Victims of the past, present and future? Environmental Injustice and Indigenous populations in the United States and Australia by Samantha Tancredi & Katharina Neumann

Victims of the past, present and future? - Environmental Injustice and Indigenous Populations in the United States and Australia

By Samantha Tancredi, SS Law and Political Science & Katharina Neumann, Deputy Editor, SS Law and Political Science

The right to environmental justice can be derived from numerous different articles within the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the right to an adequate standard of living enshrined in Article 25, the right to enjoy one’s own culture and participate in cultural life in Article 27, and the right to security of the person under Article 3. Several of these rights are reiterated in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a comprehensive instrument detailing the entitlements of native populations by setting minimum standards for the recognition, protection, and promotion of these rights. The Declaration outlaws discrimination against indigenous peoples and promotes their effective participation in all matters.

Despite these ambitious promises, indigenous people often lack effective access to environmental justice, preventing them from exercising their human rights, leading to inherent environmental injustice. This article adopts an understanding of environmental injustice by Professor Juliana Maantay at EEGS Department at Lehman College and is the founder and Director of the Geographic Information Science Program. The definition states: “Environmental injustice is the disproportionate exposure of communities to pollution, and its concomitant effects on health and environment, as well as the unequal environmental protection and environmental quality provided through laws, regulations, governmental programs, enforcement, and policies.” This all-encompassing definition allows for the specific acknowledgement of one or more components for further analysis.

This article will explore both parts of this definition through two different case studies. The first is the disproportionate exposure of indigenous communities to environmental hazards, and will be examined with reference to the Native American Population in the United States. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s circumstances within Australian society will on the other hand showcase unequal environmental protection under the law.

United States of America: Disproportionate Exposure of Native American Tribes to Environmental Hazards

The horrific events of the Church Rock Nuclear Spill occurred on July 16, 1979 on the Navajo reservation at the United Nuclear Corporation facility in Church Rock, New Mexico, USA. The spill itself happened as a result of a defect in the earthen dam system which was used to contain nuclear mine mill wastes. It is marked by University of South Florida Criminology Professor Michael Lynch as being “the largest yet most neglected nuclear accident in US history…with 1,100 tons and 95 million gallons of nuclear waste.” This spill directly contaminated water and land resources and contributed to health issues in the indigenous population. Lynch further remarks that “Church Rock is a small Navajo community with a population of 1,633 in 1980 [according to the US census], and approximately 12 per cent of that population was employed in uranium mining.” However, the breadth of damage is revealed as the community faced further hardship with the contamination of groundwater of the Puerco River, its main water source.

After the spill took its toll, the United Nuclear Corporation requested to resume its operations due to financial hardship. The federal government granted this petition. Clearly, this merely exacerbated the tragedy that had gone unaddressed, increasing the extensive damage to water contamination. This cognizant decision to prioritize economic gain over health, safety, and environmental concerns ultimately led to the addition of Church Rock to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) EPA’s National Priorities List as a superfund site. In brief, author for National Geographic Mary Schons defines a superfund site as the “common name given to the law called the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, or CERCLA. Superfund is also the trust fund set up by Congress to handle emergency and hazardous waste sites needing long-term cleanup.”

These bureaucratic decisions, without input from those directly suffering at the expense of a corporation’s neglect, have arguably led to further damage.

This is best demonstrated by the shocking health statistics that highlight the lamentable consequences of uranium exposure, including the rate of kidney disease among the Navajo being three times higher than the age-adjusted rate for the US population at large. There is no way to isolate the personal and environmental damage done. It is argued that most of the environmental justice issues faced by this specific population stem from non-tribal management. Dr Darren Ranco, an Associate Professor of Anthropology and Coordinator of Native American Research at the University of Maine articulates, “Environmental justice in the tribal context cannot be contemplated apart from a recognition of American Indian tribes’ unique historical, political, and legal circumstances.” This is clear in the outcome of Church Rock, a case where non-Native American leadership and management led to depletion and contamination of tribal resources.

Moreover, Ranco notes that Native Americans operate on a unique style of environmental management based on a “responsibilities” model. This refers to the fact that “tribal people throughout the Pacific Northwest long ago made a covenant with the salmon and the other first foods, [where they] promised the salmon that they would take care of the salmon and its home. The salmon, for their part, promised to return every year to provide food for and take care of the fishing peoples.” This covenant creates responsibilities for both parties. With non-tribal representation of these lands, there is no way to preserve this traditional system, and it will face endless exploitation.

These tenets may be synthesized in an environmental context. A lack of access to environmental justice stems from the fact that there is a lack of political representation. The lands granted to Native communities under reservation treaties were known to be arid and essentially unfarmable, but they were later discovered to store significant resources such as copper, oil, coal, and uranium, which are of great interest to large corporations and the US government. This led to massive exploitation of the Native American population, whereby the federal Government rescinded and modified the treaties in an effort to retake the land and enter new, coercive contracts, the very definition of “disproportionate exposure of communities to pollution, and its concomitant effects.” Moreover, this is compounded by the fact that the remaining Native territories are in close proximity to toxic waste, a clear hazard. This environmental consequence poses implications on human health through contamination of water and food sources, causing illness and resulting health conditions.

