Tag Archives: Environmental justice

Avi Kwa Ame National Monument and the Ward Valley Archive

Posted in Environmental justice, Participation, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Photography, 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 an adjacent mountain called Avi Kwa Ame in the Mojave* language (Spirit Mountain in English). The national monument designation protects the plants and wildlife of the area; it also protects Native American culture.

Avi Kwa Me mountain and the lands that surround it have profound spiritual and cultural significance in the cultures of many local peoples, including the Fort Mojave, Cocopah, Chemehevi, Quechan‌‌ and the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT). The mountain and surrounding landscape is also sacred to other southwestern tribes that regularly traveled through the area.

The creation of the new national monument extends preservation work already done in the area. One such effort is the ongoing environmental remediation of the ground water underneath the Topock site. PG&E contaminated the groundwater there in the 1950s and 1960s by dumping hexavalent chromium. Later, the decontamination process threatened to further disrupt the Topock site, about two thirds of which had already been destroyed since the 1880s. The Fort Mojave and other tribes are engaged in a lengthy oversight process to facilitate environmental remediation of the groundwater with as little disruption to the site as possible.

Another related campaign is the long fight against a low-level nuclear waste landfill once proposed for Ward Valley, which is in 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 other tribes and 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 proposed nuclear waste landfill threatened the endangered and sacred desert tortoise, had the potential to contaminate the Colorado River (which supplies drinking water to millions), and would have desecrated a landscape used for food, medicine, song and spirituality. 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 tribal-led occupation of the federally owned land where the landfill was to be built. Some activists occupied the site even longer, living there in tents for years.

The people who won the Ward Valley battle have hosted annual ceremonies to commemorate the land occupation that was part of their winning strategy, to practice spiritual rites, and to pass on the story of their victory to the next generation. Their 25th anniversary ceremonies last month brought people from near and far together again at the site in the desert where, thanks to their efforts, there is no a hazardous waste landfill. It was a wonderful opportunity to publicly launch the Ward Valley Archive, which hosts over 1300 (and counting!) digitized campaign documents from privately held activist 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 want to honor those who came before us, it’s common to say that we “stand on the shoulders of giants.” Today’s creation of the Avi Kwa Ame National Monument indeed stands on the shoulders of giants – 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, listen to this interview with former Fort Mojave Tribal Chair Nora McDowell, or look at some of the photos below.

* The Mojave people of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe spell their name with a ‘j.’ The Mohave people of the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT) spell their name with an ‘h.’ To make the above text easy to read, I have used the j spelling here when referencing either the language or the people. Either term is an anglicized version of the name they call themselves: Pipa Aha Macav, or in English, The People by the River.

Photos from the 25th Anniversary Ceremonies of the Ward Valley Occupation

Ward Valley, CA. February 18th, 2023. Photograph by Tracy Perkins.

At the 25th anniversary of the end of the Ward Valley occupation. February 18th, 2023. Photograph by Tracy Perkins.

Dancing. February 18th, 2023. Photograph by Tracy Perkins.

An abbreviated campaign timeline. February 18th, 2023. Photograph by Tracy Perkins.

Digitized archival files prepped and ready to share. February 16th, 2023. Photograph by Tracy Perkins.

Links roundup: Recent book-related writing, speaking and publishing

Posted in Environmental justice, Research & writing by

I’ve had some nice opportunities to share thoughts about my book, or content related to it, in the last few months. Please see below for an essay, a radio interview, and a book excerpt.

Video: Discussing my book with Laura Pulido

Last Friday I had the distinct pleasure of discussing my recently published book, Evolution of a Movement: Four Decades of California Environmental Justice Activism, with scholar Laura Pulido. It was a wonderful way to launch the book into the world. You can watch the complete recording above. It clocks in at just under an hour and a half (introductions, then a reading, then discussion with Dr. Pulido, then discussion in response to audience questions).

