V.2, N.1 – 2018 
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REVISTA SOBRE ACESSO À JUSTIÇA E DIREITOS NAS AMÉRICAS ABYA YALA 

 

 

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REITOS  
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

 
Protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline led by water 

protectors from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North 

Dakota have brought human rights violations related to 

Indigenous sovereignty, environmental justice, and 

sustainable development into the foreground of political 

debate in the United States. The struggle at Standing Rock 

has been strengthened by a coalition formed with activists 

from other Indigenous Nations, including representatives 

from the Amazon Basin, and from non-Indigenous 

movements and political organizations such as the Green 

Party and Black Lives Matter.  This article reflects upon 

the centrality of Indigenous Sovereignty within the 

broader struggle for human rights and democracy in their 

most inclusive and substantive senses, especially in societies 

whose development has been built upon the violence of 

colonial expansion, white supremacy, and 

heteropatriarchy.  The article also situates Indigenous 

rights within regimes of multiple articulated alterities in 

which the subjugation and dispossession of Indigenous and 

Afro-descendant peoples have been historically 

differentiated yet intertwined in the Americas.  The article 

offers a multi-sited framework for understanding the 

convergent and divergent points of reference in the logics 

of Indigenous and Afro-descendant identity, the 

relationship with the State and Market, and connections to 

the material and spiritual resources of land.  Attention is 

directed to cases in the United States, Honduras, and 

Suriname (including those of communities that define 

themselves as “Afro-Indigenous”) in which some notion of 

common ground, affinity, or alliance with past or present-

day Indigenous peoples has been mobilized in Afro-

descendants’ collective claims on rights to land, 

development, and cultural resources.    

Keywords:   human rights; Indigenous; democracy; 
supremacy; heteropatriarchy.  

 

 

 

RESUMO 

Protestos contra o acesso ao Gasoduto de Dakota 

liderado por protetores da água da tribo Standing 

Rock na Dakota do Norte trouxe violações dos 

direitos humanos relacionados à soberania Indígena, 

justiça ambiental e desenvolvimento sustentável ao 

primeiro plano do debate político nos Estados 

Unidos. A luta em Standing Rock foi reforçada por 

uma coligação formada por ativistas de outras Nações 

Indígenas, incluindo representantes da Bacia 

Amazônica, de movimentos não-Indígena e de 

organizações políticas como a Green Party e o 

#BlackLivesMatter (#VidasNegrasImportam). Este 

artigo reflete sobre a centralidade da Soberania 

Indígena dentro da luta mais ampla pelos direitos 

humanos e pela democracia em seus sensos mais 

inclusivos e substantivos, especialmente em 

sociedades cujo desenvolvimento foi construído sobre 

a violência de expansão colonial, a supremacia 

branca e o heteropatriarcado. O artigo também situa 

direitos Indígenas dentro de regimes de alteridades 

múltiplas articuladas, nas quais o subjugamento e a 

desapropriação de povos Indígenas e Afro-

descendentes foram historicamente diferenciados 

ainda interligado nas Américas. O artigo oferece um 

enquadramento multi-localizado para o 

entendimento da convergência e divergência de 

pontos da referência na lógica identitária de 

Indígenas e de Afro-descendentes, a relação entre o 

Estado e o Marcado, e conexões aos recursos 

materiais e espirituais de uma terra. A atenção é 

direcionada aos casos nos Estados Unidos, Honduras, 

e Suriname (incluindo aqueles das comunidades, as 

quais se definem como “Afro-Indígena”) na qual 

alguma noção básica de solo, afinidade, ou aliança 

com povos Indígenas do passado o do presente tem 

sido mobilizada nas reivindicações coletivas Afro-

descendentes ao direito à terra, ao desenvolvimento e 

aos recursos culturais.          

Palavras-chaves: direitos humanos; indígenas; 

democracia; supremacia; heteropatriarcado 

 
FROM STANDING ROCK TO FLINT AND BEYOND:                                                                              

RESISTING NEOLIBERAL ASSAULTS ON INDIGENOUS, MAROON,  

AND OTHER SITES OF RACIALLY SUBJECTED COMMUNITY  

SUSTAINABILITY IN THE AMERICAS 

 

 

 
 

Faye V. Harrison                                                                                                                            

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 

Estados Unidos 
Artigo recebido em: 28/11/2017 

Aprovado em: 05/02/2018 

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RESUMEN  

Las protestas contra el acceso al gasoducto de Dakota, lideradas por los protectores del agua de 

la tribu Standing Rock en Dakota del Norte han conducido al primer plano del debate político 

en Estados Unidos las violaciones de los derechos humanos relacionadas con la soberanía 

indígena, la justicia ambiental y el desarrollo sostenible. La lucha en Standing Rock fue 

reforzada por una coalición integrada por activistas de otras Naciones Indígenas, incluyendo 

representantes de la Cuenca Amazónica, de movimientos no Indígenas y de organizaciones 

políticas como la Green Party y el #BlackLivesMatter (#VidasNegrasImportam). Este artículo 

trata sobre la centralidad de la soberanía indígena en el marco de la lucha más amplia por los 

derechos humanos y la democracia en sus sentidos más inclusivos y sustantivos, especialmente 

