Page 35 - GIC Manifesto.m

What Pruitt and the Trump Administration identify as “flourishing” from “warming trends,”
Director-General José Graziano da Silva of the Food and Agriculture Organization categorized
as an “alarming threat to food systems and food security in the Pacific islands,” at the close of
2017. In the 50th state Trump presides over, 90-95% of dryland forests have already receded.
“The importance of Hawai‘i’s native forests extends beyond their borders – any damage to
this sacred space will likely have cascading impacts throughout the ahupua‘a (traditional
land division). Not only do healthy forests anchor the soil to prevent large amounts of sediment
from washing off mountains into the ocean and destroying coral reefs and coastal fishing
resources, forests also feed the streams that enable agriculture to flourish and sustain indigenous
and other communities,” explains Professor D. Kapua‘ala Sproat in An Indigenous People’s Right
to Environmental Self-Determination: Native Hawaiians and the Struggle Against Climate Change
Devastation.

In its 2005 petition filed against the US, the Inuit Circumpolar Conference charged that the
US government was aware of the havoc that climate change was wreaking, but simply “refuses
to honor its obligation to avoid this harm.” The Inuit cataloged “the melting of sea
ice, flooding, shore erosion, destruction of marine species, and contamination of food and
water resources” among the impacts that were already apparent. Rather than implement policies
to alleviate some of the deleterious aspects and enable self-determination, the US contributed
an estimate of $100-million to remove each Inuit village. In Arctic Village, Alaska, Gwich’in
elder Gideon James gave a cause and effect summary: “Thirty years ago the permafrost was
solid underground, so the land was flat. Now there’s dents everywhere. To target climate change
we have to first target greed. If we don’t identify greed, we will destroy the earth. The greedy
take and take. Get greed under control!” The sacred land of the Gwich’in, the Arctic National
Wildlife Refuge (ANWR), was opened to energy extraction after a three-decade struggle when
President Trump signed the December 2017 Republican tax bill into law, which included a rider
to open ANWR to drilling. To target climate change we have to first target greed. If we don’t identify greed,
we will destroy the earth.
GIC contends that UNDRIP provides indigenous people with the standing to declare and
buttress environmental self-determination, and GIC will work with tribal nations to meld our
traditional knowledge, accumulated through the ages, with contemporary scientific innovation
to develop mitigation strategies that will protect cultural identity. Within those parameters, GIC
has already drafted the basis of a climate change initiative that can be pursued and developed
by tribal nations within plains and tundra environments.