In 2016, An estimated 15,000 people representing 400 Indigenous Nations and non-indigenous allies gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in solidarity against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect Mni Sose, the Missouri River. They became known as the Water Protectors. This dissertation analyzes the response in environmental philosophy journals to the #noDAPL protest at Standing Rock. Even though the Stand at Standing Rock became one of the most important and monumental environmental protests of the last decade, neither Standing Rock nor the Water Protectors appear in environmental philosophy journals at all--not once. Why? I suggest a possible answer by …
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In 2016, An estimated 15,000 people representing 400 Indigenous Nations and non-indigenous allies gathered at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in solidarity against the Dakota Access Pipeline to protect Mni Sose, the Missouri River. They became known as the Water Protectors. This dissertation analyzes the response in environmental philosophy journals to the #noDAPL protest at Standing Rock. Even though the Stand at Standing Rock became one of the most important and monumental environmental protests of the last decade, neither Standing Rock nor the Water Protectors appear in environmental philosophy journals at all--not once. Why? I suggest a possible answer by exploring the Stand of the Water Protectors as a moment in a much longer continuous history of resistance to settler colonialism. Settler colonialism attempts to facilitate the erasure of Indigenous populations by colonial ones, in order to gain access to territory—to land. The omission of Standing Rock from environmental philosophy journals represents the ease with which environmental philosophy can become complicit in the project of settler colonial erasure and replacement through absence. Drawing on Indigenous land-based philosophies of kinship, Latin American decolonial philosophy, settler colonial theory, and frameworks of Indigenous environmental justice, I show how the geo-politics of colonialism have come to produce environmental injustice and planetary ruin. I work to break the silence on Standing Rock in environmental philosophy and allow the Water Protectors example to guide the project toward an environmental philosophy which centers colonialism and Indigenous resurgence as core concerns.
This dissertation is part of the following collection of related materials.
UNT Theses and Dissertations
Theses and dissertations represent a wealth of scholarly and artistic content created by masters and doctoral students in the degree-seeking process. Some ETDs in this collection are restricted to use by the UNT community.
