Dina Gilio-Whitaker, "As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock" (Beacon Press, 2019)

Summary

Through the unique lens of “Indigenized environmental justice,” Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, struggles for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the important leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock (Beacon Press, 2019) gives readers an accessible history of Indigenous resistance to government and corporate incursions on their lands and offers new approaches to environmental justice activism and policy.

Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans know about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, modern environmentalists must look to the history of Indigenous resistance for wisdom and inspiration in our common fight for a just and sustainable future.

John Cable will begin a teaching appointment at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in January 2022. He earned the Ph.D. in history at Florida State University in 2020.

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John Cable

John Cable is assistant professor of history at Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College in Tifton, Georgia. He earned the Ph.D. in history at Florida State University in 2020. His forthcoming book, Southern Enclosure: Settler Colonialism and the Postwar Transformation of Mississippi (University Press of Kansas), will be out in December 2023.

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