428 #ClimateLegal #Indigenous #Lawsuits
"Indigenous youth are at the center of major climate lawsuits. Here’s why they’re suing."
by Anita Hofschneider for Grist [Audio available] [08-08-'24]
https://grist.org/indigenous/indigenous-youth-are-at-the-center-of-major-climate-lawsuits/
Quotes:
"If I don't do it, who will?"
"On August 8, 2023, 13-year-old Kaliko was getting ready for her hula class at her mother’s house in West Maui. The power was out, and she heard there was a wildfire in Lāhainā, where her dad lived, but she didn’t think much of it. Wildfires happened all the time in the summer."
"Today marks the one-year anniversary of the deadliest wildfire in modern United States history, one that changed Hawaiʻi forever and made Kaliko more determined to defend her community."
"This summer she was part of a group of plaintiffs who forced the state of Hawaiʻi to agree to decarbonize its transportation system, which is responsible for half of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. (Grist is only using her first name because she is a minor and filed the lawsuit without her surname.)"
"“I’m from this place, it’s my main kuleana [a Hawaiian word that connotes both a privilege and responsibility, to her community JdeB] to take care of it like my kupuna have in the past,” she said, referring to her ancestors."
"It’s not just the United States. In 2022, Indigenous youth in Australia won a major victory against a destructive coal project. A few years earlier, Indigenous youth in Colombia joined a broader youth lawsuit that affirmed the rights of the Amazon to protection and conservation."
"To Katy Stewart, who works at the Aspen Center’s Center for Native American Youth, the willingness of Indigenous youth like Kaliko to take the lead in these cases makes sense. Her organization recently surveyed more than 1,000 Indigenous youth and conducted focus groups to learn what they care about. When it came to climate change, emotions ran hot. “What we are seeing and hearing a lot was anger, frustration, and a want to do something,” she said. “It was hopeful to me that there wasn’t sort of a ‘giving up and this is over for us,’ more of, ‘we need to do something because we’re the ones seeing this right now.’”
To Katy Stewart, who works at the Aspen Center’s Center for Native American Youth, the willingness of Indigenous youth like Kaliko to take the lead in these cases makes sense. Her organization recently surveyed more than 1,000 Indigenous youth and conducted focus groups to learn what they care about. When it came to climate change, emotions ran hot.
“What we are seeing and hearing a lot was anger, frustration, and a want to do something,” she said. “It was hopeful to me that there wasn’t sort of a ‘giving up and this is over for us,’ more of, ‘we need to do something because we’re the ones seeing this right now.’”
"When Johnny Juarez from Albuquerque thinks of climate change, he thinks of New Mexico’s oil fields, vast and expansive and dominant in the state’s economy. Juarez is 22, and in the time he’s been alive, the state’s oil production has ramped up 10 times."
“What a just transition looks like to us is centering those families that are going to be most impacted and making sure that they get the support they need,” Juarez said. Juarez has talked a lot about the “just transition” in his job as a community organizer, the concept of moving away from fossil fuels to rely instead on green energy and doing so in a way that respects the rights of marginalized peoples."
"“This was actually a fight that I was really born into,” Juarez said. “The fossil fuel industry and fossil fuel extraction and fracking and oil and gas exploration is really just the next chapter in colonial extractivism in New Mexico.”
"That’s exactly how Beze Gray of the Aamjiwnaang First Nation in Canada feels. In 2019, they joined a group of seven young people, three of whom are Indigenous, who sued the government of Ontario for weakening its climate goals. Gray grew up in the shadow of dozens of chemical plants and oil refineries and saw firsthand how their pollution hurt their community."
"Globally, Indigenous peoples are often the first to experience the effects of climate change because of their dependence on land and water. In the U.S., modern-day reservations are more susceptible than Indigenous traditional homelands to drought and wildfires, extreme weather events expected to worsen as the earth warms."
"“This is just going to keep happening,” she [Kaliko JdeB] thought. The realization is motivating her to join the Department of Transportation’s youth council created by her lawsuit’s settlement so that she can hold the state accountable to its decarbonization promises. “I want to mainly be advocating for my community,” she said. “I don’t think I can imagine myself doing anything else.”