vast swathes of land beyond the Mississippi river in property grids, erasing the knowledge, culture, and conceptions of property and ownership of the people who already lived there.

The federal government then empowered settlers to strike out and colonize the land, homestead by homestead, fighting and digging their way across the country.

As tribes were relegated to reservations, cattle ranchers, sheep herders, loggers, and pioneers all began to have conflicts over space and resources.

From the 18th century through the end of the 19th century, mapmakers and surveyors carved up the vast swathes of land, erasing the knowledge, culture, and conceptions of property and ownership of the people who already lived there.
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Although we still have stretches of miles and miles with only handfuls of people in every state in the West, our economies have long been constructed on extracting natural resources from the land. And those will always be limited.

If a ranch owner wants to use a section of forest land to graze their cattle, but the federal government is pressured to regulate how many cows can graze there because of the detriment to river ecosystems, the corporations or people who own those cows get angry. Same goes for logging or mining.

While simply selling off public federal lands to a private oil company might seem obviously egregious, transferring their ownership back to a state to control it might seem like a more reasonable idea.

But don’t be fooled.

Managing big pieces of land takes money and resources — things that state governments are often short on. So when states are faced with an enormous new expense and the opportunity to sell it at a profit to mining, logging, and drilling companies, what do you think they’ll do? The fall-out won’t be surprising, and it won’t be new.

Intricate ecosystems that took thousands of years to build will be trammeled in weeks. Earthmovers, oil derricks, and semi-trucks will dig up the places you used to fish, wander, and farm.

And the ruinous pollution that comes along with ruthless, profit-driven resource extraction will poison the water and air in communities of poor people and people of color more than anywhere else.

The march of settlers, extractors, users, and builders across the West displaced and killed millions of native people, and also enabled white supremacist arrangements of property-based hierarchy that extend into our world today.

The march of settlers, extractors, users, and builders enabled white supremacist arrangements of property-based hierarchy that extend into our world today.
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Therefore, these tensions are not just something that matters to folks in the West, and they’re not something that’s only significant to people who care about the environment.

They’re essential to imagining a better, decolonized world, where the redistribution of wealth is possible.

2. This Allows States to Sell Land Stolen from Indigenous People to Private Corporations

You’re probably familiar with the years-long protest at Standing Rock over the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Halted in December under the waning days of the Obama administration, the new powers that grab have announced aggressive plans to complete the passionately protested, unpopular project.

Violent removal of Lakota and other tribal and non-native water protectors has already begun with 76 arrested recently, including the politician and attorney Chase Iron Eyes, and destruction of winter encampments is underway.

Most of us are already living on occupied land.
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The protectors and activists around the country have used phrases like “Water is life” and “You can’t drink oil” to emphasize the abhorrent violence of threatening the water supply of an entire community.

And yet, it’s important to note that this struggle is about more than just oil, sustainability, and public health.

It’s about the newest attempt — in a series of attempts over the past 400 years — of a private corporation, with the blessing and support of a section of the U.S. government, to usurp tribal land rights, ignore treaties, threaten indigenous sacred sites, and potentially destroy artifacts.

Most of us are already living on occupied land. Politicians or land owners advocating for land sell-offs will try to claim that the federal government is “mismanaging” that land, and it should be sold off to a private corporation who wants to blow up the shale underground and drain it of oil in order to care for it properly — that is, make a profit.

This is a grave offense and danger to every worker and every individual who values autonomy– but it’s doubly violent to the indigenous people who already have the legal right to that land.

The failure to observe treaties over the past 250 years is already an audacious injustice.

To suggest that we could ever move forward in recovering from a white supremacist history of property expansion and land theft by selling off public space to corporations bent on creating profit should seem shocking.
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But to suggest that we could ever move forward in recovering from white supremacist history of property expansion and land theft by selling off public space to corporations bent on creating profit should seem shocking.

The fact that it doesn’t demonstrate just how far we have to go, and how important the key of public land is in that journey.

3. There Is Nowhere People Can Sit Still for a Second and Not Have to Answer to Anybody

It’s not easy being queer, of color, disabled, trans, or non-conforming in any number of ways in this white supremacist, heteronormative, capitalist patriarchy we live in.

And while the ideas that nature is a totally separate, pure, wild place is complicated, it’s also fair to recognize that in the wilderness, the world looks different.