The event took place at ASU, with Dr. Pulido zooming in from the University of Oregon and Michael McQuarrie serving as moderator. Together with my home unit, the School of Social Transformation, the event was co-sponsored by the T. Denny Sanford School of Social and Family Dynamics, the School of Transborder Studies, the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, Rob and Melani Walton Sustainability Solutions Service, and the Center for Work and Democracy. Thank you to everyone who made the event possible.

Today’s the day!

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

My book is officially published today! I’ve received my hardcover and paperback copies from UC Press, two friends have texted me pictures of their copies, and my mom forwarded me an e-mail saying that her copy has been delayed until April 15th. It’s been a long process to get here, and I look forward to seeing the work move out into the world.

I’ve given a few talks on it so far. Last fall, I presented the chapter on California’s climate policy AB 32 at the new University of California Center for Climate Justice run by Tracey Osborne. In February, I got to discuss the book with Martha Matusoka, Michael Méndez, Danielle Purifoy and Jonathan London at the American Association of Geographers’ annual meeting. Next week, I’ll zoom into Michelle Glowa’s graduate seminar on research methods at the California Institute of Integral Studies. My undergraduate students in Environment and Justice here at Arizona State University are also reading it now. I’ve enjoyed these opportunities and hope to have more of them. I’m even more interested know where the book may travel to without me. I hope I’ll get messages in a bottle from unexpected places with signs that the book has been there.

Perkins, Tracy. 2022. Evolution of a Movement: Four Decades of California Environmental Justice Activism. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.

Book forum at AAG annual meeting

Posted in Climate change, Environmental justice, Public speaking, Research & writing by

If you are attending the 2022 annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers this weekend, please come by the session on my new book! I’ll be discussing it with a stellar group of environmental justice activist-scholars. The book comes out in a month, so consider it a sneak preview.

Book Forum – Evolution of a Movement: Four Decades of California Environmental Justice Activism

Sunday, Feb. 27th, from 2-:20 pm, Eastern Standard Time.

Chair/moderator: Martha Matusoka

Author: Tracy Perkins

Panelists:

For a 30% discount, order the book at UC Press. Use source code 21W2240 at checkout.

The Ward Valley Nuclear Waste Dump That Never Was

Posted in Environmental justice, Research & writing by

Last weekend I attended the 24th annual commemoration ceremonies of the successful anti-nuclear waste dump campaign in the Mojave Desert’s Ward Valley. This was my fourth time in attendance, and it was beautiful as always. When UC Press asked me to write a blog post linked to my forthcoming book this week, I jumped at the chance to write about Ward Valley:

Today, there is no nuclear waste dump in Ward Valley. This beautiful stretch of California’s Mojave Desert, about 25 miles west of the Colorado River, is instead home to plants, animals, and much of the culture and spirituality of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe and other tribes of the Southern Colorado River, including the Chemehuevi, the Colorado River Indian Tribes (CRIT), the Cocopah and the Quechan. Yet at one point, this land had another likely future — as the location for a shallow, unlined trench to store nuclear waste…

To read the rest, head over to the UC Press blog.

Group photo at the annual Ward Valley commemoration ceremony. February 24, 2018.

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!

New publication on California environmental justice movement history

Posted in Environmental justice, Research & writing by

I had a new publication come out this week on a subject close to my heart, California environmental justice history. The article is titled “The multiple people of color origins of the US environmental justice movement: social movement spillover and regional racial projects in California.” It explores the origins of the national US environmental justice movement through California’s early activism. The article showcases the many, regionally specific strands of activism among racialized groups that informed the California environmental justice movement. It presents social movement geneologies of Black, Indigenous, Asian American and Latinx activists in California, with particular attention to the role of the farmworkers’ movement through the United Farmworkers of America (UFW).