en sociedades cuyo desarrollo fue construido sobre la violencia de la expansión colonial, la 

supremacía blanca y el heteropatriarcado. El artículo también sitúa los derechos indígenas 

dentro de regímenes de alteridades múltiples articuladas, en las cuales el subyugamiento y la 

desapropiación de pueblos Indígenas y Afrodescendientes en las Américas fueron 

históricamente diferenciadas a pesar de encontrarse interconectados. El artículo ofrece un 

encuadramiento multilocalizado para el entendimiento de la convergencia y divergencia de 

puntos de referencia en la lógica identitaria de Indígenas y de Afrodescendientes, la relación 

entre el Estado y el Mercado, y las conexiones a los recursos materiales y espirituales de la 

tierra. La atención se centra en los casos en los Estados Unidos, Honduras, y Surinam 

(incluyendo aquellos de las comunidades que se definen como "Afro-indígenas ") en los que 

alguna noción básica de suelo, afinidad, o alianza con pueblos Indígenas del pasado o del 

presente ha sido movilizada en las reivindicaciones colectivas de los Afrodescendientes 

relativas al derecho a la tierra, al desarrollo ya los recursos culturales.  

Palabras claves: derechos humanos; indígena; democracia; la supremacía; heteropatriarcado. 

 

 

he mass protest that the 

Standing Rock Sioux are 

leading against the Dakota 

Access Pipeline in the United 

States has brought to the world‘s 

attention how this particular 

infrastructural development project, 

along with others like it, inflicts 

economic, environmental, and spiritual 

violence against the fundamental human 

rights of indigenous people as self-

determining entities recognized by 

international law and policy.  The 

Dakota Access Pipeline‘s failure to 

consult, gain the consent of the Sioux, 

and seriously consider their legitimate 

worries concerning potential hazards to 

their community‘s water supply  

―conflicts with the international human 

rights standards, norms, and principles 

found in the Vienna Convention, 

Geneva Conventions, international 

criminal law, humanitarian law, and the 

International Climate Agreement 

(Paris)‖ (Red Owl Legal Collective, 

2016).   

 The water protectors‘ 

mass demonstrations, which are less 

than a mile outside of Standing Rock 

Reservation, have attracted 

representatives from other U.S.-based 

Native American tribes and even 

indigenous communities and movement 

organizations from the Amazon.  There 

has also been the physical presence and 

practical solidarity of environmentalists, 

antiracist activists, and others who see 

themselves as allies in the struggle for 

indigenous peoples‘ rights and the 

struggle against the interlocking 

oppressions that adversely affect Native 

Americans‘ life chances and well-being.  

Among the allies who have made their 

presence felt at Standing Rock are 

demonstrators involved in Black Lives 

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Matter or the Movement for Black 

Lives (Mays 2016).  The significance of 

building mutual alignments between the 

struggles of Native Americans and 

African Americans is clearly reflected at 

Standing Rock as well as in Native 

American activists‘ expressions of 

solidarity with African Americans who 

are navigating the lead-poisoned water 

crisis in Flint, Michigan.  According to 

Kyle T. Mays, an urban historian of 

Black and Saginaw Anishinaabe 

heritage,  working against the grain of 

conventional assumptions about their 

distance, divergence, and conflicting 

interests,  Black and Indigenous 

activists have been reimagining the 

possibilities for mutual solidarity in the 

way they have engaged with the water 

politics of Flint and Standing Rock. 

Mays writes that 

 

 
before Black Lives Matter went to 

Standing Rock, Indigenous people 

from Detroit went to Flint. [Hip-hop] 

[a]rtists like SouFy and Sacramento 

Knoxx, both Anishinaabe and from 

southwest Detroit, made protest 

songs to bring awareness to the 

FlintWaterCrisis; they also donated 

water and supplies to the residents of 

Flint. These Native people have and 

continue to work in solidarity with 

New Era Detroit and other Black 

organizations. Moreover, the Little 

River Band of Ottawa [based in 

northwest Michigan] also donated 

$10,000 to assist with the 

FlintWaterCrisis. These actions show 

that Black–Indigenous solidarity is 

real, not rhetorical (Mays 2016).  

 

 

 This article reflects upon 

the centrality of Indigenous self-

determination and the freedom of Afro-

descendants across the African diaspora 

within the broader struggle for 

democracy and human rights in their 

most inclusive and substantive senses. 

These objectives are especially relevant 

in societies, such as those in the 

Western Hemisphere, whose historical 

development has been built upon the 

violence of colonial expansion, white 

privilege and supremacy, and 

heteropatriarchy.  The article argues in 

favor of situating indigenous rights 

within the context of regimes that are 

structured around the logic and 

articulation of multiple alterities (i.e., 

otherness, differences) in which the 

subjugation and dispossession of 

Indigenous and Afro-descendant 

peoples, among others, have been 

historically differentiated yet 

intertwined in varying contexts across 

the Americas.  The article aims to offer 

a multi-sited framework for 

understanding convergent and divergent 

points of reference in the formation and 

experience of Indigenous and Afro-

descendant identities, their relationship 

with the state and market, and their 

connections to the material and spiritual 

resources of land.  Our attention will be 

directed to cases in the United States, 

Honduras, and Suriname and will also 

include consideration of communities 

that define themselves in terms of the 

hybrid category of ―Afro-Indigenous.‖ 

In the cases to be discussed, some 

notion of common ground, affinity, or 

alliance with past or present-day 

indigenous peoples has been mobilized 

in Afro-descendants‘ collective claims 

on rights to land, development, and 

cultural resources. Toward these ends, 

new insights will be offered for 

understanding some of the concerns and 

nuances related to recent trends in the 

dynamics of new social movements 

whose motor force is driven by 

struggles for indigenous and Afro-

descendant peoples‘ human rights and 

dignity. 

