Promoting Ethical and Just Environmental Policy in Native America Discussed in Environmental Justice

Jan. 10, 2012 - PRLog -- New Rochelle, NY—How best to ensure environmental justice for Native Americans in terms of policy, governance, and activism on tribal lands? The broad range of issues, challenges, and possibilities are explored in an insightful and thought-provoking special issue of Environmental Justice entitled “Environmental Justice in Native America.” Environmental Justice is a peer-reviewed journal published by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. The entire issue is available online at http://www.liebertpub.com/env

This collection of timely and provocative articles draws from extensive research on the legal, ethical, political, and cultural issues related to tribal governance and independence, preservation of traditions and cultural identity, modern environmental policy, and historical precedent. Written by authors with diverse training and specialties, the articles present a spectrum of concerns and views and serve as a foundation and stimulus for further research and debate.

“Together, each of the contributions to [this special issue] open discussion of environmental justice issues in Indian Country to larger discussions of environmental justice in relation to indigenous peoples and nations around the world,” writes Guest Editor Kyle Powys Whyte, PhD, Assistant Professor, Department of Philosophy, Michigan State University, East Lansing, in his editorial introducing the issue “Environmental Justice in Native America.”

Articles in this special issue of Environmental Justice include:
Self-Determining Environmental Justice for Native America
Tribal Environmental Justice: Vulnerability, Trusteeship, and Equity under NEPA
The Recognition Dimensions of Environmental Justice in Indian Country
Radical Adaptation, Justice, and American Indian Nations
Medicine Food: Critical Environmental Justice Studies, Native North American Literature, and the Movement for Food Sovereignty
Environmental Justice, American Indians and the Cultural Dilemma: Developing Environmental Management for Tribal Health and Well-Being
A Method for Tribal Environmental Justice Analysis

“Dr. Whyte has assembled an important and impressive array of essays that address the dilemmas of environmental and ecological inequities and their concomitant problems of health, economic, and political disenfranchisement in Native American and indigenous communities,” says Sylvia Hood Washington, PhD, MSE, MPH, Editor-in-Chief of Environmental Justice, President and Chief Scientist of Environmental Health Research Associates, LLC, and  Adjunct Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.

Environmental Justice is an authoritative peer-reviewed journal published bimonthly in print and online. The Journal encompasses study and debate on a broad range of environmental inequalities at the local, national, and global level tied to social, health, and economic equity. The Journal features studies that demonstrate the adverse effects on populations that are already at risk for health and environmental hazards, as well as the complicated issues inherent in remediation, funding, relocation of facilities that pose hazardous risk to health. Tables of contents and a free sample issue may be viewed online at http://www.liebertpub.com/env

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Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. is a privately held, fully integrated media company known for establishing authoritative peer-reviewed journals in many promising areas of science, medicine, biomedical research, and law, including Sustainability: The Journal of Record, Environmental Engineering Science, and Ecopsychology. Its biotechnology trade magazine, Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (GEN), was the first in its field and is today the industry’s most widely read publication worldwide. A complete list of the firm’s 70 journals, books, and newsmagazines is available at http://www.liebertpub.com