By Clara Feldman

Op-Ed: Growing Beyond Gold: Why Indigenous Sovereignty is Integral to Climate Work

By Clara Feldman

There is unity among all things in this world—a web of interconnection that endures the strongest of storms. Humans are intimately related to the natural world, but we have been distanced from this space through centuries of colonial ideology and capitalist ventures. The violence and resource extraction that cleaved this separation persists today. In light of the escalating climate crisis, the relationships between humans and all of the natural world are becoming clearly visible as a greater number of communities begin experiencing effects of the climate crisis that can no longer be ignored. The relationship between humans and the Earth should be one of mutuality; but we have done more harm than good to this planet and the consequences of that behavior are visible.

As ice shelves fall, fires rage, and storms tear apart communities worldwide, coalitions of climate activists such as Sunrise Movement and Extinction Rebellion are working to challenge the capitalist ideologies that create injustices across social and ecological spheres. Rather than focusing solely on consumer-responsibility and individual action, climate groups are turning focus towards conglomerates and institutions that enable ecocide and exploitation. Coupled with this shift in focus is activists’ attempts to ensure that environmental justice is at the core of their work. In doing so, an abundance of Indigenous wisdom and leadership has found space to blossom where it was once stamped out. Progressive groups within today’s broader climate movement are increasingly aware of how necessary it is to highlight Indigenous leadership in all aspects of policy and activism work. Colonialism and capitalist systems that dominate our world do not focus on cultivating a sustainable relationship with the earth and are contradictory to Indigenous ways of knowing, which makes Indigenous leaders powerful agents for guiding and reshaping the ideologies that ground the climate movement.

Representative of how Indigenous liberation and cli-

mate salvation are intertwined is the proposed reopening of Rise Gold’s Idaho-Maryland mine in the Nevada City Rancheria of Northern California, ancestral homeland of the Nisenan Tribe. If this proposal were to become reality, the environmental and social outcomes would be devastating, with impacts spreading far beyond the immediate Nevada City Rancheria area. As Nisenan spokeswoman Shelly Covert acknowledges, “This is about land. With the Native American people, it’s always about land.”1 It is impossible to separate the tribe’s goals of reinstated federal recognition from the activism movements trying to preserve the area’s social and ecological health. Like the Nisenan Tribe, the objectives of many Indigenous communities are closely aligned with mainstream climate goals, yet are not often treated as such. Recognition of Indigenous nationhood places authority of land management into Indigenous hands—hands that would mitigate exploitation and protect the integrity of land and all its inhabitants. Failure to acknowledge the interrelation between Indigenous sovereignty and environmentalism is a great loss for any climate movement. By protecting their cultural worldviews, Indigenous nations continue to be active proof that human existence is not inherently detrimental to land; we can and do exist alongside the rest of the natural world. Securing the land-back goals like those of the Nisenan Tribe inherently advances the restoration and regeneration of land that climate activists desire.

Ecological degradation following the reopening of this mining operation is certain. The sanctioned exploitation the mine proposes would plunge the area into a state of environmental and social distress as clearly explained by Mine Watch scientists and leaders. Thus, there is no room for debate over the destructiveness of continued extraction. The county’s current “F” air quality rating would only worsen with the expected release of numerous greenhouse gases, fugitive dusts, and other asthma and cancer-causing particulate matter. Water, an increasingly at-risk resource in California and beyond, would be consumed by the millions-of-gallons per day for nearly a century after the mine’s construction. Energy use in the mine would employ 48 billion watt hours per year, a 12% consumption rate of the county’s entire energy supply—knocking back the county government plan to decrease fossil fuel use, and significantly upping energy costs2. A consumption of fossil fuels this intense cannot be sustained during this time of record power shut-offs and wildfire damage, nor can it foster a livable community for animals and humans. An additional 75 acres of woodland and chaparral, originally intended for supervised restoration and toxin clean-up, would be demolished to make way for mine waste products. These lands are not only ecologically vital to the area’s watershed, but intrinsically and practically valuable to all beings in the region. What is lost ecologically rarely goes unfelt viscerally.