Like many academic articles, this one was a long time in coming. The idea for it started when I was doing research on environmental justice activism in California’s San Joaquin Valley during my time as a master’s student at UC Davis (2006-2008). I saw how present the farmworkers’ movement was in environmental justice gatherings, at which people often sang UFW protest songs, carried UFW flags, referenced UFW leaders Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, and drew on the skills of the many people in the region who had been part of the farmworkers’ movement in its heyday. These experiences informed my master’s thesis and subsequent article on what leads women into environmental justice activism, “Women’s Pathways Into Activism: Rethinking the Women’s Environmental Justice Narrative in California’s San Joaquin Valley.” They also later led to an essay titled “The Environmental Justice Legacy of the United Farm Workers of America: Stories from the Birthplace of Industrial Agriculture.” I expanded on these themes in the first chapter of my book manuscript after graduating with my PhD. However, I eventually cut the chapter from the book manuscript, as it was making a different argument than the rest of the book, which is on the political evolution of the California environmental justice movement (forthcoming with UC Press in February of 2021). Also, as the chapter kept getting longer and longer, it was clear it just wouldn’t fit. The discarded content found new life at the “Bridging the Gap: Race and the Environment” mini-conference preceding the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) 2018 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia. The mini conference was organized by the Committee on Racial Equity within the ASA section on Environmental Sociology as part of broader efforts to address racism within the section. The article has now been published in “online first” format prior to the completion of a special issue stemming from the mini-conference. Thank you to everyone who helped put on the conference and who are now shepherding the special issue through to completion, especially my assigned guest-editor, Jennifer Carrera.

Thank you also to all the environmental justice activists who have let me interview them over the years. Getting to hear about your lives is one of the highlights of my job. This article names some environmental justice activists, but others remain anonymous. This is because some of the interview excerpts already exist in the public sphere with their names attached (anonymous interviews conducted by myself for which I subsequently got permission to use real names, or interview excerpts published by others), while others do not. California activists who are named include: Maricela Mares Alatorre, Robin Cannon, Pam Tau Lee, Marta Salinas, and Lupe Martinez. A paper this short can’t provide a comprehensive history of California environmental justice history and all of the activists who were part of it. Rather, I use a few individual activists’ experiences to present themes relevant to the broader movement. It’s a fascinating history – I’m thinking about making it the subject of my next book, where I can give it the fuller treatment that it deserves.

The article is behind a paywall, but free downloads are being provided by the publisher to the first 50 people who access it at this link.

The multiple people of color origins of the US environmental justice movement: social movement spillover and regional racial projects in California

Abstract

This paper contributes to scholarship on the origins of the US environmental justice movement (EJM) through exploration of the early EJM in California. The national EJM is often seen as having grown out of the intersection of environmentalism and the Black civil rights movement in the 1982 protests in Warren County, North Carolina. This paper adds weight to alternate narratives that depict the EJM as drawing on a variety of racialized social movement infrastructures that vary regionally. These infrastructures, as they were built in California, are analyzed as regional racial projects responding to histories of white supremacy that are connected through social movement spillover. This conceptual framework illuminates the place-based ways in which racial oppression and racial justice responses create social movement infrastructure that persists across multiple movement formations, both across contemporary groups and through time. The paper draws on data gathered from existing case studies and oral histories, in-depth interviews, participant observation, and archival documents to offer a capacious view of the EJM’s origins.

Gustavo Aguirre was first involved in the farmworkers’ movement through the United Farmworkers of America (UFW), and later joined the environmental justice movement. Here he shows a letter from UFW leader Cesar Chavez. The flags of the UFW and CRPE, an environmental justice organization, hang above his desk. Photo by Tracy Perkins, 2010.

Nora McDowell speaking about women’s environmental leadership at the Smithsonian Castle

Posted in Environmental justice, Gender, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Public speaking, University life by

This spring I was honored to host Nora McDowell as the inaugural speaker at the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum’s first “Dinner and Discussion” series, which is part of their Women’s Environmental Leadership programming.

