Tag Archives: activism

Avi Kwa Ame National Monument and the Ward Valley Archive

Posted in Environmental justice, Research & writing by

Today President Biden signed the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument into law, which protects over 500,000 acres of land in Southern Nevada. The National Monument is named after and extends protections around the adjacent mountain – called Avi Kwa Ame in the Mojave language and Spirit Mountain in English. Beyond the protections that the national monument designation grants to plants and wildlife, the mountain and the lands around it are a site of great cultural significance: they are the creation site for the Fort Mojave, Cocopah, Quechan‌‌ and other regional tribes. For the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, the soul originates at Avi Kwa Ame and eventually reaches the end of its journey 40 miles south down the Colorado River. The mountain and surrounding landscape is also sacred to other tribes in southwest that regularly traveled through the area.

Today’s national monument designation extends preservation work already done in the area. One of these is the long fight against a low-level nuclear waste landfill once proposed to be built in Ward Valley, part of the Mojave Desert just south of the new national monument. The Fort Mojave, Chemehuevi, Cocopah, Quechan and Colorado River Indian Tribes and their allies in the anti-nuclear, anti-toxics and environmental justice movements successfully fought off the construction of this landfill between the late 1980s and the early 2000s. The landfill threatened the endangered desert tortoise, had the potential to contaminate the Colorado River (which supplies drinking water to millions), and would have desecrated the landscape over which the Mojave soul travels. The fight was long, and involved community organizing, lawsuits, spiritual practices, international solidarity work and direct action. Perhaps the most dramatic of these tactics was a 113-day occupation of the federally owned land where the landfill was to be built.

The people who won the Ward Valley battle have hosted annual ceremonies to commemorate the land occupation that was part of their winning strategy, practice cultural rites, and pass on the story of their victory to the next generation. Their 25th anniversary ceremonies last month brought people from near and far together, and was a wonderful opportunity to publicly launch the Ward Valley Archive, which hosts over 1300 (and counting!) digitized campaign documents from privately held activists files. The Fort Mojave Tribe also printed an abbreviated campaign timeline for display, and distributed the digitized archival files to leaders from the other four core tribes involved in the campaign.

When we accomplish great things, it’s common to say that we “stand on the shoulder’s of giants.” Today’s creation of the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument stands on the shoulders of tireless activists like those who dedicated their lives to protecting the land at Ward Valley, and in doing so arduously built public understanding for Native American life and claims to the land.

For more on the Ward Valley campaign, see the links page at the Ward Valley Archive, and listen to this interview with former Fort Mojave Tribal Chair Nora McDowell here.

My book is coming out soon!

Posted in Climate change, Environmental justice, Research & writing, University life by

The book that I’ve been working on in one form or another for a long, long time is coming out soon! Evolution of a Movement: Four Decades of California Environmental Justice Activism will be published by the University of California Press in January. Here’s the blurb that will go on the back:

Despite living in one of the country’s most environmentally progressive states, California environmental justice activists have spent decades fighting for clean air to breathe, clean water to drink, and safe, healthy communities in which to live and work. Evolution of a Movement tells their story – from the often-raucous protests of the 1980s and 1990s to activists’ growing presence inside the halls of the state capitol in the 2000s and 2010s. Perkins offers a new lens for understanding environmental justice activism in California, tracing how shifting political contexts combined with activists’ own efforts to institutionalize their work within nonprofits and state structures.

Drawing on case studies and 125 interviews with activists from Sacramento to the California-Mexico border, Perkins explores the successes and failures of the environmental justice movement in California. She shows why some activists have moved away from the disruptive “outsider” political tactics common in the movement’s early days to embrace traditional political channels of policy advocacy, electoral politics and working from within the state’s political system to enact change. But while some see these changes as a sign of the growing sophistication of the environmental justice movement, others critique their potential to blunt grassroots power. At a time when environmental justice scholars and activists face pressing questions about the best route for enacting meaningful change, this book provides insight into the strengths and limitations of social movement institutionalization.

The book is available for pre-order now, and could be assigned for mid-semester or end-of-semester reading in the spring of 2022. See the beautiful cover below!