On the Swamp: Stories of Indigenous Environmental Justice from North Carolina’s Coastal Plain

Speaker:  Ryan Emanuel, Associate Professor, Environmental Sciences and Policy, Duke

Despite centuries of colonialism, Lumbee people and their Indigenous neighbors still occupy their ancestral homelands among forested swamps, sandy plains, and blackwater streams of present-day North Carolina.  Amid these backwaters, Indigenous communities have adapted to a radically transformed world while preserving cultures and connections to place.  In recent decades, however, pollution, unsustainable development, and climate change quicken the transformation of Indigenous homelands and threaten Indigenous life-ways on the Coastal Plain.  Stories from North Carolina about Indigenous survival, adaptation, and resurgence in the face of radical transformation hold lessons about the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of tribal communities in environmental governance. In this talk, Emanuel will share some of these stories and reflect on lessons of environmental justice and Indigenous rights on the swamp.