The Charity
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Women's Earth Alliance
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Linking and empowering women environmental leaders around the globe.
Bring Light Activity
9 Donors
2 Projects since June, 2007
1 Active Project since September, 2007
Charity Info
Based in: San Francisco, California
Year founded: 2006
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Project Info
Sacred Places in Peril
The vast landscapes of the U.S. Southwest have long been subject to environmental degradation resulting from energy development, waste dumping, timber harvesting, urban sprawl, and industrial agriculture. As is the case throughout the world, Native communities, traditionally reliant upon the earth for their livelihoods and communal longevity, suffer most directly from these ecological desecrations. What’s more, federal and state laws often assist polluters in locating their facilities on tribal lands, since the legal regimes applicable to Native Americans and their homelands are convoluted, inconsistent, and often based in economic opportunism.
Throughout the United States, Native American environmental activists use a powerful array of tools and strategies to halt environmentally-destructive practices, develop sustainable resource use patterns that support Native communities and economies, and build alliances between Native and non-Native environmental and human rights advocates. Though the applicable legal and political systems often support polluters, these creative and dedicated activists continue to successfully defend the environment. Women consistently serve as powerful leaders in this work.
Our Journey
The June 2008 Transformative Advocacy delegation to the Southwest will convene international women environmental attorneys with Native American women working for environmental justice and sustainability in their communities. For ten days, our delegation will travel through the Southwest to meet with Native women environmental leaders, learn about the environmental challenges at stake and the legal structures applicable to Native lands and communities, and witness the profound parallels between the Native American environmental justice movement and the worldwide movement to preserve and defend environmental human rights. Through conscious dialogue and experiential learning, the participants in this journey will join a living, growing global network of women working on behalf of the Mother Earth and her people.
The international attorney delegates will participate actively in learning and alliance-building at every step of the process. Prior to the trip, they will gain an understanding of the multifaceted Southwestern landscape – legal and political, natural and cultural – through informative readings and conference calls with environmental justice attorneys and community leaders. During the journey itself, the delegates will utilize tools of mindful listening and strategic questioning in conversation with Native activists. In so doing, the delegates will gain a deep understanding of the issues at stake in a manner that is respectful of the activists’ time and expertise, while drawing from their own wealth of experiences to generate a useful and productive dialogue.
Our Transformative Advocacy
Following the June 2008 journey, the delegates will collaboratively develop a report, sharing information about the environmental degradation they witnessed, as well as the strategies and best practices of Native activists working to promote environmental and economic justice. The report will also contain the delegates’ reflections on the linkages between the Native environmental movement and environmental justice movements elsewhere in the world. Finally, delegates will recommend further policy action based, as appropriate, on an informal comparison of U.S. legal and political structures to those in their home countries. This document, translated from English and distributed electronically, can serve as a powerful tool for educating and building community among environmental activists worldwide.
Against a backdrop of immense worldwide demand for resources, with an ever-increasing environmental and human cost that so often burdens native people the most, it is imperative that the changemakers working on these entrenched issues be inspired and supported. There is no better way to offer such nurturance than through face-to-face and heart-to-heart connection; such connection is inspiring, educating, and indeed transformative. Women’s Earth Alliance’s Transformative Advocacy delegation to the Southwest will be an unprecedented opportunity for that unique connective experience to occur, so that each participant can return to her own work revitalized and inspired.
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