Page 220 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

216 G. MURDOCK

commoning is anchored in a world view constructed around values of
custodianship and sustainability rather than exploitation.
Indigenous peoples have often born the brunt of the dispossessions
entailed in commercial logging, forest clearances, and coal and mining
projects, but the ethical foundations of commoning have continued to
provide a powerful imaginative counterweight to the force of capitalist
enclosure. As Julian BraveNoiseCat, of the Salish peoples of what is now
British Columbia noted in a piece published on 27 March 2017:

Indigenous epistemologies were all but eliminated by colonization. British
and American empires dispossessed indigenous people of their lands in the
name of property and productivity. Despite this brutal and enduring history,
indigenous people today stand on the frontlines of global movements
fighting for a more just relationship between humanity and the land
(BraveNoiseCat 2017).

As Naomi Klein points out in the interview included in this volume, it is the
people who still live on the land and who are most directly affected by
mining, pipelines and other fossil fuel projects who are leading the struggle
against carbon capitalism and for alternative practices based on the ethos of
the commons.
In 2016, the largest gathering of the Sioux nation since the meeting
before the Battle of Little Big Horn convened on the Standing Rock
reservation to protest plans to run the Dakota Access oil shale pipeline
across native lands. They were acting not only to protect water supplies
from possible contamination from leaks but to ensure that the resources
they saw themselves holding in trust were handed on in good order. As the
protest web site declared:

In honor of our future generations we fight this pipeline to protect our water,
our sacred places, and all living beings (Stand with Standing Rock 2017).

They won a landmark decision requiring the government to institute
meaningful consultations on the protection of tribal lands and resources,
only to see it overturned when President Trump signed an executive order
to advance construction on the project, on the same day as giving the
go-ahead to the Keystone XL pipeline.
These moves have been met with intensified opposition. Objectors
lodged a suit in the federal court almost immediately after the Keystone