 

Standing Rock and Indigenous 

Rights in U.S. Politics     



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 The Standing Rock Sioux 

are a part of the Great Sioux Nation (the 

Oceti Sakowin), with which the United 

States Government signed the Fort 

Laramie Treaties of 1851 and 1868. 

Those historic, purportedly legally-

binding agreements codified the 

indigenous right to self-determination 

and extended those rights to control of a 

portion of the traditional territories over 

which the Sioux exercised stewardship 

long before colonial expansion deprived 

them of most of their land and 

resources.  In the historical 

consciousness and social memory of the 

Sioux Nation, those 19
th

 century treaties 

continue to exercise legal authority and 

efficacy today, in protecting their 

control over the land and the resources 

upon which their sociocultural, spiritual, 

economic, and overall ecological well-

being depends. The U.S. government 

has regularly breached the terms of 

those treaties, yet claims to be a paragon 

and leader of liberal democracy in the 

world community. 

 Since his January 2017 

inauguration, U.S. President Donald 

Trump has demonstrated his support for 

the corporate interests and profit-above-

people practices of the Dakota Access, 

LLC, ―a Delaware limited liability 

company [which is a subsidiary of the 

Energy Transfer Partners, L.P. This 

limited partnership business is] 

authorized to do business in [the state 

of] North Dakota and [to construct]… 

the 1,172-mile-long Dakota Access 

Pipeline … intended to transport crude 

oil from the Bakken Shale of North 

Dakota to refineries in Patoka, Illinois‖ 

(Red Owl Legal Collective, 2016, p. 1, 

footnote 1).   A former stockholder in 

Energy Transfer Partners, Trump sought 

to undermine the temporary moratorium 

that in 2016 the federal government, 

with former President Barack Obama‘s 

approval, placed on completing the 

construction of the pipeline adjacent to 

the unceded traditional territory of the 

Great Sioux Nation.  With most of the 

pipeline already built, the specific area 

affected by the 2016 moratorium is 

located in the vicinity of the Standing 

Rock Reservation around the Lake 

Oahe, a reservoir created by a 

government-built dam on the Missouri 

River more than 50 years ago. This is 

the main water source for the Standing 

Rock Sioux Reservation community. 

The lake‘s vulnerability to being 

contaminated by oil leaks is one of the 

main environmental objections the 

Sioux are making against the pipeline. 

Other objections have to do with the 

pipeline‘s violating the spiritual 

integrity and sanctity of burial sites and 

other culturally significant landmarks 

on the territory upon which a Euro-

American settler colonial regime 

encroached in the past and continues to 

do so in the present.  

 Beginning in July 2016, 

the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe took its 

grievances and numerous appeals to 

federal court.  Initially, the U.S. District 

Court for the District of Columbia, the 

nation‘s capital, ruled that the U.S. 

Army Corps of Engineers had not 

complied with the law when it granted a 

permit to the Dakota Access Pipeline 

without having undertaken a review of 

the potential environmental hazards.  

The court, however, did not concur with 

the Sioux tribe‘s argument for an 

injunction to block further construction 

of the pipeline.  In its October 11, 2017 

ruling, it decided not to arrest the 

pipeline‘s construction while the Army 

Corps completes its environmental 

review by April 2018.  In response to 

the disappointing news, Mike Faith, the 

Standing Rock Sioux Chairman 

lamented: ―From the very beginning of 

our lawsuit, what we have wanted is for 

the threat this pipeline poses to the 

people of Standing Rock Indian 

reservation to be acknowledged. Today, 



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our concerns have not been heard and 

the threat persists‖ (Earthjustice 2017).    

 

Compliance with the 

Declaration of Indigenous 

People’s Rights?  
 

 In January 2017, 

President Trump ―signed an executive 

memorandum directing the Army Corps 

of Engineers ‗to review and approve in 

an expedited manner‘ the [Dakota 

Access] pipeline ‗to the extent 

permitted by law and as warranted‘‖ 

(New York Times, 2017). In the first 

several months of his term, Trump 

reversed the environmental policies that 

former President Barack Obama‘s 

administration put into place on climate 

change, and will likely undermine the 

liberal concessions that the former 
administration made toward complying 

with the terms of the United Nations‘ 

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous 

Peoples, a non-binding but morally 

significant agreement and international 

standard that went into effect in 2007 

without the signature and ratification of 

the United States along with Canada, 

Australia, and New Zealand/Aotearoa.  

Since then, however, all four countries 

have decided to support the Declaration. 

