CLIMATE JUSTICE TEAM
WHO WE ARE
The Climate Justice Team centers frontline, BIPOC, and marginalized communities across all chapter activities, teams, and events.
Email us today to learn more! crbaclimatejustice@gmail.com
JOIN US AT OUR UPCOMING CLIMATE JUSTICE EVENTS:
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LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL AND CLIMATE JUSTICE
As members of the San Francisco Bay Shoreline Contamination Cleanup Coalition, we collaborate with Bay Area BIPOC-centered environmental justice campaigns.
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INDIGENOUS VOICES
We seek to uplift Indigenous voices and increase the Chapter membership’s understanding of and engagement on issues of Indigenous sovereignty, and how these issues are essential in our struggle for long-term solutions to end the global climate crisis.
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DIVERSITY, EQUITY, INCLUSION, & JUSTICE (DEI&J)
Our goal is to build capacity in the Chapter to understand and facilitate productive DEI&J conversations that keep climate justice and racial justice at the center of our work and in the climate movement.
LOCAL ENVIRONMENTAL & CLIMATE JUSTICE
Climate Reality Project Bay Area Chapter is a member of the San Francisco Bay Shoreline Contamination Cleanup Coalition. We participate in, organize, collaborate on, and promote activities that amplify the work and voices from local Bay Area BIPOC-centered environmental justice campaigns.
For our Chapter's involvement in our local environmental justice coalition work, we plan to meet approximately every other month in 2024, typically on the third Thursday, 5 - 6 p.m. on Zoom. For more information, please visit our Team Meetings page under Events.
COALITION INFORMATION
San Francisco (SF) Bay Shoreline Contamination Cleanup Coalition website
SF Bay Shoreline Contamination Cleanup Coalition Position Statement
Sea Level Rise and Shoreline Contamination Regional Workshop recordings: Day 1 (December 8, 2021) and Day 2 (December 9, 2021)
Sea Level Rise and Shoreline Contamination Regional Workshop - Shoreline Community Tools and Resources page
RESOURCES AND MEDIA
Toxic Tides: Sea Level Rise, Hazardous sites, and Environmental Justice in California
Groundwater Beneath Your Feet is Rising With the Sea. It Could Bring Long-Buried Toxic Contamination With It, KQED, December 15, 2020
More than 400 toxic sites in California are at risk of flooding from sea level rise, LA Times, November 30, 2021
Why Environmental Justice Is Crucial in Climate Resilience: Just Look at New Sea Rise Predictions, KQED, February 23, 2022
How Rising Sea Levels Could Push Up a ‘Toxic Soup’ Into Bay Area Neighborhoods, KQED, April 8, 2022
INDIGENOUS VOICES
Land Back, Indigenous Sovereignty, Decolonization (pdf), and Rematriation are major climate solutions: they are movements with a track record of effectively delaying or stopping fossil fuel projects, led by frontline communities directly targeted by Big Polluters and industries that [are] fueling the climate crisis. Our Chapter started the Indigenous Voices prong of our Climate Justice program in 2020, because we believe that support for and partnership with Indigenous climate leadership can end the climate crisis. Our Climate Justice team is currently composed of settlers (white people and People of Color).
Settlers (non-Indigenous people who voluntarily came, or whose ancestors voluntarily came, to live on lands settled by colonizers) can help achieve these solutions by learning about settler colonialism, listening to Indigenous perspectives, and taking actions (especially those directed at governments and corporations) towards creating mutually beneficial relationships with local Indigenous peoples.
INDIGENOUS SPEAKER EVENT RECORDINGS
November 2023: YouTube Premiere: Land Back + Indigenous Resistance—Video Launch from May and July 2023 Programs, co-hosted by Climate Reality San Diego and ClimateHope.us
April 2022: Beyond Land Acknowledgments: What Every Climate Activist Needs to Know about Land Back, Rematriation, and Indigenous Sovereignty -- speakers, Jonathan Cordero (Ramaytush Ohlone, from The Association of Ramaytush Ohlone), and Sara Moncada (Yaqui/Irish, from The Cultural Conservancy)
August 2021: People Over Pipelines -- speakers, Carrie Clayton (US Climate Action Network), Elaine McCarty (Environmental Finance Center West), Sarah Diefendorf (Environmental Finance Center West), Sydney Mosler (US Climate Action Network)
May 2021: U.S. Native History and Building Relationships with Native Communities for Effective Climate Work -- speakers, Jim Warne (Oglala Lakota, Warrior Society Development) and Jill Sherman-Warne (Hoopa, Native American Environmental Protection Coalition), co-presented with the Commonwealth Club
INDIGENOUS VOICES READING AND LISTENING CIRCLE SUGGESTED “READINGS”
Since 2021, the Climate Justice team has hosted Reading and Listening Circles featuring selected readings help settler participants in the Circles think about what it means to identify ourselves settlers, and how this transforms and directs our climate activism.
