Special Issue: Indigenous Peoples and Environmental Justice

Indigenous peoples have long sustained profound, reciprocal relationships with their lands and waters—relationships grounded in care, responsibility, and respect. These connections are not symbolic; they are vital systems that uphold ecological balance and human survival. For millennia, Indigenous knowledge has guided practices of stewardship that ensure the flourishing of ecosystems and communities alike. These lifeways embody principles of reciprocity and accountability that modern environmental frameworks often fail to recognize.^1,2

Yet today, these relationships face relentless assault. Extractive industries strip the earth for profit, militarization reshapes landscapes into zones of occupation, and climate change accelerates ecological collapse. Layered upon these crises are enduring colonial legacies that continue to dispossess and oppress Indigenous communities, severing ties to ancestral lands and undermining cultural sovereignty. This is not only a social injustice—it is an ecological catastrophe. When Indigenous peoples are displaced, their local lands and waters lose their most knowledgeable and committed caretakers. ³

The historical and ongoing displacement, dismemberment, and oppression of Indigenous peoples have left the Earth deeply wounded. ⁴ The erasure of Indigenous science and knowledge systems from environmental and conservation frameworks has created a vacuum—one filled by capitalist greed, destruction, and exploitation of both people and land. Where Indigenous stewardship once ensured balance, extractive economies now impose cycles of harm and depletion. These systems prioritize short-term gain over intergenerational responsibility, perpetuating a worldview that treats land and water as commodities rather than kin.

This special issue intentionally centers Indigenous voices, knowledge systems, and science. As Smith, L. T. (1999) ⁵ emphasizes, Indigenous research must be rooted in self-determination and decolonization. Indigenous science rooted in generations of observation, practice, and ceremonial stewardship offers relational frameworks that unify the health of land, communities, and all living beings. This special issue centers the sciences, lives, and even spiritual elements that make up important praxis when it comes to Indigenous peoples’ environmental protection efforts. With the aim to disrupt the manner in which these experiences are discarded, labeled superstition, or at best, pseudo or outdated knowledge.^6,7 In The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World, ⁸ Robin Wall Kimmerer demonstrates how reciprocity and mutual flourishing are not mere ideals but ethical obligations guiding our relationship with the more-than-human world. These principles are the very foundation of environmental justice: they call for systems that repair harm, restore balance, and uphold the rights of both human and more-than-human communities, ensuring that justice is ecological, cultural, and intergenerational.

The articles in these pages span continents, histories, and strategies, reflecting the breadth and depth of Indigenous environmental leadership. We begin with African Ubuntu Humanness Ontology and Ecological Connection, which explores the philosophical and relational ethics that bind people and ecosystems. Wounds on this Turtle’s Back: On Feeling Extractivism and Felt Theories of Change offers deeply personal reflections on the embodied impacts of extractive industries. In Teaching Environmental Justice in U.S.-Occupied Hawai’i: Defamiliarizing the Impacts of Militarism and Tourism on Indigenous Landscapes, we see how militarism and tourism reshape and harm Indigenous places, and how education can serve as a tool for resistance and decolonization.

Legal and political analyses include Disavowing the Doctrine of Discovery: Indigenous Healing, Decolonization, and Implications for Environmental Justice in the Pacific Remote Islands Area and Indigenous Peoples Rights Discourse: Toward Hemispheric Indigenous Climate and Environmental Justice, both of which interrogate the colonial foundations of environmental law and chart pathways toward sovereignty and healing. Environmental Justice for Indigenous Peoples in the Constitutional Jurisprudence of Colombia and Ecuador offers critical insights into how Indigenous environmental justice is being contested and redefined within state frameworks.

Several contributions focus on transforming research and data practices. Disrupting Colonial Environmental Research and Teaching, Yarn by Yarn and It’s Time to Reclaim Our Lands and Data: Steps for Ethically Engaged Environmental Research with Indigenous Communities call for ethical, community-led approaches grounded in accountability and reciprocity. Finally, Thriving Through Adversity: Ancestral Wisdom and Environmental Justice affirms how ancestral knowledge sustains Indigenous peoples through environmental and social upheaval.

Taken together, these works do more than challenge dominant narratives about environmental justice they dismantle them. They reject tokenistic gestures and superficial inclusion, insisting instead on Indigenous-led approaches grounded in sovereignty, cultural integrity, and relational accountability. These contributions remind us, in the spirit of The Serviceberry, ⁹ that the future depends on relationships of mutual care where the gifts of the Earth are met with gratitude, responsibility, and the unwavering commitment to return those gifts in kind.

This call resonates powerfully with what unfolded at COP30 in Belém, Brazil, where Indigenous peoples achieved historic visibility, but it required a lot of advocacy and on-the-ground efforts during the convention. For the first time in COP history, more than 3,000 Indigenous delegates participated in negotiations, securing landmark commitments such as the Intergovernmental Land Tenure Commitment, a pledge to recognize Indigenous land rights over 160 million hectares of tropical forests by 2030. ¹⁰ Brazil alone committed to demarcating 63 million hectares of Indigenous territories, alongside decrees for Afro-descendant quilombos.

Despite these gains, negotiators failed to agree on a roadmap to phase out fossil fuels ¹¹ or reverse deforestation ¹² within the formal UN process, leaving implementation uncertain and reinforcing the urgency of grassroots action. This gap underscores a troubling reality: while pledges and declarations make headlines, they often lack binding enforcement mechanisms and timelines. Without concrete commitments to halt fossil fuel expansion, protect biodiversity, ¹³ and finance Indigenous-led climate solutions, the promises of COP30 risk becoming symbolic rather than transformative. The absence of a global consensus on fossil fuel phase-out despite overwhelming scientific evidence and mounting climate disasters reveals the persistent influence of extractive economies and political inertia. It is a stark reminder that systemic change will not come from negotiations alone; it must be driven by movements on the ground, by Indigenous leadership, and by a global shift toward accountability and justice. ¹⁴

As editors, we hope this collection moves readers beyond passive acknowledgment toward active engagement. We invite you to question the structures that define “justice” in environmental contexts, to confront the systems that normalize extraction and erasure, and to commit to genuine, sustained partnerships with Indigenous communities. These lessons are not abstract; they are urgent, actionable, and intergenerational. They point to ways of living and governing that honor our shared interdependence and ensure that both human and more-than-human worlds can thrive.

The time for listening is now. The time for acting is now. Let these pages be a catalyst for change, a call to repair, to restore, and to return to relationships that sustain life. For in the wisdom of Indigenous peoples lies not only the memory of balance but the blueprint for a future where abundance and justice are possible for all.