The United States‘ opposition to it was 

reversed, or perhaps softened, in 2010, 

when Obama and Susan Rice, then the 

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, 

publicly proclaimed the federal 

government‘s endorsement of 

indigenous rights. However, what did 

that endorsement really mean?  

 Social critic Four Arrows 

(Wahinkpe Topa, also known as Don 

Trent Jacobs), a prolific Native 

American scholar activist of Cherokee 

ancestry, emphasizes the unlikelihood 

that the government will comply with 

the true spirit and substance of the 

Declaration, given its contradictory 

track record (Four Arrows, 2011; Four 

Arrows, no date).  He admits that there 

are reforms that the Administration has 

backed (e.g., establishing college 

scholarships, settling water rights 

lawsuits, and addressing grievances 

against the Department of Agriculture‘s 

discrimination against native farmers 

and ranchers).  However, he points out 

that, despite these cursory reforms, 

―next to nothing has…happened to 

change the dismal health, violence, 

poverty, and educational problems on 

American Indian reservations‖ (Four 

Arrows, 2011 [accessed 2017]).   

 He goes on to claim that: 

―Private industry still trumps tribal 

sovereignty,‖ and in the past several 

years, beginning under President 

Obama, for the first time in more than 

thirty years, the State Department has 

stipulated that citizens of Iroquois or 

Haudenosaunee Confederacy Nations 

(i.e., the Onondago, Mohawk, Seneca, 

Oneida, Tuscorora, and Cayuga) have to 

hold U.S. passports when traveling 

internationally. This new ruling was 

tested in the case of the Iroquois 

Lacrosse Team. As Four Arrows 

explains, 

 
There are many reasons the Iroquois 

honour their own passports. One has 

to do with national pride and identity. 

Another is that the team is competing 

as a sovereign nation and the 

competition requires evidence of their 

own national identity. The Iroquois 

have been allowed to use their own 

passports for decades after an 

agreement among the US, British, 

Canadian, and other governments. 

 Why didn't the president—or 

one of the cabinet members who 

ha[d] supposedly been instructed to 

consider Indigenous perspectives and 

[complying with]… the decision to 

support UNDRIP—intercede? (2011)   

This is Four Arrow‘s way of 

saying that the United States‘ claim to 

support the UN Declaration for the 



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Rights of Indigenous People is a 

―nonevent.‖ 

 

 

Citizenship, the Carceral State, 

and Human Rights  

 Black Lives Matter 

demonstrators supporting the water 

protectors at Standing Rock are part of a 

movement that mobilizes against the 

militarized force of police, who defend 

the security of corporate property, white 

public space (Page and Thomas 1994), 

and the state.  A parallel situation exists 

in the case of the encampment at 

Standing Rock.  State sanctioned and 

complicit violence in the United States 

has racializing effects within a society 

organized around the logics and 

articulations of multiple alterities and 

modes of producing otherness, through 

which anti-blackness and anti-

indigeneity are manifested along with 

systemic biases against other racially 

profiled and surveilled bodies. The 

latter category implicates the darkening 

and stigmatization of categories of 

immigrants presumed to be problem 

populations, notably, segments of the 

Latina and Latino (or ―Latinx‖) 

communities, especially Mexican and 

Central American migrants, but also 

Muslims presumed to be potential 

radical jihadists. The State‘s war on 

terror and on undocumented migration 

along with the longstanding war on 

crime (and drugs), which is often 

translated into a war on black and 

brown people in ghetto and barrio 

communities, feeds into the workings of 

the neoliberal securitization of the state. 

This process is increasingly associated 

with the consolidation of a carceral state 

that is theorized in critical studies of 

mass incarceration and the prison 

industrial complex (Marable, Steinberg, 

and Middlemass 2007).  The securitized 

state administers the integration of the 

terror industrial complex (Rana 2016), 

the immigrant retention or immigrant 

industrial complex (Golash-Boza, 2009; 

Ho and Louky, 2012), and the prison 

industrial complex (Davis, 2003). These 

three spheres of the penal justice system 

are rarely addressed together as 

interrelated facets of the carceral state. 

An integrated approach is being 

explored in some recent work on the 

expansion of police power in the 

politically manufactured moral panic 

over private safety and national security 

(Harrison 2013a, page 4).   

 The carceral state has 

grown in tandem with the neoliberal 

minimalization of the government‘s 

responsibility for providing safety nets, 

social welfare, and other supports for 

the socioeconomic rights that are 

delineated in the International Covenant 

on Economic, Social, and Cultural 

Rights, one of the two covenants 

comprising what is called the 

International Bill of Rights along with 

the Universal Declaration of Human 

Rights. The status of economic, social, 

and cultural rights are still highly 

contested as universal human rights, 

although the international human right 

regime now insists that they are 

indivisible and interdependent with civil 

and political rights, considered the 

negative, first generation rights of 

individuals (UN Chronicle 2009). They 

protect individuals from the negative 

excesses of State power and are 

enshrined in the Universal Declaration 

of Human Rights and the International 

Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. 