ACTIONS FOR NON-INDIGENOUS CLIMATE ACTIVISTS
Learn about settler colonialism, its relationship to the climate crisis, and how colonizer governmental, economic, social, and value systems are on track to perpetuate exploitation through both fossil fuel and renewables economies.
Attend virtual or in-person public events held by Indigenous peoples in your area and offer support for their projects. An easy way to find out about their events and projects is to check their websites and subscribe to their newsletters. In Canada and the United States, you can find powwows to attend at Powwows.com. Projects that may not seem, on the surface, to be directly related to climate change are usually rooted in the historical and ongoing realities of erasure, land theft, and genocide. Legal defenses in 2022-23 of the Indigenous Child Welfare Act (ICWA) are one example of this dynamic.
Take action in accordance with the Resource Guide for Indigenous Solidarity Funding Projects (pdf), or Resource Generation’s Land Reparations and Indigenous Solidarity Toolkit.
Learn about Indigenous climate activism by checking out a suggested reading from our Chapter’s monthly Indigenous Voices Reading and Listening Circles (linked above), or by attending one of our meetings. You can sign up at the CRBA Events page!
OTHER RESOURCES
In the San Francisco Bay Area, check the many Indigenous-led organizations, including but not limited to the following:
Bay Area American Indian Two-Spirits (BAAITS)
The Cultural Conservancy
Alter Theater
American Indian Cultural District
Idle No More San Francisco
The Association of Ramaytush Ohlone (San Francisco Peninsula)
Alliance for Felix Cove (North Bay)
Coast Miwok Tribal Council of Marin (North Bay)
Redbud Resource Group (North Bay)
California Indian Museum and Cultural Center (North Bay)
Museum of the American Indian (North Bay)
Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (North Bay)
The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (East Bay)
Suscol Intertribal Council (Napa and nearby counties)
The Tuolumne Band of Me-Wuk Indians (Sierra Nevada)
Tamien Nation (South Bay)
Amah Mutsun Tribal Band (South Bay)
Muwekma Ohlone Tribe
Resources for Non-Indigenous Climate Activists:
compiled by Climate Justice team co-chair S. Louie
Indigenous Environmental Network: “Established in 1990 within the United States, . . . IEN’s activities include building the capacity of Indigenous communities and tribal governments to develop mechanisms to protect our sacred sites, land, water, air, natural resources, health of both our people and all living things, and to build economically sustainable communities.”
Indigenous Climate Action: “Indigenous Climate Action was founded in 2015 by Alberta Indigenous women who saw a need to bring Indigenous Peoples together to begin discussions on climate change and Indigenous rights.”
Webinar recording: Indigenous Practices Contribute to Carbon Management and Climate Adaptation, presented by Dr. Maureen McCarthy (settler), gives a summary of the Tribal Lands chapter of the Second State of the Carbon Cycle Report which was co-authored by Beverly Ramsey (Cherokee), John Phillips (First Americans Land Grant Consortium), and Margaret H. Redsteer (Navajo).
Why Pollution Is As Much About Colonialism As Chemicals, interview with Max Liboiron (Michif-settler) and Michelle Murphy (Métis), Don’t Call Me Resilient podcast (transcript is at the link), November 3, 2021. Work by Professors Liboiron and Murphy addresses the origins and impacts of plastics (and settler worldviews that created and continue to popularize them) as historical and ongoing root causes of climate change.
Indigenous Sovereignty - On The Road to Sustainable Development, by Ash Layo Maysing (Native Sarawakian): “Has Western capitalist modernity been that great for Indigenous peoples such as myself?”
Check your knowledge of Indigenous peoples where you live, work, and play with this Questions About “Home” (pdf) worksheet, and this Indigenous Justice for Environmental Movements toolkit
Building Trust Before Truth: How Non-Indigenous Canadians Become Allies, by Robyn Ward (settler), Director of People Operations at Animikii, February 22, 2019. Suggested by Michelle Robinson (Sahtu Dene), host of Native Calgarian Podcast, to settlers who want to build a solid foundation for doing work with Indigenous peoples.