On the Swamp

Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

Ryan Emanuel

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9781469678320
  9781469678313
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469678337
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Environment & Energy Policy
• Index: Social Sciences

Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina—a patchwork quilt of forested swamps, sandy plains, and blackwater streams that spreads across the Coastal Plain between the Fall Line and the Atlantic Ocean. In these backwaters, Lumbees and other American Indians have adapted to a radically transformed world while maintaining vibrant cultures and powerful connections to land and water. Like many Indigenous communities worldwide,they continue to assert their rights to self-determination by resisting legacies of colonialism and the continued transformation of their homelands through pollution, unsustainable development, and climate change.

Environmental scientist Ryan E. Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee tribe, shares stories from North Carolina about Indigenous survival and resilience in the face of radical environmental changes. Addressing issues from the loss of wetlands to the arrival of gas pipelines, these stories connect the dots between historic patterns of Indigenous oppression and present-day efforts to promote environmental justice and Indigenous rights on the swamp. Emanuel’s scientific insight and deeply personal connections to his home blend together in a book that is both a heartfelt and an analytical call to acknowledge and protect sacred places.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Graph, Illustrations, Maps, and Table
• Preface
• A Note on Terminology
• Half Title
• Introduction: On the Swamp, February 2017
• Chapter One. Whose Land? Reimagining Land Acknowledgment
• Chapter Two. More Than One Way to Own a Thing: Indigenous Empowerment and Erasure
• Chapter Three. Water in the Lumbee World: Refugia Transformed
• Chapter Four. This Is Indian Land: Pipelines and the Fight for Indigenous Visibility
• Chapter Five. The Smell of Money: Industrial Livestock and Racialized Environmental Harm
• Chapter Six. Flood: Climate Change in a Watery World
• Chapter Seven. Hope and Healing: Cultural Renewal on the Great Coharie River
• Chapter Eight. Recommendations: Indigenous Environmental Justice in a Transformed World
• Conclusion: On the Swamp, April 2022
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index