The green transition will deepen entrenched socioeconomic barriers for Indigenous peoples — unless Western forms of science and ongoing settler colonialism are addressed by researchers. That’s according to a new study out this month focused on the use, and abuse, of Indigenous knowledge to solve climate change. Despite disenfranchisement, researchers added, Indigenous nations remain the best stewards of the land.
Focused on environmental oral histories of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, the study examined how the nation strengthened tribal sovereignty by revitalizing connections to land. This has included re-introducing freshwater mussels into the ecosystem as a way to clean local waterways, and growing ancestral plants for food, medicine, and textiles in urban areas.
“We as a people, and all the Native people on the East Coast, have been dealing with environmental changes for thousands of years,” said Dennis White Otter Coker, the principal chief of the Lenape Indian Tribe of Delaware, in the report.
Researchers argue that it is impossible to separate the effects of climate change from the history of land dispossession and violence endured by Indigenous peoples, and contend that that legacy continues in Western science practices aimed at finding climate solutions. For example, previous studies have found that organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change are biased towards Western sciences over Indigenous knowledge, and their reports “problematically unquestioned,” regardless of the international organization’s own reports finding colonialism to be a key factor in climate change.
“Western Science is really what dominates the way we talk about climate adaptation,” said Lyndsey Naylor, an author on the paper from the University of Delaware. She added that Western science has a hard time meaningfully integrating tribal projects into research, sometimes dismissing their insights completely. Western researchers often have an…