These instruments continue a long 

democratic legal tradition that dates 

back to the England‘s Magna Carta 

(1215) and Bill of Rights (1689), 

France‘s Declaration of the Rights of 

Man and of the Citizen (1789) and the 

United States‘ Declaration of 

Independence (1776) and Bill of Rights 

(1789), which represented the first ten 



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amendments to the U.S. Constitution.  

The rights delineated in the 

International Covenant on Economic, 

Social, and Cultural Rights have been 

considered positive, second-generation 

rights (UN Chronicle, 2009).  The third 

generation of human rights 

encompasses collective rights, such as 

those related to indigenous self-

determination, economic development, 

natural resources, and a sustainable and 

healthy environment.  These rights are 

considered to be largely aspirational and 

have generated a great deal of debate.  

They are, however, central to the goals 

and objectives of indigenous and Afro-

descendant movements throughout the 

Americas.  

 Third generation rights have 

been difficult to codify and enforce in 

legally binding documents.  Some legal 

scholars strongly argue that only 

negative civil and political rights have 

legitimate status as universal human 

rights, because most states lack the 

material wherewithal to deliver positive 

rights.  The indivisibility and 

interdependence of both negative and 

positive rights, however, have been 

recognized by the UN General 

Assembly since it issued The 

Declaration on the Right to 

Development on December 4, 1986 

(UN General Assembly 1986).  

According to Article 6.2 of the 

Declaration: ―All human rights and 

fundamental freedoms are indivisible 

and interdependent; equal attention and 

urgent consideration should be given to 

the implementation, promotion and 

protection of civil, political, economic, 

social and cultural rights‖. 

The principle of indivisible and 

interdependent rights was reinforced in 

the 1993 Vienna Declaration and 

Program of Action, which resulted from 

the World Conference on Human 

Rights.  Since those interventions, the 

definition of human rights has been 

expanded, as indicated on the website of 

the UN Office of the High 

Commissioner for Human Rights, 

where it clearly states that: 

 
All human rights are indivisible, 

whether they are civil and political 

rights, such as the right to life, 

equality before the law and freedom 

of expression; economic, social and 

cultural rights, such as the rights to 

work, social security and education, 

or collective rights, such as the rights 

to development and self-

determination, are indivisible, 

interrelated and interdependent. The 

improvement of one right facilitates 

advancement of the others. Likewise, 

the deprivation of one right 

adversely affects the others (UN 

Office of the High Commissioner of 

Human Rights).    

 

The legality of indigenous 

people‘s rights, which together 

constitute dimensions of collective 

sovereignty, is embedded in 

international law and progressively 

codified in UN covenants, conventions, 

and in softer instruments whose role in 

the human rights regime is more 

informal but morally significant.  There 

are also important regional conventions 

and declarations, such as those ratified 

through deliberations within the 

Organization of American States (OAS) 

and, since June 2016, the American 

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous 

Peoples. The American Convention on 

Human Rights is the central treaty that 

guides the workings of the Inter-

American Commission on Human 

Rights and the accompanying Inter-

American Court on Human Rights. 

Court judgments play a significant role 

in contributing to the legal framework 

and establishing legal precedents that 

support the claims-making process that 

Indigenous and Afro-descendant 

claimants undertake.  As we shall see, 

important precedents in human rights 



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court cases have had implications for 

both of these oppressed populations and 

their movements for social, economic, 

and environmental justice. 

 

Regimes of Multiple Racialized 

Alterities 

 

The analysis here draws on Peter 

Wade‘s (2010) concern that Indígena 

and Afro-descendant predicaments are 

rarely analyzed within a common 

framework that implicates differential 

yet interconnected facets of structural 

racism with its variegated processes of 

racialization.  Building upon his notion 

of ―structures of alterity‖ (Wade, 2010, 

p. 37), this article argues that an 

adequate analysis of Indigenous, Black, 

and Latinx human rights violations in 

the United States and in other settings 

needs to be placed within the context of 

the multiple structures of alterity that 

configure the relationship between the 

state and racially othered groups.  

Within the context of U.S. race and 

ethnic relations, this approach is an 

alternative to the once-dominant bipolar 

perspectives on the ―Negro problem‖ in 

which black-white relations have been 

conventionally distinguished from all 

other ethno-racial relations. There has 

been considerable resistance to situating 

Native American and African American 

predicaments on the same critical 

analytical terrain (Mays 2016). In this 

respect, studies of Indigenous and 

African-descended populations in the 

United States and in Latin American 

contexts have developed roughly 

parallel approaches.    

 A multiple alterities 

framework permits the analysis of both 

similarities and differences across the 

various social locations and sites of 

lived experience in which ethno-racial 

identity formation occurs. This 

framework is attentive to the plural 

trajectories followed and the strategies 

deployed in claiming citizenship and 

human rights, especially when the 

strategies and tactics are based on forms 

of identity that are collective and 

resonate with concerns expressed in 

―third generation‖ human rights.  The 

extent to which collective or group 

identity is corporate or based on a 

unified communal subject position 

varies considerably among Afro-

descendants in the Americas.  

Anthropological research has 

documented the corporate character of 

social and economic organization and of 

political authority among, for instance, 

rainforest Maroons in Suriname, whose 

moral and legal status within the 

national body politic is that of a distinct 

people and not merely a group or 

confluence of individuals (Price 2011).  

