HOW CAN INDIAN TRIBES' ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS BE ADDRESSED BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT?

Abstract

The distinctive land tenure status of Indian reservations has combined with the relationship between tribal governments and state environmental regulatory authority to make Indian lands especially attractive to developers seeking sites for the treatment, storage, and disposal of hazardous by-products of industry and electrical power generation. In deciding whether to permit such activities on their lands, tribal communities have often faced difficult choices concerning whether to accept the local investment that accompanies the potential environmental, health, and safety risks. To address past environmental problems and avoid them in the future, the choices that tribes face in deciding whether (and on what basis) to join with other constituents of the environmental justice movement are equally difficult. The environmental justice movement aims to promote structural changes needed to exert greater control over facility siting and cleanup of existing contamination, yet tribal governments have a different basis of authority to protect the health, welfare, and resource base of their tribal members than their counterparts in community-based organizations, the backbone of the environmental justice movement. Confounding the uncertain strategic wisdom of tribal governments in casting their lot with community-based organizations is the fact that more than half the Indian people in America live away from reservation lands, in urban areas, where they are among the most disadvantaged of all residents. This paper characterizes the extent to which tribal jurisdictions and urban Indian communities are disproportionately burdened by environmental health risks, and assesses three political mobilization strategies for Indian participation in the promotion of environmental justice in America.