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We Are a Part of the Land and the Land Is Us - Coggle Diagram
We Are a Part of the Land and the Land Is Us
Settler Colonialism is Ongoing
Settler colonialism is a structure that is very much still alive today
"Violence didn't end, it just changed form"
Physical genocide -> environmental\cultural erasure
How do groups continue to benefit or suffer from that violence today?
Genocide Beyond the Body
Genocide = breaking down relationships between people, land, and relatives
When the salmon die, the Yurok people’s health dies too
Can a people survive if their land and non-human kin cannot?
Toxicity as violence: “Toxicity turns our relations against us… It kills us through connection.”
Personal Reflection: Us still actively celebrating Colombus day isIt is living proof that while the act of genocide against Native Americans, in a physically violent way, is in the past, the effects of that are still VERY much active and undermined
The buffalo slaughter on the Plains “destroy the buffalo, destroy the people.”
The 2002 Klamath River fish kill: 70,000 salmon died, called genocide because salmon are kin.
Examples:
Silence is a Second Violence
The genocide of California Indians is erased from textbooks and public memory
EX: Mission projects
The collective silence on this genocide is so loud.”
What does it mean to inherit the benefits of that violence and why is it important to face that truth?
Healing and Reconnection
land return and ecological restoration
Community-based restoration
Acknowledgment for the suffering in schools as necessary education
Examples:
Chiitaanibah Johnson, a Maidu/Navajo student, challenged her professor, who denied genocide showing how erasure continues in classrooms.
Fenelon and Trafzer’s six reasons why genocide denial persists EX: “lack of precedent” to “failure to take responsibility.”
Governor Newsom’s 2019 apology: a start, but as Reed writes, “Acknowledgements must come with action.”
Personal thoughts... It feels very performative to simply say that we need change without actually putting any effort into it. Acknowledging the land doesn't belong to us without doing anything else about it doesn't mean anything.
Relations of Genocide
The U.S. required stolen land to exist. That genocide is built into the system itself
Quote; “Genocide through geocide” killing a people by killing the earth.
The Doctrine of Discovery and Manifest Destiny justified this process.
Environmental destruction = genocide because it breaks relational systems of reciprocity.
Examples:
The 18 unratified treaties of 1851–1852 7.5 million acres promised to tribes, secretly rejected.
Rivers dammed, forests cut, waters poisoned all break the circle of life and culture.
Uranium mining, oil pipelines, toxic waste sites — modern forms of “relations of genocide.”
Environmental Resistance
Environmental repair reconnects communities with ancestral responsibility. Restoration is spiritual: the land was witness to the genocide. Cultural practices like weaving, fishing, and ceremony rebuild life systems. Environmental justice is inseparable from decolonization.
Examples:
Yurok river restoration projects — heal ecosystems and community bonds.
Replanting native species and revitalizing language = acts of survival and defiance.
“If the river is sick, our people will never be healthy.”