Their struggle for human rights gives 

priority to communally-based territorial 

sovereignty.  

 

Indigenous & Afro-

Descendant Convergences & 

Divergences across Time & 

Space  
 

A multiple alterities approach to 

interrogating indigenous rights within 

the U.S. context could very well lead to 

a scrutiny of the intersection, 

interrelationship, and, in some 

instances, the overlap that exists 

between Indigenous and other ethnic 

peoples‘ rights, such as those of 

populations classified as Latinx or 

―Hispanics.‖ This issue is especially 

significant in those instances in which 

Latin American immigrants are of 

mainly indigenous background, such as 

the case of Guatemalans of Maya 

descent and heritage (Burns, 1993, 

2001; Hiller, Linstroth, Vela 2009).  

However, the more neglected 



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intersection between Indigenous and 

Afro-descendant peoples‘ rights in the 

United States and across the Americas 

will be examined instead.  A few cases 

will be highlighted that should stimulate 

rethinking along neglected lines of 

inquiry. 

Today, the environmental 

injustices that preoccupy the water 

defenders at Standing Rock, North 

Dakota resonate strongly with the 

environmental racism that many African 

American communities confront in both 

rural and urban settings in the United 

States, whether in the 2005 Katrina 

catastrophe in New Orleans, Louisiana 

and in the surrounding Gulf Coast or in 

Flint, Michigan, where in January 2016 

a federal state of emergency was 

declared because lead levels in the 

water supply had reached critical 

poisonous proportions.  The health and 

the life of residents had become 

endangered in that disproportionately 

African American populated rust-belt 

city of blight, economic displacement, 

and food deserts. 

The rights to life and well-being 

are also constrained by yet another 

environmental factor, and that is the 

factor of violence, which exists in a 

continuum of structural and 

intersubjective modalities (Scheper-

Hughes, 2002; Scheper-Hughes and 

Bourgois, 2004). The threat of anti-

black extrajudicial killings, whether by 

police who are rarely held accountable 

or by armed citizens in fear of black 

crime (e.g., George Zimmerman in the 

2012 Trayvon Martin case), has reached 

crisis proportions and is being 

vigorously debated in the public sphere.  

It is important to point out, however, 

that Native Americans actually suffer 

the highest per capita rate of police 

killing than any other segment of the 

US population.  Although less than 1% 

of the country‘s total population, Native 

Americans killed by law enforcement 

are nearly 2% of all police killings.  

Statistically, this is the highest rate that 

any group experiences although the 

aggregate numbers are small (Indian 

Country Today, 2016; see also Voice of 

America, 2015).  Public awareness of 

this trend is virtually nil.     

 

Intersecting Histories 

 

Historically, relations between 

American Indians and African 

Americans (and Amerindians and 

African descendants more broadly) have 

varied across time and space. The 

history of inter-group relations, whether 

focused on conflicting interests or on 

alliances, has been greatly neglected.  

The historian and anthropologist Jack 

D. Forbes (Powhatan-Renapé and 

Delaware-Lenape) redressed this 

silencing of the past (Trouillot, 1997) in 

his seminal Africans and Native 

Americans: The Language of Race and 

the Evolution of Red-Black Peoples 

(Forbes, 1993), a text that takes a 

decolonial turn from the conventions of 

Native American and African American 

studies, which have historically been 

treated in separate silos.  

In the U.S. context, the history 

of inter-group alliances is exemplified 

most clearly in the Seminole and Black 

Seminole confederacy which developed 

in the state of Florida in the 18
th

 and 

early 19
th

 centuries.  The Seminoles and 

their Black Seminole allies fought 

against the U.S. Army in three Seminole 

Wars during the first half of the 19
th
 

century (Howard 2002).  An 

anthropologist who studied the impact 

of fugitive African Americans on the 

Lower Creek population that eventually 

became Seminoles in Florida was 

Laurence Foster, whose 1931 doctoral 

dissertation focused on Black-Indian 

relations in the U.S. southeast (Foster 

1931). His multi-sited ethnohistorical 



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and ethnographic research, conducted 

most intensively in 1929-30 followed 

the migratory path mixed groups of 

Seminoles had taken from Florida to 

Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma. The 

communities that settled in the United 

States were affected by racial 

discrimination.  Laws in Oklahoma 

made it illegal for Indians to marry 

persons with any African ancestry. That 

worked against the close ties that once 

existed between Black and ―Red‖ 

Seminoles.   

The anthropologist and ethno-

historian William S. Willis, Jr. (1963) 

wrote about the ways that the 18
th

 

century government administration used 

tactics of divide and conquer in its 

colonial expansion strategies, pitting 

Indians against Blacks, who when 

enslaved were likely to run away from 

plantations and seek refuge in the 

wilderness beyond the borders of the 

plantation zone.  To offset the 

possibility of Indians providing shelter 

to Maroons (fugitives from slavery), the 

army and civilian government in the 

colonies and later in states like Georgia 

fomented antagonisms between the two 

subordinate groups, who together 

outnumbered the Euro-American 

settlers and, if united, could potentially 

jeopardize the feasibility of the colonial 

status quo and political economy.  The 

white colonial authorities enlisted 

Indians in the role of capturing and 

returning runaways, and they inculcated 

within Africans the fear and distrust of 

Indians.  Later in the context of the 

westward expansion of U.S. settler 

colonialism, African Americans were 

conscripted in the frontier army as 

―Buffalo Soldiers‖ to fight ―renegade 

Indians,‖ who resisted the Euro-

Americans‘ displacement, pacification 

and reservation practices, whose effects 

were often genocidal (Deloria 1984; 

Dunbar-Ortiz 2015).  

