Page 221 - Carbon Capitalism and Communication Confronting Climate Crisis

18 CONCLUSION: ONE MONTH IN THE LIFE OF THE PLANET … 217

decision was announced, arguing that the State Department had relied on
an environmental impact assessment that was outdated and incomplete and
therefore invalid. In a second suit a broad coalition of environmental
groups alleged that failure to comply with the federal requirement that an
environmental impact study be conducted prior to any decision being
taken rendered Trump’s lifting of the moratorium on new coal leases on
federal land illegal. Indigenous rights were again at the heart of the case
being made. As Jace Killsback, President of the North Cheyenne Tribe,
whose lands in Montana would be most severely affected, made clear:

The Nation is concerned that coal mining near the Northern Cheyenne
Indian Reservation will impact our pristine air and water quality, will
adversely affect our sacred cultural properties and traditional spiritual prac-
tices and ultimately destroy the traditional way of life that the Nation has
fought to preserve for centuries (Frears and Ellperin 2017).

Indigenous rights are also central to current mobilizations against the
Adani mine in Queensland detailed in Benedetta Brevini and Terry
Woronov’s chapter in this collection. The manifesto launching the broadly
based Stop Adani Alliance in March 2017 includes ‘respect for indigenous
rights’ as a key tenet alongside demands for the cancellation of the project,
a ban on all new coal mines and an end to public subsidies for polluting
projects including the $1 billion concessional loan the federal government
has promised to help fund the rail link from the mine complex to the coast
(The Stop the Adani Alliance 2017). The Galilee Blockade Campaign,
which is planning peaceful civil disobedience around the mine site, has
undertaken to “promote or be involved in direct action in the Galilee Basin
[only] if requested by the Wangan and Jagalingou Traditional Owners
family Council, the indigenous custodians of the land” (Galilee Blockade
Campaign 2017).
Appeals to the core principles of the commons are no longer simply
rhetorical. They can now cite a powerful legal precedent in support. In a
landmark judgement in mid-March the New Zealand House of
Representatives passed the third and final reading of a bill granting the
country’s third longest river, the Whanganui, its own legal identity with the
corresponding rights of a legal person. The decision marked the final set-
tlement of dispute dating back to the 1870s based on the local indigenous
people’s demand that the state recognize its special relation to the river. As
the minister in charge of negotiations noted, “I know the initial inclination