At the end of a year defined by the Gulf oil spill, failed climate legislation, and an ever-mounting urgency as the weather intensifies, federal leadership makes strides towards clean energy at the same time that leaders continue to dig in their heels in favor of fossil fuels. And, as everywhere in the world, indigenous peoples […]
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First nations continue tar sands pushback
George Poitras of the Mikisew Cree First Nation – a tribal nation whose traditional homeland lies downstream from Canada’s Athabascan tar sands – articulated the devastating impacts of oil development on traditional peoples when he said, “if we don’t have land and we don’t have anywhere to carry out our traditional lifestyles, we lose who […]
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The U.N. comes West
In April, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations announced that the U.S. will conduct a formal review of its position on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), an historic document over two decades in the making. UNDRIP was adopted by the U.N. General Assembly in September 2007, with 143 […]
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This Saturday, Prayers for the Peaks
Earlier this week I had the good fortune to share a conversation with David Johns, acting president of the Navajo medicine men’s association. Mr. Johns and his colleagues in the Dine Hataalii Association (DHA) are preparing for a Navajo Nation-wide day of prayer this Saturday, to support the campaign to protect the holy San Francisco […]
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Representatives ask Obama to examine impacts of tar sands pipeline
In late June, the Obama Administration received a letter [PDF] from fifty members of the U.S. House of Representatives, demanding that the President take a hard look at the climate change impacts of a proposed oil pipeline that would more than double the United States’ consumption of Canadian tar sands oil. This 1,600-mile oil pipeline, called Keystone […]
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Gulf tragedy highlights need for Native renewables
Six weeks after the blowout, the calamity in the Gulf of Mexico shows no signs of abating – in fact, information emerging from the region continues to reveal new dimensions of the disaster. Media reports suggest that this is the worst environmental catastrophe in history; that long-term damage to the Gulf’s ecosystem will cripple not […]
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Grand Canyon uranium threatens tribal water
Last week, a delegation of leaders from Arizona’s Havasupai Tribe traveled to Washington D.C., to advocate for the protection of the Grand Canyon region from a potential onslaught of uranium extraction activities. These four women – tribal council members and traditional elders – voiced their concern for the safety of the land, the purity of […]
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Sovereignty versus stewardship
Last month, Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) released the draft of a bill intended to “unlock the potential of Indian energy resources.” The bill would amend the Energy Policy Act of 1992 to ease restrictions on extractive industry’s activities on tribal lands, including the elimination of federal drilling fees, the reduction of federal environmental oversight, and […]
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Black Mesa mine mess
A controversial clean water permit for a coal mine complex sited at a Navajo and Hopi sacred mountain is once again up for review by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Peabody Western Coal Company seeks a renewal of its water quality permit for the Black Mesa/ Kayenta Mine Complex, despite the mine’s impact on […]
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Toxic legacy for tribes
Earlier this month, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals approved a controversial permit for uranium mining operations at sites in Church Rock, New Mexico. The operation includes a site associated with the largest release of liquid radioactive waste in United States History — a catastrophe which continues, a generation later, to negatively impact the lives […]
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Saying “yes” to climate justice
It’s Sunday morning and I’m on my way home from the Public Interest Environmental Law Conference in Eugene, Ore., the annual convergence of lefty lawyers, scientists, and policy advocates on the frontlines of the fight to preserve the earth. As usual, the conference afforded a tremendous array of opportunities to learn and be inspired; every […]
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“Messy and unstructured, relentless and global”
Environmental justice law is unlike most other areas of the law. It may not even be amenable to definition as a single, discrete field of practice. Instead, environmental justice lawyering is as close as we come to modern-day alchemy: lawyers work in alliance with communities to summon forth justice from a shifting patchwork of unfavorable […]