Native American Perspectives on the Environment

The Native American scholar Jace Weaver has written extensively about Native perspectives on environmental topics.

Native American populations have long viewed environmental challenges as significant.

Following Spanish settlement of the Caribbean, the growth of settlements throughout the Western Hemisphere resulted in many Native peoples throughout the hemisphere reduced to the status of “domestic dependent nations.”  New governments throughout the hemisphere took control of most Native lands.

_{The visualization of land lost portrayed in the video above only includes the loss of land influenced by British expansion– it does not include a visual representation of how the Spanish, the French and the Dutch influence land use- If these were to be incorporated the visual representation would be much more dramatic than this representation portrays.}

Of primary concern for many Native populations were the ways in which Spanish settlements and subsequent laws established rights over land, forests and rivers.

By the late 1800s and early 1990s many western nation-states began to enact comprehensive land-use regulation– a series of legal battles resulted asserting the right to intervene and regulate the environment.

And, although it is assumed that Native nations have the authority to regulate the environment when it comes to nations residing on reservations, in many cases those rights encounter limitations.

One of the most fought over resources across the hemisphere are water, air and wildlife.  The migratory nature of these means that Native nations struggle to control what the quality of these within and beyond the borders of their nations.

Off reservation pollution affects health on reservations.