The storyplot of Native peoples’ resistance to environmental injustice and land incursions, and a call for environmentalists to learn from the Indigenous community’s rich history of activism

Through the initial lens of “Indigenized environmental justice,” Indigenous researcher and activist Dina Gilio-Whitaker explores the fraught history of treaty violations, challenges for food and water security, and protection of sacred sites, while highlighting the key leadership of Indigenous women in this centuries-long struggle. SO LONG AS Grass Grows provides readers an available background of Indigenous level of resistance to federal government and commercial incursions on their lands and offers new methods to environmental justice activism and policy.

Throughout 2016, the Standing Rock protest put a national spotlight on Indigenous activists, but it also underscored how little Americans find out about the longtime historical tensions between Native peoples and the mainstream environmental movement. Ultimately, she argues, contemporary environmentalists must turn to the history of Indigenous resistance for intelligence and inspiration inside our common battle for a simply and sustainable upcoming.