This commentary is by Carolina de Buy Wenniger of Burlington, a sophomore at the University of Vermont.
The U.S. is fixated on the ideal of endless consumption, increased wealth and economic growth. This fixation is often calculated in the form of gross domestic product growth and takes place at the expense of people and the environment.
The brunt of environmental impacts falls on those disenfranchised through years of continued colonialism, genocide and systemic racism.
Indigenous Americans often suffer loss of sovereignty in the pursuit of outside interests of economic power and growth. However, new academic and social fields such as degrowth seek to reverse these systems. Degrowth and the fight for Indigenous sovereignty should be examined to understand how their goals are similar: to redistribute wealth and power while limiting environmental degradation.
Degrowth is a relatively new movement in the field of ecological economics created around the rejection of measurements of classical economics. Degrowth seeks to analyze how the pursuit of GDP and economic growth has led to degradation of the environment and human welfare alike (Robra & Heikkurinen, 2019).
The pro-growth argument is that increased production and consumption — economic activity — will lead to increased prosperity and welfare for all. Increased economic throughput is argued to lead to more jobs and more wealth through the trickle-down effect. Pro-growth has become so ingrained in the mainstream that all economic policy from local town to federal government seems to prioritize increasing growth yearly.
Yet studies have constantly refuted the pro-growth argument, showing that the endless pursuit of GDP growth leads to wealth and income inequality, environmental degradation, and exploitation of humans and resources (Chakravarty & Mandal, 2020). Fixation on infinite growth disregards the rights of humans, organisms and the earth in pursuit of individual wealth.
Degrowth seeks to combat this mainstream narrative and works to reimagine our socioeconomic system to “include local autonomy, political and economic equity, communalism, connection to place, convivial lifeways, and voluntary simplicity” (Frost, 2019). Degrowth focuses on decreasing economic throughput and the size of the global economy given the finite biophysical limits of the planet.
The pursuit of economic growth leads to resource extraction and environmental degradation, often at the expense of Indigenous groups. Environmental injustice from industrial processes “take the form of environmental externalities — negative, nonmonetized impacts of industry, which the industry is not held accountable for economically or legally and which are inflicted on others nonconsensually” (Frost, 2019). This leads to negative consequences because loss of food security and spiritual connection to place damages the integral parts of culture, society and spirituality in Indigenous communities. Loss of land has resulted in “serious challenges for the sovereignty and self-determination of Indian nations” (Land Tenure History).
Even today, the sovereignty and rights of Indigenous people are being challenged by corporate entities that seek to make economic profit in any way possible. Recent and current projects such as the Dakota Access Pipeline and Enbridge’s Line 3 Pipeline continue to disregard and nonconsensually violate land right treaties with Indigenous nations around the U.S.
State and federal governments approve energy projects even with strong opposition from Indigenous groups. Pipelines endanger the lives and livelihoods of everyone, especially Indigenous land that they cross. Pipelines have devastating environmental impacts, both directly in the form of oil spills, and down the line as greenhouse gas emissions (Erdrich, 2020).
The pursuit of energy and resource extraction for endless economic growth is a human rights violation. The climate crisis is a direct result of a pro-growth mindset. It has led to degradation and irreversible damage to our planet. Blind pursuits of individual wealth without respecting the rights of sovereignty of Indigenous communities in the U.S. is dangerous and should be stopped. Our sociopolitical and economic systems are hurting people and the planet.
Economic degrowth and the fight for Indigenous rights and sovereignty are aligned. Fights for Indigenous sovereignty parallel the ideals of degrowth, which include “calls for voluntary simplicity, local autonomy, communalism, conviviality, and sacred relationship to place, as well as shared explicit challenging of capitalist growth ideology” (Frost, 2019).
These sentiments all play a role in Indigenous communities and Indigenous knowledge. The fight for Indigenous sovereignty and degrowth should not parallel each other; they should coexist in the same academic and social paradigms. Degrowth and Indigenous sovereignty and rights should support each other in the fight for a future that recognizes the importance of land, culture and society.