Stepping outside of roads, money, cars, banks, and buildings for a just an afternoon can be an immense relief. When I’m lost, flailing and depressed in the oppressive world that we live in, I can’t always see a way out. I fear that we will never escape the exploitative cycles that define our lives.

But when I sit by a river with my friends and my dog and build a quiet fire, I can start to imagine a world that operates very differently than this one does.

I fear that we will never escape the exploitative cycles that define our lives.
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Simply being allowed to be somewhere, to exist without challenge or suspicion, is a privilege. And it should not be. It should be a right.

And since we don’t currently have that right in our communities and daily lives, we deserve the opportunity to visit a space — such as the protected spaces that already exists, like our natural parks — to access that right.

We deserve a place to escape when we’re emotionally exhausted from being tailed by security, pulled over by police, yelled at on the street, and questioned for our presence.

When we’re worn out from carefully talking down another racist at the bar or another white feminist yelling on Facebook about people being “divisive,” we should have the chance to go elsewhere, where we might quietly breathe unpolluted air, put our feet in mud and water, or stand under a thousand-year-old fir tree and look up.

In South India, Women Empowerment Groups Fight For Land Rights

We deserve the right to have moments where we only have to worry about the simplicities of survival in terms of our water filters and orienteering, rather than our likelihood of being murdered by our boyfriends or the cops.

Our public lands provide us the extraordinary chance to exist, momentarily, unharrassed.

What if we lost that singular opportunity to have the right to take up space?

So, what are we supposed to do about it?

First, don’t be fooled by the potentially easy victory in the pulling of the bill I mentioned at the beginning of this article. There’s an even more destructive second bill, H.R. 622, coming right on its heels.

Stay vigilant, read between the lines, and never, ever trust the motives of people who want to sell off or transfer public land.

Keep calling your representatives about these issues specifically. Remember that “environmental” issues aren’t something that can be set aside because it feels like the immediate, bodily realities of people being detained in airports feels more suddenly important. It is important! All of it is.

These lands are not just a big, abstract idea — they are a tactile, tangible, material piece of our world, and our lives depend on them.
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But these lands are not just a big, abstract idea — they are tactile, tangible, material piece of our world, and our lives depend on them. Environmentalism isn’t just about not blowing up the literal Earth because we can’t imagine living another fifty years anyway.

It’s about social justice, the livelihood and flourishing of vulnerable people, and the imminent need to not let women and Indigenous people drown in polluted estuaries while the rest of us can scramble toward higher ground.

Just as the land we live on and walk on is physical, get ready, if you’re a person with a body that it’s possible to put at risk, to be physical in your resistance.

We must be willing to lay down on the ground in front of Earth movers and pipelines across this country. If we don’t, we will fail, and we will watch our world be dug up into a roiling pit of oil and set aflame.

It can’t just be radical activists and people who have no choice but to stand up in resistance anymore — we need everyone to shrug off fear and trepidation.

We must reframe who counts as our family, and we must toss respectability into the wind. Because this fight may come first for those on the margins, but it can’t be won with only the fringes.

flickr/Agustin Ruiz

Structural racism is deadly, and not just because of police shootings of unarmed black youth. Environmental racism — disproportionate exposure to pollution and toxicity — is a slower, more insidious form of violence against low-income communities of color.

The term “environmental racism” was coined in the 1980s to highlight the placement of low-income or minority communities in proximity to environmentally hazardous or degraded environments, especially toxic waste sites. Race plays a major role in the location of polluting industries in the U.S. This is a pattern that stretches deep into U.S. history, and we’re watching it play out right now with the water crisis currently raging in Flint, Michigan.

It’s telling that last night, black stars like Ava DuVernay and Ryan Coogler ditched the #OscarsSoWhite Academy Awards to help raise money for this crisis at the #JusticeForFlint fundraiser. Racism played a key role in this crisis — and, moreover, it’s continuing to play a key role in the devastating progression of climate change across the globe.

The Toxic Situation In Flint

A series of structural inequalities combined to create the toxic catastrophe in Flint, most of which boil down to valuing money over human health and life. For decades prior to 2014, Flint — a majority-black city in which 41.5% of the population lives below the poverty line — relied on Detroit’s water system. Facing financial difficulties, a state-appointed official switched the source to the Flint River with the aim of saving the city $5 million in two years.

