The green transition will deepen entrenched socio-economic barriers for indigenous people – unless Western forms of science and continued settler colonialism are addressed by researchers. This is according to s new study out this month focused on the use and misuse of indigenous knowledge to solve climate change. Despite disenfranchisement, researchers added, indigenous nations remain the best stewards of the land.
Focused on environmental history of the Lenape Indian tribe of Delaware, the study examined how the nation strengthened tribal sovereignty by revitalizing connections with land. This included the reintroduction of freshwater mussels into the ecosystem as a means of cleaning up local waterways, and cultivate ancestral plants for food, medicine and textiles in urban areas.
“We as a people, and all the native peoples on the East Coast, have been dealing with environmental changes for thousands of years,” said Dennis White Otter Coker, Principal Chief of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, in the report.
Researchers argue that it is impossible to separate the effects of climate change from the history of land dispossession and violence endured by indigenous peoples, and argue that that legacy persists in Western scientific practices aimed at finding climate solutions. For example, previous studies have found that organizations such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change biased towards Western sciences over indigenous knowledgeand their reports “problematically indisputable”, regardless of the international organization’s own reports that find colonialism a key factor in climate change.
“Western Science is really dominating the way we talk about climate adaptation,” said Lyndsey Naylor, an author of the paper from the University of Delaware. She added that Western science finds it difficult to meaningfully integrate tribal projects into research, sometimes dismissing their insights altogether. Western researchers often have an extractive relationship with tribes where institutions will come into communities, take what they need, and leave.
“Indigenous knowledge is either subsumed [or] granted,” Naylor said. “Or like, ‘Hey, that’s cute, but we know what we’re doing.'”
But despite prejudices by governments against Western science, indigenous nations are integrating traditional knowledge to fight climate change around the world. From the plains of North America, where tribes are reintroducing buffalo as a way to support healthy habitats and ecosystems, to the Brazilian Amazon, where indigenous protected areas show 83 percent lower deforestation rates as settler-controlled areas. Indigenous science, and control, hold keys to fighting climate change.
However, those indigenous innovations still face challenges, especially from the green transition. In Arizona, for example, the San Carlos Apache have been fighting for years to protect Oak Flat – an area of the highest religious importance to the tribe and a critical wildlife habitat – from copper mining. The proposed mine will be an integral part of the production of batteries for electric vehicles, while mitigating long-term climate impacts and an integral part of the Apache’s culture and wipe out important ecology in the area.
Faisal Bin Islam, a co-author of the study who specializes in the effects of climate change in colonial contexts, said that Western science has a “savior complex” and continues to explain historical and contemporary colonial violence in indigenous communities. ignore, only deepen those ways of thinking.
“In a settler colonial future, we may eventually invent a technology or process that significantly reduces emissions to prevent the effects of climate change,” he said. “However, this will not end colonial expropriation and violence.”
