MODULE 3: Water justice

 AGENDA

1. Politeness 
2. Midterm study guide at tab above
3. Kinship disruption
4. Water reports

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Politeness

• Please speak to others politely. Be nice, be respectful, even if you disagree.
• Please also listen to others politely. Give them your full attention and respect.
• Please also speak about others politely. This pertains to speaking about groups of people that come up because of our course topics.

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Three views about environmental injustice

1. Environmental racism
2. Principle of commensurate benefits and burdens
3. Kinship disruption

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Whyte

1. Kinship relations involve reciprocity: A gives B gifts, B gives back to A
2. Indigenous people see as kin (examples in Whyte): corn, potatoes, plants generally, buffalo, salmon, rivers, mountains, nature generally
3. Environmental injustice = kinship disruption
4. Rectifying the injustice = restoring kinship

Restoring kinship

• Buffalo example (US) -- restoration of kinship with buffalo through recreating herds and hunting
• Uluru example (Australia) -- indigenous Anangu people reclaim the rock
• Later we will discuss -- reclaiming US national parks

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Water issues

1. 
   What's the water issue?
2. Is it an environmental justice issue?
• Environmental Racism
• Principle of commenensurate burdens and benefits
• Kinship disruption
3. Is another kind of environmental wrong involved? 
• mistreatment of people (generally)
• mistreatment of plants, animals, ecosystems
• causing species extinction
• tragedy of the commons

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Reporting document

We may look at --

Aquifer articles--

NYT, US aquifers

• animation of US groundwater levels

NYT, global aquifers

US water laws -- see "absolute dominion" for Texas law -- aka "rule of capture" -- if you own the land you have a right to the water below your land -- stricter regulations in New Mexico

Seamus McGraw, A Thirsty Land

MODULE 1: Kinship

 Agenda

1. Quiz
2. Kinship

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MODULE 1: Moral status

• What is the moral status of an eagle or a tree?
• What principles govern the way we treat an eagle or a tree?
• What is OUR relationship to the eagle or the tree?

Today: more about the relationship

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Kyle Powys Whyte, "Kinship and environmental justice"

• philosopher at Michigan State
• Native American, Potawatomi  (pot -a -WOT - a - me)
• draws on ideas from Robin Kimmerer, also Potawatomi, a botanist, and author of Braiding Sweetgrass  and The Service Berry.

Who are the Potawatomi?

• Potawatomi   -- one nation in Oklahoma, four in Michigan
• Whyte talk at the UN 

Topics in article--

• kinship (today)
• kinship-based account of environmental justice (module 3) 
• colonization -- removal from original lands (module 4)

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Kinship

"In general, kinship refers to qualities of the relationships we have with others--whether others are humans, plants, animals, fishes, insects, rocks, waterways, or forests" (p. 267)

"Kin relations are like ideal family or friendship bonds, and are composed of types of relationships and qualities of relationships.  In a good friendship, the friends may be mutually responsible, for example, to support each other's wellbeing. Mutual responsibility is a type of relationship--that is, a general category of a relationship.  But what makes this relationship truly a kinship relationship is if the mutual responsibility has certain inherent qualities. Qualities are dimensions of relationships like trust, consensuality, transparency, reciprocity, and accountability." (p. 267-268)

"Reciprocity is an important kinship quality. A bond has the quality of reciprocity when each relative (or freind) believes the others to be in a long-term gift-receiving and gift-giving relationships." (p. 268) 

Kinship relations can be with ... corn (Potawatomi), reindeer (Sami people in Siberia), potatoes (Quechua people in Andes)  (p. 269)

"Robin Kimmerer, speaking of ecosystems as 'the living world,' says that 'the living world is understood, not as a collection of exploitable resources, but as a set of relationships and responsibilities.  We inhabit a landscape of gifts peopled by nonhuman relatives, the sovereign beings who sustain us, including the plants' (Kimmerer, 208, p. 27)."  (p. 270)

"One way to understand environmental injustice is as an assault on kinship relationships." (p. 270). 

Maori (mow-ree) people of New Zealand -- Waikato river --  river is used for power, diverted, warmed, pumped -- disrupting the kinship relationship to the river  

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How can we eat and live, if we see nature this way?

Kimmerer -- "The Honorable Harvest" (40:50 - 46:48)

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Invitation: when you encounter plants, animals, even water, over the weekend--ask yourself if these kinship ideas resonate at all. What it would take to start seeing trees and squirrels as kin?