Convened by Climate Justice co-chair Alma Soongi Beck (settler) and facilitated by Climate Justice co-chair S. Louie (settler).

Following the lead of the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, a San Francisco Bay Area organization led by urban indigenous women that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people, we will be reading together and discussing selections from the Recommended Reading List offered on the Sogorea Te' Land Trust’s website, and campaigns assessed in the 2021 Indigenous Resistance Against Carbon report. This report concluded that Indigenous resistance against carbon in the United States and Canada has kept BILLIONS of tons of carbon in the ground equivalent to one-quarter of annual emissions from both the U.S. and Canada combined!

Check out a suggested "reading" if you can:

1. ROOT CAUSES and COMMON EFFECTS

Indigenous Climate Action Pod, "How Do You Cancel A Pipeline?":
Lindsey Bacigal (Chickasaw descent), "So many Indigenous communities are forced [by colonialism] into accepting extraction projects just as a way to survive financially. . . . You can support Indigenous organizations and frontline groups doing anti-extraction work and look to see if your bank is backing extraction projects. If they are, consider pulling out of them and move your money into smaller banks or credit unions." Check your insurance companies too!

Resource extraction projects are direct contributors to the crisis of #MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women) / #MMIWG2S (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirits) / #MMIR (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives):
Carol Muree Martin (Nisga'a and Gitanyow) and Harsha Walia, Red Women Rising (pdf): "Indigenous women are often the primary land stewards and knowledge keepers of the territories, more reliant on traditional food and medicinal systems, less likely than men to benefit from wage-jobs associated with resource extraction . . . Higher wages for resource sector workers also drive up overall food and housing prices, which pushes Indigenous women into even more economically insecure positions and increases their dependence on male partners and precarious work. One of the immense social changes that mega-development projects bring into communities is the huge influx of mostly male workers living in man camps, in some cases more than doubling the local population. . . . Extractive violence on Indigenous lands is connected to violence against Indigenous women" such as increased sexual harassment, rape, assault, and sex trafficking. Diane Redsky (Shoal Lake First Nation): "Anytime there are men with money who are transient, you’re going to have sexual exploitation" (pages 60-61).

Raye Zaragova (Akimel O'odham heritage), Fight Like A Girl (3 minute music video)

First Nations Caring Society, Spirit Bear & Friends, A Love We Know, written and performed by First Nations children (4 minute music video)

2. PERMIAN OIL AND GAS BASIN, southeast New Mexico and west Texas

Environment Texas interview (text and 4 minute video) with Christa Mancias (Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas) and Frankie Orona (Executive Director, Society of Native Nations): "You can go to a park where kids play . . . you’ll see black film on the playground that’s coming out of some of these refineries. All sacrificed zones are predominantly in POC communities . . . where they feel they’re going to get the least resistance."

Beautiful photos and text descriptions of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas's Bridge To The Ancestors Youth Walk (March 24 - April 1, 2023), which followed "a path through our lands, what we call Somi’ Sek [to] honor sacred sites, bring awareness to the destruction of our lands from extractive industries, and connect with adversely affected in-path communities to share tribal history and stories with youth from our Elders."

The Teachings of the Hands video, narrated by Juan Mancias, chair of Carrizo/Comecrudo, is part of a film series presented in 2022-23 by the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City. Check it out for kaleidoscopic visuals of landscape, ancient paintings on rock walls, the imposition of colonizer and fossil fuel infrastructure, and tribal roots and present-day infrastructure: "There's a different teaching in this land than the one that was brought in of greed and avarice."