More recent trends in historical 

research on ―Afro-Indians‖ or ―Black 

Indians‖ demonstrate that inter-group 

mixing was not uncommon, although 

disincentives were imposed from above, 

stigmatizing Black-Native families and 

denying them recognition as indigenous 

(Miles, 2015 [2005]; Brooks, 2002). 

The one-drop rule or hypodescent 

jeopardized the legal status of native 

communities with mixed-heritage, 

especially those with Black admixed 

members.  White admixture did not 

carry the same stigma, a symptom of the 

hegemonic weight of white supremacy 

even in ―Indian country.‖  The wedge 

constructed to divide Indigenous people 

and Africans had a negative effect on 

families and on the rights of African 

descendants who were once legally 

recognized citizens of those Indian 

nations originally concentrated in the 

southeast which settler colonialists 

characterized as the five ―civilized‖ 

tribes.  These so-called civilized natives 

of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, 

Creek, and Seminole nations were 

incorporated into the plantation mode of 

production, which depended on the 

exploitation of enslaved laborers.  When 

coercively removed westward to 

Oklahoma territory (via the ―Trail of 

Tears‖), these tribes were accompanied 

by their freedmen, who were recognized 

as citizens in post-bellum (i.e., post-

Civil War) treaties between the U.S. 

government and the tribal polities.  

Decades later and into the present era, 

that citizenship would come to be 

contested.  Older generations of African 

American freedmen, however, often had 

competence in Indigenous languages 

and cultures, reflecting ethnic if not 

―racial‖ commonalities shared with their 

Indigenous counterparts (Sturm, 2002).   

Recently, there have been a 

number of court battles over the status 

of the descendants of freedmen, their 

rights to Indian benefits and the tribal 



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ballot, and access to heritage archives 

and other resources because of their de 

jure, treaty-based citizenship within 

Indian nations dating back to the 

aftermath of emancipation.   Even when 

Indian ancestry has been a component 

of the Freedmen‘s court claims, it has 

rarely been adequately documented.  

When the Dawes Rolls determining 

tribal membership were compiled, as 

was stipulated by the 1887 Dawes Act 

which converted communal land 

ownership into individualized 

allotments, freed African Americans 

were usually presumed to be (only) 

Black rather than Indian by virtue of the 

prevailing ―one-drop‖ rule, even when 

their families included members who 

were recognizably Indians. Mixed-

heritage individuals were not included 

on the Dawes Roll but on a separate list 

for freedmen. Genealogical information 

on Black Indians‘ ancestry and heritage 

was, therefore, not recorded in those 

cases (Native Heritage Project, 2014; 

Sturm 2002).  This partial, skewed 

documentation contributed to the 

erosion of freed people‘s eligibility for 

substantive citizenship, since the Dawes 

Roll is the legal point of reference 

determining eligibility for tribal 

membership and belonging.   

 By the 1980s, the 

Cherokee Nation amended its legal 

criteria for citizenship, denying 

Freedmen‘s votes in tribal elections 

(Cherokee Phoenix, 2006).  At that 

time, voting rights were determined by 

blood quantum.  This required the 

documentation of descent from 

someone listed on the Dawes Rolls as 

―Cherokee by blood.‖ This rule change 

disenfranchised the descendants of 

Cherokee Freedmen.  

Today, more African Americans 

are publicly claiming their Indigenous 

heritage and organizing around their 

cultural and legal interests as Indians or 

Black Indians. This trend is gaining 

momentum at a historical moment when 

hegemonic racial classifications and the 

cultural principle of hypodescent are 

being questioned and resisted.   

Federally recognized Indian tribes do 

not necessarily welcome African 

descendants‘ claims to Indigenous 

ancestry and rights to tribally 

administered resources and services.  

The Descendants of Freedmen of the 

Five Civilized Tribes Association is one 

organization that has advocated for 

African Americans whose foreparents‘ 

status as Freedmen was recognized by 

the 1866 treaty. After many years of 

back and forth litigation, a U.S. District 

Court ruled that the historic treaty had 

indeed granted Freedmen ―all the rights 

of native Cherokees‖ (PRI [Public 

Radio International] 2017). In the 

judgment rendered in the Cherokee 

Nation v. Nash case,  

 
The Cherokee Nation can continue to 

define itself as it sees fit but must do 

so equally and evenhandedly with 

respect to native Cherokees and the 

descendants of Cherokee freedmen. 

By interposition of Article 9 of the 

1866 Treaty, neither has rights either 

superior or, importantly, inferior to 

the other. Their fates under the 

Cherokee Nation Constitution rise 

and fall equally and in tandem. In 

accordance with Article 9 of the 1866 

Treaty, the Cherokee Freedmen have 

a present right to citizenship in the 

Cherokee Nation that is coextensive 

with the rights of native Cherokees 

(PRI, 2017). 