This leads to a discussion about the future of environmental justice concerning the Native American population – is there a solution in sight? It seems that there is a gleam of hope for a more equitable future. As Forbes journalist Carlie Porterfield writes, in the 2020 US elections, “more Native Americans were elected to Congress than ever before,” with six newly elected representatives with Native American heritage claiming seats. This ensures that previously hidden voices will be given an opportunity to both act and speak in Congress, working together with federal agencies to enact positive, realistic change and end any future exploitation.

Beyond tribal recognition, a push for a “more culturally defined notion of human health, calling for ‘new integrating tools’ between the impacts of pollution on culture and human health” would enable environmental justice. The impacts faced by Native American groups extend beyond the classic risk assessment model, and reform would allow these tribal communities to define health in culturally appropriate ways. As with any significant change, this will not occur overnight, but the correct measures are arguably being taken, and the path toward access to environmental justice is being carved.

Australia: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People’s Unequal Environmental Protection under the Law

The devastating Australian bushfires were likely the defining event of the Southern hemisphere’s 2019/2020 Summer. Footage of a sea of flames covering miles and miles of the Australian outback, destroying homes and killing native animals circulated around the world. However, what received little attention was the disproportionate impact the wildfires had on different parts of Australian society. The Royal Bushfire Commission reported that a quarter of the indigenous population of New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria lived in bushfire-affected areas that year. Further, while indigenous people comprised 5.4 per cent of people living in fire-affected areas, this group comprised only 2.3 per cent of the total population of NSW and Victoria, illustrating that indigenous Australians were disproportionately affected by the fires. Moreover, as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people hold unique and significant legal rights and interests in lands within the fire-affected area under the different Aboriginal Land Right Acts of the states, their inability to exercise these rights due to destruction of the lands reflects additional disparity. It is important to note that fires are an inherent part of indigenous land keeping, managed through cultural burning, a skilful practice of using low-intensity fires to remove fine fuels on the forest floor. However, the uncontrollable nature of the climate change-induced fires led to the destruction of aboriginal sacred places, which are inherent to indigenous identity.

Despite this fundamentally disproportionate impact, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are still overlooked in the bushfire response. Policymakers have failed to include them in the reports of two major post-bushfire inquiries. Both inquiries demonstrate noticeable neglect of Aboriginal people’s priorities, a mere rhetorical relegation to the past and only the most superficial inclusion of their interests. For example, in Volumes I–III of the 2009 Victorian Bushfires Royal Commission Final Report there are merely two references to Aboriginal people. This results in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people experiencing land dispossession and deprivation of land rights without government redress.

There is no question that this “unequal environmental quality provided through laws” is manifested by pre-existing inequalities, most of them inheritances from colonial rule as the legacy of trauma and loss continues to haunt many indigenous Australians today.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are still not mentioned in the Australian Constitution and merely 2.6 per cent of members of the 46th Australian Parliament identify as indigenous. Despite several government initiatives, indigenous Australians continue to be disadvantaged on every level, from health and education to life expectancy, indicating that indigenous Australian voices remain widely unheard.

However, it is suggested that access to environmental justice is restricted on another level. Casting pre-existing inequalities aside, issues transpire regarding the paradigms used in environmental decision making and land use as they are contrary to indigenous teachings and understandings. Indigenous people have a deep, unbroken connection to their ancestral homelands, to which both their culture and identity are linked. In their

worldview, there is no separation between people, land, and other forms of life, and there is a deep relationship of reciprocity, respect and responsibility between those elements. Opposed to this, Western nations treat the environment as a resource, basing decisions on opportunity cost, strictly dividing between humans and nonhumans. Decisions based on this narrative fully contradict indigenous teachings. This forecloses Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people from any meaningful access to environmental justice, although this is arguably most important to them due to their strong connection with land. Environmental decision making does not sufficiently consider indigenous worldviews and fails to recognise that the settler-colonial views that persist in society exacerbate environmental injustices for indigenous peoples.

Thus, to enable equal participation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in environmental decision making and to provide more comprehensive environmental protection under the law, it is submitted that not only do the commonly referred roadblocks need to be removed but a new foundational concept to conceptualise nature is required. Philosopher Christine Winter argues for “accounts of environmental justice to move beyond Western liberal thought to meaningfully include Indigenous epistemologies” to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s equal voice in environmental decision making.

Conclusion

Access to environmental justice is critical for all. However, as this article stipulates, indigenous groups require specific mechanisms to achieve this. As the case study from the US illustrates, increased access may be achieved through recognition of native culture and political representation in order to ameliorate the “disproportionate exposure of communities to pollution.” Similarly, the Australian case demonstrates that indigenous teachings need to be transposed into environmental decision making procedures to create a more equal “environmental quality provided through laws.” Jointly, these illustrations highlight not only the necessity for increased access to environmental justice for indigenous people but also the need for heightened exposure of these salient issues.