Ecocide of Native America Environmental Destruction of Indian Lands and Peoples

Description

It is one of the cruelest ironies of modern times that American Indians, who have lived in close ecological harmony with the earth for thousands of years, are among the primary victims of “ecocide” in today’s polluted world. This book examines the age-old ecological practices of native groups and documents the subsequent destruction, which continues to this day, fueled by the dominant culture’s greed for land and resources.

The authors present a detailed history of human suffering and environmental degradation inflicted on specific Indian populations throughout North America, whose plight, tragically, is typical of what is happening to many other native groups.

The book concludes with the moving testimony of American Indians who have experienced the slow death of their lands, their means of subsistence, and their communities. They speak of Navajo uranium miners who died spitting blood, Akwesasne mothers who carry PCBs in their breast milk, Cree hunters who find freshly killed caribou poisoned and already dying from toxic substances. As the authors note, the destruction continues even as environmentalists begin looking to Native American precedents for solutions to our common global catastrophe.