The Nevada City Rancheria area exhibits a disproportionately high rate of lung afflictions and related mortalities, but also a significant and inequitable number of mental health concerns. Rates of depression, anxiety, and annual suicides are significantly higher than state averages, while access to psychological health services remains severely lacking. Spokeswoman Covert adds that “extreme rates of undereducation and under employment, in addition to high rates of drug and alcohol addiction, domestic violence, suicide, and poor health,”3 are experienced by the community. Disproportionate health outcomes concentrated in Indigenous communities is not a novelty. In fact, it is the standard. Worse, environmental degradation caused by the mine is likely to increase community anxiety over property values and depletion of resources, while also increasing depression and frustration as community health outcomes worsen. No consolation is granted, as any possible financial benefit of the mine is immediately counteracted by the negative impacts to the area’s tourism and recreation industry. Destruction of a healthy community ethos through both physical and psychological means is a tool of oppression towards Indigenous communities and the wider area, hindering the progress of conservation initiatives and positive environmental action.

Additionally, even without federal recognition of Nisenan sovereignty, the construction of this mine is in violation of state health and safety codes. Section 41700 of the California Health and Safety code states almost verbatim, that no amount of air pollutants can be released if they will cause “injury, detriment, nuisance, or annoyance” to any public group or jeopardize the “comfort, repose, health or safety” of the public—realities that will come to frui-

tion if the mine is approved. With this clash of policy and proposal, it is clear that existing resources are not enough to serve the community members fighting this mine. Even when they are using all available institutions in their effort, it is still not enough to protect their community.

Thus the critical question arises: where does Indigenous recognition come into play? If the responsibility of land stewardship were returned to the hands of Indigenous nations, activism could occur alongside and in conjunction with state and federal institutions; protecting Indigenous land through existing frameworks, but under the direction of the land’s ancestral kin. Restoring Indigenous sovereignty over the Rancheria means recognizing that the institutions of the State of California and the government of the United States will not be enough to heal the climate of this area, or anywhere. Existing pathways for bureaucratic and institutional change will never adequately serve the interests of land stewardship because they were built by a society with a fundamentally extractive method of thinking. Shifting and recomposing societal ways of thinking is necessary to make substantial, lasting change. Integration of Indigenous worldviews in all spaces is what is missing in activism. To make a dual-lens approach that integrates both Indigenous and Western perspectives simultaneously, the new norm of climate work first requires a recognition of Indigenous nationhood and land sovereignty. This shift begins with rescinding outright federal control, and asking for permission from the caretakers of the land when resources are needed.

If we are to care for Earth and regenerate our relationship with it, we need a fundamental shift in the lenses through which we approach the climate crisis. A prioritization of exploitation and rights-based thinking has allowed for projects like the Idaho-Maryland mine to come to fruition around the world. Take Line 3 in Minnesota or the Dakota Access Pipeline as examples. Opposition movements everywhere are suffocating because the system around them is formulated to nurture extraction not reciprocity, apathy not kinship, transaction and not gratitude. With respect and responsibility, we must integrate alternative ways of understanding our relationship to Earth that prioritize regenerative approaches to climate restoration. But herein lies an important distinction—we must not inspire the theft of Indigenous paradigms, but rather advocate for the elevation of those paradigms through the establishment of Indigenous leadership and sovereignty. For the Nevada City Rancheria, this means supporting opposition initiatives like Mine Watch, as well as supporting the goals of the Nisenan Tribe, acknowledging that neither objective is complete without the other.

If the Idaho-Maryland Mine proposal holds any value at all, it is that actions directed by a desire to extract are not actions worth taking. As our worsening climate strains interconnected ecosystems worldwide, learning to see the crisis ahead of us through different lenses remains one of the most powerful tools available for change making—if we have the courage and accountability to ask for guidance.

If you’d like to help stop the approval of the Idaho-Maryland mine, visit https://www.minewatchnc.org/ for more resources and action items. For more information on the Nisenan Tribe of California and how to support their heritage conservation initiatives, visit https://www.nisenan.org/. H

Notes 1 Rebecca O’Neil, Nisenan Spokesperson Says She Believes State Recognition Is Possible, The Union (November 2020). 2 Mine Watch (June 2020). 3 Brooke Schueller and Avery L. White, The California Tribe the Government Tried to Erase in the 60s, Vice (January 2017).

Art by Ella Weatherington