Keywords of Environmental Reparation: Restoration, Democracy, and Rights

Session Submission Type: Complete Panel

Abstract

Many keywords of environmental history, such as “natural,” “biological,” and “native,” have functioned to rationalize hierarchical orientations toward nonhuman nature. Increasingly, the intersection of environmental justice and environmental history has drawn attention not just to ecological and epidemiological impacts but also to discursive violence. However, numerous political actors across borders also fused environmental and other keywords in campaigns that at times challenged ongoing asymmetries, or sought recompense for historic damages and dispossessions (though these were not without problematic assumptions). This panel indexes three keywords of increasing purchase in environmental history that reflect this kind of politics—restoration, democracy, and rights—using case studies rooted in energy, ecological, and indigenous activism. Laura Martin’s paper, for example, interprets bison restoration as a means to erode tribal sovereignty in the United States in the early 1900s, and compares these early ecological restoration efforts with the recent work of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, whose mission is to restore buffalo to Indian Country in order to preserve historical, cultural, traditional, and spiritual relationships. Energy democracy movements, as Abby Spinak reveals in her paper, have since the 1930s denounced the frequently uneven distribution of “power” across landscapes and made claims to social democratic dividends on grounds of ongoing economic and ecological injuries. And Megan Black’s paper reflects on how indigenous rights activists in the United States, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand strategically and sincerely linked a politics of environmentalism to a politics of colonial reparations in the 1970s in international appeals for vital rights and protections. Comments from Ellen Griffith Spears will draw connections across these cases, highlighting interconnections among the emerging fields of energy history, histories of environmental science, and international environmental relations. These three cases ultimately suggest the importance of attending to politicization as much as naturalization in the keywords and critical vocabularies of environmental history.

Sub Unit

• ASEH Annual Conference

Individual Presentations

• "Restoration" in Ecological Management - Laura Martin, Williams College

• “Democracy” in Energy - Abby Spinak, Harvard University

• “Rights” in Indigenous Activism - Megan Ann Black, London School of Economics

Chair

• Ellen Griffith Spears, University of Alabama

Commentator

• Ellen Griffith Spears, University of Alabama