I met Nora through my research on California environmental justice activism, and in particular through a project to document the 1990s-era fight against the construction of a nuclear waste landfill in the Mojave Desert’s Ward Valley, on the traditional lands of the Mojave people. Nora grew up in Needles, California and currently lives on the Fort Mojave reservation in Mojave Valley, Arizona. She was elected as chairperson of the Fort Mojave Tribe at age 24, a position she held from 1985 to 2007. During that time she helped lead a decade-long campaign to block the construction of a nuclear waste landfill in the Mojave Desert’s Ward Valley nearby. Additionally, she was part of forming the Ten Tribes partnership to represent Colorado River tribal water rights to the Colorado River Water Users Authority. She also started the water and sewer company as well as the electrical company owned and operated by the Fort Mojave Tribe.

Now, Nora is the Project Manager of the Topock remediation project at the AhaMakav Cultural Society of the Fort Mojave Tribe. Topock is the name of the place that is the passageway to the spirit world for the Mojave people. PG&E built a natural gas compression station there in 1950, which leaked chromium six into the groundwater for over 40 years. Nora focuses much of her time on the cleanup of this site, and in particular trying to minimize the impact on the remediation process on Mojave landforms and artifacts. She also serves in an advisory capacity in a number of other settings, including on the Tribal Advisory Committee to the California EPA. She also serves on the Colorado River Basin-wide tribal advisory board, which advises a consortium of federal agencies, tribes and NGOs active on the Colorado River. She is also on the Fort Mojave telecommunications board and is a founding board member of WEWIN – Women Empowering Women for Indian Nations.

The Anacostia Museum hosted the evening in the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall. It was an intimate event. I asked Nora questions about her leadership experiences in front of 40 or so attendees, and then we all discussed the themes she raised and shared a meal together. You can find the audio recording below, as well as photos taken by Susana Raab. Audio, photographs and captions are provided by the Smithsonian Anacostia Community Museum.

The next “Dinner and Discussion” event will take place in September, this time featuring Dr. Adrienne Hollis, hosted by Vernice Miller-Travis.

 

Tracy Perkins and Nora McDowell Thumbnail

Dr. Tracy Perkins (left) and Ms. Nora McDowell (right).

Ms. Katrina Lashley Introduces Special Guests Thumbnail

Ms. Katrina Lashley introduces Dr. Tracy Perkins and Ms. Nora McDowell.

Nora McDowell and Alexis Dickerson Thumbnail

Ms. Alexis Dickerson and Ms. Nora McDowell.

Tracy, Nora, Lisa, Katrina

Dr. Tracy Perkins, Ms. Nora McDowell, Ms. Lisa Sasaki, and Ms. Katrina Lashley.

Dr. Elgloria Harrison Thumbnail

Dr. Elgloria Harrison thanks special guests.

 

New(ish) journal article on public engagement in the environmental humanities

Posted in Environmental justice, public sociology & campus-community collaboration, Tech support by

2018 zoomed by without me stopping to share a co-authored journal article to which I contributed on public engagement in the environmental humanities. Without further ado, here it is!

The article describes our varied experiences doing publically engaged work in the environmental humanities and nearby disciplines. My contribution focuses on the practicalities of producing scholarship on independently built, multi-media websites. I enjoyed the opportunity to give a shout-out to my tech-mentor Allen Gun and the other good people at Aspiration.

The article takes a question and answer format in which Julie Sze poses questions and the rest of us answer them. We wrote the first draft together in one sitting (via Skype’s chat feature, if I remember correctly). Basically, we all logged on remotely, Julie wrote questions, and we all typed in our answers simultaneously. Sometimes we would see each other’s responses and then respond to them in our responses as well. At the end of the extended “chat,” Julie pulled the conversation into a word-processing document and that became our first draft. We edited to flesh out ideas from there. One drawback is that because we were writing simultaneously our answers in the finished piece don’t engage with each other as much as they might. Nonetheless, it was a fun way to quickly get a lot of content down to work from. I’ve continued to experiment with simultaneous writing since. This semester I am working on a co-authored piece with three Howard undergraduates who took my Sociology of Food and Agriculture class last semester. We are regularly meeting to have co-writing sessions in which we simultaneously contribute to our draft on Google Docs. We first built a general outline and then each selected sub-sections to work on. So far, it has been working well.

Enjoy the article!