The Flint River has been contaminated for decades by industrial toxins created under the capitalist belief that more is better. For generations, motor city behemoths GM and Buick City dumped industrial waste directly into the river, polluting on the order of tens of billions of gallons of industrial waste per day. Buick City shut operations in 1999; GM continues to run.

After the city switched to using the Flint River for its water supply in 2014, Flint residents began complaining of horrible smells coming from the tap water. Children became sick with horrendous rashes. Others told stories of hair loss and mood changes that they believed were linked to their tap water, which flowed the color of rust.

It wasn’t until September 2015, after high levels of lead were found in the blood of children — almost 900 times the EPA limit for lead particles — that these stories of poisoning were taken seriously. After two years of toxicity, however, the irreversible and deadly damage has already been done to this low-income community of color. Children in Flint, among the most vulnerable members of the population, will have to cope with lifelong and irreversible brain damage caused by lead poisoning from the public water supply.

The Flint water crisis is both a class and a race issue. Companies nationwide dump toxic waste directly into poor communities’ air and water supply; this pattern is well-documented.

Affluent communities would leverage their privilege to prevent such an injustice from occurring in their homes and communities. The America we live in is one where the white and wealthy are healthy, while low-income communities of color are poisoned by the powerful, in the name of making a profit.

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Decisions about the environment are tied to political power, and political power is tied to race and class. Landfills, sewage treatment plants, smelters, incinerators, and other hazardous waste sites end up in the poor’s backyard. In this way, white and affluent communities are favored over black communities with regard to municipal services. People in low-income communities of color bear the burden of environmental degradation and industrial pollution. Even more egregiously, officials who are elected to protect these communities routinely ignore the voices of the poor and vulnerable.

The Flint water crisis could be considered a small-scale environmental injustice, in terms of the number of people it affects. But it’s mirrored in one of the largest threats that the global population currently faces: climate change.

Environmental Justice Writ Large

Climate change is environmental injustice writ large. As with other examples of environmental racism — the location of coal-fired power plants, the dumping of nuclear waste, the lack of adequate public transportation — it disproportionately harms indigenous communities and people of color. These communities also have the fewest resources to cope with climate change, as a direct result of institutionalized racism.

Just as the toxic water slowly but inevitably poisoned the Flint community, many feel immobilized by the slow-acting but irreversible impacts of climate change. Corporations and governments prioritize profits now over the life and health of future generations. Climate change is a result of business-as-normal policies. These actions amount to a slow poisoning of our collective future.

In January 2014, I spent a month living in Tuvalu, a tiny coral atoll nation in the South Pacific on the frontlines of climate change. In this Pacific island nation of around 11,000 citizens, the highest point is only 4.5 meters above sea level. The seas have been rising at a steady rate of 5 millimeters per year since the Australian government started monitoring the main wharf in Funafuti in 1993. In the event that Tuvalu disappears underwater, New Zealand has agreed to accept the country’s citizens. A number of Tuvaluans have already moved to New Zealand; not just immigrants, they are “climate refugees.”

A variation of this problem faces communities in the Arctic. According to the UN’s most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, the region is warming over twice as fast as the global average, and many changes are already visible. Weather patterns are increasingly unstable. Sea ice is declining. Pack ice that supports marine hunters is further from shore and often too thin to travel to safely. Storm surges erode coastal areas. Sunburns, never experienced before, are now common.

Global climate struggles are geographically unique, yet linked. One of those links is the great irony of climate change: Across the board, communities that contribute the least to causing climate change are the most severely affected.

On December 12, 2015, at the United Nations conference on climate change, 195 countries adopted the first universal climate agreement, which aims to hold the increase in the global average temperature to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels in order to reduce the risks and impacts of climate change. The climate justice movement, though, is by no means done. While this agreement marks a touchstone in the struggle, now, more than ever, is the time to keep momentum going on these critical issues — which is why events like #JusticeForFlint are so important.

White environmental activists must not ignore what activists of color already know: Environmental racism is real. The people who are disproportionately affected by climate change (and a whole host of other environmental issues linked to reckless capitalism) are black and brown, and that’s an injustice we all have to work to correct.

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