Oldal 280 [280]
DENISA KRASNA
plants, animals, and elements that give us Life, the sun, moon, wind, fire, soil.”*
Respect for the environment and all its elements that are protected as relatives
is thus an intrinsic behavior for many Indigenous people. Glen Coulthard,
a Yellowknives Dene scholar, calls this attitude a “place-based ethics of
reciprocity” and explains that the word “land” in his language (Yellowknives
Dene dialect of Dogrib) includes all that is in relation to “land” (in its Western
meaning), i.e. animals, plants, lakes, rocks, people, etc.*” Land is therefore not
treated as a material estate to be exploited but as an elemental part of other life
forms, including humans who are obliged to treat it with respect.
Nowadays, Indigenous people in North America form coalitions to protect
the land from an ever-growing capitalist expansion that comes primarily in
the form of extraction industries. The imposed US-Canadian border acts asa
literal and administrative barrier to many of these endeavors. The following
paragraphs provide some examples of cross-border Indigenous-led initiatives
that showcase the determination and resourcefulness of Indigenous tribes in
overcoming the challenges created by the imposed border.
In the far north region of North America Indigenous people have become
increasingly active in addressing problems of environmental nature that affect
their everyday lives and pose a threat to their cultures. Along the Alaska¬
Canadian border, the Gwich’in tribe and the White River First Nation guide
environmental action and organize events that unite members separated by the
boundary. The Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council is an outstanding
example of powerful cross-border Indigenous organizing. The Council was
formed by Alaska Native villages and First Nations living within the Yukon River
watershed with the aim of protecting the river that had always been their source
of drinking water. In recent decades, however, the river has been polluted as a
result of “mining operations, military installations, inadequate sewer systems
in riverine settlements, diesel and chemical runoff from the Alaska-Canada
Highway, recreational activity, and so forth.’ Some of the Council’s major
activities include monitoring of the river’s water quality; providing support
and technical assistance training to tribes lacking drinking water; facilitating
education and awareness programs; evaluation of the risks of mining activities
in the area; backhauling solid waste material; and encouraging and enabling
redevelopment of brownfields.” The Council, which now comprises 73 First
* Melissa K. Nelson, Education for the Eighth Fire, in E. Assadourian - L. Mastny (eds.),
EarthEd: Rethinking Education on a Changing Planet, Washington D.C., Island, 2017, 53.
7 Glen Coulthard, Place Against Empire: Understanding Indigenous Anti-Colonialism,
Affinities: A Journal of Radical Theory, Culture and Action, Vol. 4, No. 2 (2010), 80, http://
pages.ucsd.edu/~rfrank/class_web/ES-114A/Week%203/Coulthard-A fhinities%204-2.pdf
(accessed 3 April 2020).
18 Starks - McCormack - Cornell, Native Nations, 82.
® Yukon Intertribal Watershed Council, One People, One River, https://www.yritwc.org
(accessed 4 April 2020).
* 278 +