Volume 111
Issue
6
Date
2023

Dishonoring the Earth: Ecocide as Prosecutable Genocide Against Indigenous People

by Abbey Koenning-Rutherford

Global Indigenous Footnote #1 content: Indigenous is hereinafter capitalized to affirm Indigenous people as autonomous subjects with agency, rather than indigenous, which refers to a characteristic of a person. See DANIEL HEATH JUSTICE, WHY INDIGENOUS LITERATURES MATTER 6, 8 (2018) (“The capital ‘I’ is important here, as it affirms a distinctive political status of peoplehood, rather than describing an exploitable commodity, like an ‘indigenous plant’ or a ‘native mammal.’”). people exist as one with the environment, with no western binary between people and nature. Footnote #2 content: See Sarah Wright, Kate Lloyd, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Laklak Burarrwanga, Matalena Tofa & Bawaka Country, Telling Stories in, Through and with Country: Engaging with Indigenous and Morethan-Human Methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia, 29 J. CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 39, 39–60 (2012); Miguel Astor-Aguilera, Latin America: Indigenous Cosmovision, in ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF RELIGION AND ECOLOGY 158, 161–62 (Willis Jenkins et al. eds., 2017). See generally ROBIN WALL KIMMERER, BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: INDIGENOUS WISDOM, SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, AND TEACHINGS OF PLANTS (2013) (detailing the symbiotic and nonbinary intricacies between Indigenous people and nature). Destruction of Indigenous people is reciprocal with environmental destruction. Indigenous people, though only six percent of the global population, protect eighty percent of the world’s biodiversity and occupy exceedingly environmentally vulnerable regions. Footnote #3 content: Indigenous people are specifically at risk for their role in protecting the world’s richest resource regions and biodiversity. See Climate Academy by Grounded, Why Protecting Indigenous Communities Can Also Help Save the Earth, GUARDIAN (Oct. 12, 2020, 9:30 AM), https://www.theguardian.com/ climate-academy/2020/oct/12/indigenous-communities-protect-biodiversity-curb-climate-crisis [https:// perma.cc/6GG5-E8V8]; Marcia Langton & Zane Ma Rhea, Traditional Indigenous Biodiversity-Related Knowledge, 36 AUSTL. ACAD. & RSCH. LIBRS. 45, 46–47 (2013). Because of these reasons, the International Criminal Court (the “ICC”) could be utilized to achieve justice by prosecuting ecocide as genocide, should impacted Indigenous peoples choose to utilize it.

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