Asserting Native Resilience
240 pages, 7 x 10
B&W photographs
Paperback
Release Date:01 Jun 2012
ISBN:9780870716638
Asserting Native Resilience
Pacific Rim Indigenous Nations Face the Climate Crisis
Edited by Zoltán Grossman and Alan Parker
Oregon State University Press
Indigenous nations are on the front line of the climate crisis. With cultures and economies among the most vulnerable to climate-related catastrophes, Native peoples are developing twenty-first century responses to climate change that serve as a model for Natives and non-Native communities alike.
Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Indigenous peoples around the Pacific Rim have already been deeply affected by droughts, flooding, reduced glaciers and snowmelts, seasonal shifts in winds and storms, and the northward movement of species on the land and in the ocean. Using tools of resilience, Native peoples are creating defenses to strengthen their communities, mitigate losses, and adapt where possible.
Asserting Native Resilience presents a rich variety of perspectives on Indigenous responses to the climate crisis, reflecting the voices of more than twenty contributors, including tribal leaders, scientists, scholars, and activists from the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, Alaska, and Aotearoa / New Zealand, and beyond. Also included is a resource directory of Indigenous governments, NGOs, and communities and a community organizing booklet for use by Northwest tribes.
Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Indigenous peoples around the Pacific Rim have already been deeply affected by droughts, flooding, reduced glaciers and snowmelts, seasonal shifts in winds and storms, and the northward movement of species on the land and in the ocean. Using tools of resilience, Native peoples are creating defenses to strengthen their communities, mitigate losses, and adapt where possible.
Asserting Native Resilience presents a rich variety of perspectives on Indigenous responses to the climate crisis, reflecting the voices of more than twenty contributors, including tribal leaders, scientists, scholars, and activists from the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, Alaska, and Aotearoa / New Zealand, and beyond. Also included is a resource directory of Indigenous governments, NGOs, and communities and a community organizing booklet for use by Northwest tribes.
In the times of the unraveling of our world, it is essential to stand against the combustion, mining and disregard for life. Life is in water, air, and relatives who have wings, fins, roots, and paws, and all of them are threatened by climate change--as are people themselves. Grossman and Parker have done an excellent job in telling the stories of climate change, and the people who are standing to make a difference for all of us. Change is indeed made by people, and climate change must be addressed by a movement, strong, strident, and courageous.’ —Winona La Duke, executive director of Honor The Earth and White Earth Land Recovery Project
Evergreen State College Professors Zoltan Grossman and Alan Parker have done the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Rim, including our Tribal nations in the Northwest, a great service by assembling this book. Asserting Native Resilience speaks for the Native people who are the most directly impacted by climate change. We see the glaciers in our beautiful Olympic Mountains disappearing and our salmon and shellfish already hanging by a thread on the edge of extinction. It is past time that our fellow Americans wake up to the reality of climate change, heed the lessons from our sacred teachings, and stop listening to self-serving politicians, scientists, and corporations who want us to continue in a state of denial.’
--Fawn Sharp, President of the Quinault Indian Nation and the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (ATNI)
Zoltán Grossman is a professor of Geography and Native American and World Indigenous Peoples Studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington.
Alan Parker, a citizen of the Chippewa Cree Tribal nation and Professor of Advanced Studies in Tribal Governments, is executive director of the Northwest Indian Applied Research Institute at The Evergreen State College.
