The Lummi Nation, one of the same group of Northwest Treaty Tribes, has taken action to block the establishment of a coal shipment terminal and train railway near its treaty-protected sacred area Xwc’chi’eXen. In addition to environmental protection, the Lummi reject the industrial capitalist values and colonial policies that ignore treaties for the sake of expanding carbon-intensive industries such as coal. The tribal chair, Tim Ballew, says: “We’re taking a united stand against corporate interests that interfere with our treaty-protected rights” (Connelly, 2015).
At the same time, Indigenous peoples are not always of the same mind on pipelines and extraction basins. Tribes such as the Navajo Nation, the Crow Nation, and the Three Affiliated Tribes have substantial investments in coal, gas, and oil. Yet, in each of these cases, the United States had used political and economic pressure to reengineer the governments of each of these tribes to be dependent on extractive industries, often forcing them to make hard choices between having access to resources or being recognized as sovereign. Scholars such as Melanie Yazzie (2018) are retelling some of the histories of Indigenous persons who for decades were resisting these pressures on tribal governance. For example, John Redhouse had researched, going back many decades, how the Navajo Nation was trapped in a network of fossil fuel infrastructure that pressured them to become dependent on extraction. While some people interpret the conflicts regarding fossil fuels between tribes to prove that tribes are advocates of extraction, that is too simple an interpretation. Tribal governments that advocate for extraction must be put into historical context.
In all these cases, the advocacy movements themselves emphasize the denial of consent as a critical reason why Indigenous peoples are facing the infrastructure of extractive industries in the first place. Or, in cases where tribes are co-opted by powers such as the U.S. government and corporations, the historical record clearly shows that these tribes were put in a position where they had to make hard choices that were not conducive to their self-determination.
Traditions of Consent
There is an irony when we reflect on how the United States has failed to value and respect Indigenous consent in situations such as those facing the Akwesasne Mohawks or the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe. The irony is that many Indigenous peoples’ own traditional philosophies for how to organize their societies place great emphasis on the importance of consent. These philosophies translate into how Indigenous peoples understood the best ways to engage in diplomacy with other societies. Consent also mattered to Indigenous peoples in their interactions with the nonhuman world and featured prominently in traditions of how humans should interact with plants, animals, entities and flows (such as water and wind), and particular landscapes. Consider some examples of these Indigenous philosophies that privilege consent in their very understanding of how to organize a society.
Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe peoples are well known for traditions of treaty making that prioritized the idea that all parties to the agreement should be able to consent or dissent. The Haudenosaunee Kaswentha refers to a philosophy that political agreements between two parties are like two vessels navigating parallel running rivers in a shared ecosystem. In the agreement, each party should maintain its independence and way of life, yet both parties should find beneficial ways to cooperate. In this way of thinking of political agreement, the core of treaty making is respect for each party’s independence, or consent. Haudenosaunee people today continue to use the Kaswentha philosophy as the basis for environmental protection and justice. For example, the Akwesasne Task Force has created protocols for how environmental scientists from outside the tribe can collaborate with the tribe in ways that respect each other’s mutual independence and consent (Hill, 2008; Ransom & Ettenger, 2001).
The Dish with One Spoon refers to another treaty-making tradition that connects the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples. In one interpretation, the philosophy is that both parties live in a common bowl or dish (ecosystem) and have just one spoon to share together in order to eat from the dish. Every time someone seeks to take from the ecosystem in order to satisfy their survival and sustenance, they have to think about the implications for the other party who shares the same dish and spoon. In this way, parties in the agreement have to respect each other’s consent to the actions they take because of how they impact one another. The Dish with One Spoon philosophy is being used today in one of the peoples' ancestral homelands, in what is currently Toronto, Ontario, Canada. When I travel there, I witness how a lot of Indigenous persons are making it apparent that the territory can be called “the Dish,” which is intended to show the settler population the importance of working to protect the environment and taking responsibility for the dispossession of Indigenous lands, languages, and sovereignty in the region (King, 2015; Simpson, 2008).
Within particular Indigenous peoples, consensus is also privileged as a best practice for how to organize a society. The Haudenosaunee people actually made major political decisions through local leaders coming to a consensus about the wisest action. The goal of making decisions by consensus was to ensure that local leaders actually had a dialogue and learned from each other before deciding what to do. Those who ultimately did not consent to the decision that the majority made were not bound by it, yet they were nonetheless supported in their decision making (Ransom & Ettenger, 2001). In the Navajo Nation, local leaders were selected by informal consensus. Robert Yazzie (1996–1997) writes that this ensures “everyone can have their say, and when someone is out of line, they get a ‘talking to' by a naat’aanii [peacemaker/mediator]” (p. 122). Yazzie describes this process “as a circle, where everyone (including a naat’aanii) is an equal. No person is above the other. In this ‘horizontal' system, decisions and plans are made through consensus” (p. 122). Similar to the Haudenosaunee consensus process, the Navajo process encourages discussion (long, when needed), the sharing of perspectives, and in-depth learning about the nature of the problem being looked at (p. 122).
Indigenous justice traditions are also consensual in nature. Yazzie describes the Navajo restorative justice process:
For example, to Navajos, the thought that one person has the power to tell another person what to do is alien. The Navajo legal maxim is “it’s up to him,” [sic] meaning that every person is responsible for his or her own actions, and not those of another. As another example, Navajos do not believe in coercion. Coercion is an undeniable aspect of a vertical justice system. However, because coercion tends to be authoritarian, it is thus alien to the Navajo egalitarian system…. It is illustrated as a circle where everyone is equal. (p. 120)
For the Lakota, James Zion (2005) writes that the justice system involves the relatives of the people who are affected by the wrongdoing: “They use a talking-out process among relatives to reach a practical consensus about what to do about a problem. They use ceremony and prayer to bond people to the process and to involve the spirits both in forming the path to a solution and in making the decision binding” (p. 70).
Consent also plays a role in some Indigenous cultural and intellectual traditions in terms of consenting to environmental expertise and leadership. Coash Salish societies, for example, are well known for their giveaway traditions. Ronald Trosper (2002) discuss this in his work. In the case of salmon stewardship, leaders of houses had to go through educational processes, widely understood by society, that would give them the basis for expertise in managing salmon habitats. Given that the ecosystems were interconnected, a giveaway ceremony meant that a titleholder in a house had to show to others that they had done a good job harvesting. If one’s harvest that one gave away was inadequate or inappropriate for some reason, then one’s position as a title holder could be challenged. Title holders, who played roles as both leaders and experts, were accountable to the consent of those who were affected by their decisions (Trosper, 2002).
Indigenous