The Center for Environmental Futures and the University of Oregon are located on Kalapuya Ilihi, the traditional Indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people. Following treaties signed between 1851 and 1855, the U.S. government dispossessed Kalapuyas of their sacred homelands and forcibly removed them. We recognized that those treaties did not cede the lands that UO now occupies. Today, Kalapuya descendants continue to contribute to their communities, UO, Oregon, and the world as citizens of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. We acknowledge the genocide inflicted by settler colonialism and the ongoing injustices against Kalapuyas. We now hope to disrupt that legacy, beginning with environmental justice and honest storytelling about this place. CEF also extends our respect to the nine federally recognized Indigenous nations of Oregon: the Burns Paiute Tribe; the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua and Siuslaw Indians; the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde; the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians; the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation; the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs; the Coquille Indian Tribe; the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians; and the Klamath Tribes. Finally, we express our respect for the numerous Indigenous peoples who are not formally recognized and yet have ancestral homelands in Oregon and continued connections to their lands, including the Celilo-Wyam Indian Community, the Clatsop-Nehalem Confederated Tribes, and the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce).

As scholars and people concerned about the environment, we recognize the role of white supremacy and racial violence in structuring how certain bodies interact with the environment. The recent high profile events involving Black Americans—the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, the murder of Ahmaud Arbery by white vigilantes in South Georgia, Amy Cooper’s threats against Christian Cooper in Central Park—along with the countless other examples, demonstrate that Black Americans and other people of color do not have the same environmental freedoms that whites enjoy. We implore everyone in our CEF community to use your positions to help others (and yourselves) understand the role of white supremacy in producing and reinforcing environmental injustices and the ways Blacks and other communities of color have resisted and continue to resist this oppression. For those who teach, incorporating diverse authors in your syllabi and listening to scholars of color tell these stories is a great way to start. But all of us in the environmental community can benefit from their voices. We suggest the following readings as a starting point:

• Lindsey Dillon and Julie Sze, “Police Power and Particulate Matters: Environmental Justice and the Spatialities of In/Securities in U.S. Cities,” (English Language Notes 52 2016): 13-23.
• Carolyn Finney, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors (University of North Carolina Press, 2014).
• David Pellow, What Is Critical Environmental Justice? (Polity Press, 2018), and “Toward a Critical Environmental Justice Studies: Black Lives Matter as an Environmental Justice Challenge,” Du Bois Review 13 (2016): 221-236.
• Brandi Summers’ op-ed in the New York Times, “What Black America Knows about Quarantine”
• Natalia Mehlman Petrzela’s op-ed in the New York Times, “Jogging Has Always Excluded Black People”

Please remember, it is okay to feel uncomfortable as we engage in conversations about white supremacy. It is not okay to stand still and do nothing. Please continue to share resources and educate one another. Dismantling white supremacy as the founding structure of our nation will take fundamental, decolonizing change. We believe there are enough people on the right side of justice to make it happen. It all starts with each one of us deciding to disrupt the status quo within our own respective spheres of influence. Now, let’s get to work!

Authored by Aimee Okotie-Oyekan. Inspired by the words of Jill Lindsey Harrison. For more on CEF’s stance on racial and social justice visit us on Twitter (@UO_CEF) and Instagram (@cefuoregon).