All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life

All Our Relations: Native Struggles for Land and Life, Winona Laduke, South End Press, 1999

One hundred and fifty years ago, Native Americans fought land-hungry settlers to keep their territory and their way of life. Today, they are fighting major corporations who want their land for timber, mining or waste storage. This book chronicles some of those present-day struggles.

In northern New York, the Akwesasne Mohawk reservation is next door to a General Motors motor train plant (and Superfund site) containing over 800,000 cubic yards of material contaminated with PCBs and downstream from some of the most extensive pollution on the continent, in and around the Great Lakes. In northern Quebec, the Innu and Cree peoples are fighting hunting restrictions in their traditional lands, the James Bay dam projects that would flood huge pieces of land and low-level flights from NATO planes, all courtesy of the Canadian Government. They also face a proposed mine that would create 71 million tons of waste rock for 150 million tons of nickel, cobalt and copper.

The Northern Cheyenne reservation sits on top of some very rich and very high quality coal. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has leased much, or all, of that land to multinational coal companies at bargain basement prices without even telling the Cheyenne, let alone consulting them. The US Government would like to make Yucca Mountain, inside the Western Shoshone reservation, into a permanent nuclear waste storage facility. There is also the story of diversion of water, loss of topsoil and near extermination of the buffalo, all the way from Canada to mexico. The people of Hawai'i also have to deal with the militarization of their land (along with the entire Pacific), and a tourist population that is six times greater than the number of actual residents.

This is a half-Native American and half-environmental book that works on both levels. It shows that Native struggles to keep control of their land still go on today. It's very interesting, and well worth reading.