Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement signals a complete disregard of human rights, Indigenous rights, climate justice, and the future of this planet in the interest of greed, wealth, acquisition, and the continued conquest of Mother Earth. Indigenous Peoples around the world will feel the impact. Cultural Survival strongly condemns the backing out of the agreement.
As Indigenous Peoples, today and everyday, we continue a more than 500-year-old fight for our lands, cultures, and languages. We fight to protect our natural resources and Mother Earth as we face the dire consequences of climate change and imminent threats of complete loss of some of our communities. We draw upon knowledge given to us by our ancestors to be in spiritual relationships with Mother Earth and all living things, and appropriately honor and steward the land. There is no doubt that as a human race we are at a crossroads for making intentional decisions and taking immediate actions to ensure the survival of our future generations. Indigenous Peoples hold place-based knowledge about our environments and practice Indigenous science in maintaining special relationships to the land and in adapting and mitigating climate change. Our challenge today is not only the unprecedentedly rapid rate at which anthropogenic climate change is occurring but also its denial by the current United States administration.
Human survival is connected to survival of nature and this is echoed at every international meeting with Indigenous participation. 250-plus Indigenous delegates attending the 21st Session of the Conference of Parties (COP 21) in Paris, France, with world leaders, environmental activists, human rights organizations, and other stakeholders sought to develop a universal legally binding agreement on climate change. Indigenous Peoples whose communities are the most vulnerable to climate change worked to ensure that the rights of Indigenous Peoples be included in the binding portion of the Paris Agreement. Sadly, they were not, but we, Indigenous people, will continue to fight to ensure that our voices, rights, and traditional knowledge are respected, protected, fulfilled and incorporated directly into the dialogues where it concerns climate change, our lands, and resources.
While the Paris Climate Agreement failed to include Indigenous Peoples’ rights, it is an important agreement between 195 countries to begin reducing greenhouse gas emissions and take responsibility for the future of the planet.
The US as the second largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world must take responsibility to lead in this effort. Not to do so only reflects the arrogance of its notion of empire, in other words “making America great”. For whom and at what cost to the future of humanity?
Suzanne Benally
(Santa Clara Tewa/Navajo)
Executive Director
Photo courtesy of Bert Kaufmann/Flickr.