 

The Cherokee Nation‘s legal 

counsel has issued a statement that it 

will respect the rule of law and will not 

seek to appeal the court‘s decision. 

 

Afrodescendant and indigenous 

convergences in the circum-

Caribbean  

The Garifuna of Honduras 



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In other parts of the Americas, 

Afro-descendant and Indigenous contact 

and interaction have been integral to 

many societies‘ historical development, 

particularly in the Caribbean and Latin 

America (Forbes, 1993; Wade, 2010). A 

key example is the Garifuna or Black 

Caribs whose heritage is Arawak, Carib 

and African. The Garifuna‘s unique 

ethno-genesis resulted from an alliance 

between Maroons and Caribs who 

resisted European domination in St. 

Vincent in the Eastern Caribbean.  In 

1797 the British forcibly relocated them 

to Central America, where their 

descendants are now found along the 

Atlantic or Caribbean coast, from Belize 

(formerly British Honduras) to 

Nicaragua, with communities found in 

Guatemala (Gonzalez 1988) and 

Honduras (Anderson, 2009). There are 

also other indigenous populations with 

documentable (albeit understated or 

denied) African heritage, but the 

Garifuna are the most iconic case of 

dual African and indigenous cultural 

heritage, reflected especially in their 

language, which is of Arawakan origin.  

Some Garifuna in Honduras even define 

themselves as indigenous, Afro-

Indigenous, or autochthonous.  Others 

emphasize their blackness and align 

themselves with other Afro-

descendants. These alignments are also 

reflected in the wider regional networks 

to which Garifuna civil society 

organizations and social movements 

belong (Anderson, 2009).    

The activists who emphasize the 

ethnically autochthonous character of 

the Garifuna seek to expand the 

meaning of Indigenous so that it is not 

conflated with or restricted strictly to 

Indian.  By claiming autochthonous 

status, Garifuna activists have asserted 

their identity and social location as 

―long-standing occupants of territory 

who bear non-European linguistic and 

cultural ‗traditions‘ and the same 

collective rights as indigenous peoples‖ 

(Anderson, 2009, page. 124).  The 

language and ideology of autochthony 

have facilitated the Garifuna‘s pursuit 

of a political agenda perceived as 

equivalent to that of indigenous people 

in their common preoccupation with 

issues related to rural communities‘ 

vulnerability to displacement and to 

having their communal rights to land 

discounted.  These convergent interests 

lie at the heart of the politics of 

indigeneity, despite the fact that the two 

populations have been differently 

racialized as Black and Indian.  

According to Mark Anderson, 

mobilizing around an indigenous rights 

paradigm or model has enabled the 

Garifuna to  

 
address cultural and linguistic 

oppression and claim rights to 

cultural and linguistic difference.  It 

helped turn stereotypes of Garifuna 

primitiveness into valorized 

traditions. The paradigm brought to 

the fore the problems of access to 

land and resources, rendering rural 

communities the center of political 

concern. Like (other) indigenous 

peoples, Garifuna would mobilize an 

image of themselves as stewards of 

the environment, protecting that 

which Western modernity destroyed.  

Indigeneity thus provided a language 

through which collective claims 

could be made and heard; it made 

Garifuna a collective subject that the 

state and other actors could recognize 

as legitimately distinctive. Garifuna, 

though identifying and identified as 

Black, became ‗visible‘ as a 

collective subject to the state, 

indigenous and environmental 

organizations, international NGOs, 

multilateral institutions, and the 

public media by appearing in the 

same metacultural frame as 

indigenous peoples (Anderson, 2009, 

page 134).  

 

During the 1990s, Hondoran 

multicultural discourse, as reflected in 



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―legislation and presidential accords[,] 

employed the phrase ‗etnias 

autóctonas‘.‖  Later, the legal language 

shifted to ―pueblos indígenas y 

afrohondureños,” recognizing that state 

policies on the indigenous should also 

include or apply to Afro-Hondurans.   

These shifts in government policy and 

action resulted from the relatively 

effective mobilizations the Garifuna 

undertook to be recognized as a distinct 

people politically and legally 

convergent with indigenous citizens. 

This approach gave them greater 

leverage in combatting displacement 

from ancestral territories whose 

communal stewardship was being 

eroded by the increasing encroachments 

from real estate development, projects 

in tourism and agribusiness, and 

mestizo peasant land occupation 

(Anderson, 2009, page 27, 225).    

Although the relationship 

between blackness and indigeneity 

continues to be debated, the Garifuna‘s 

status as a distinct people is firmly 

established in Honduras‘ multicultural 

regime. Their collective subject position 

is no longer questioned, even when it is 

argued that the Garifuna can be more 

accurately characterized as mestizos—

that is, as descendants of Caribbean 

Island Arawaks and Caribs as well as of 

black Africans (Anderson, 2009, page 

137) in a society in which the 

hegemonic category of mestizo is 

traditionally reserved for descendants of 

Spaniards and Indians. 

 

The Maroons of Suriname 

 

Another historical case of Afro-

descendant and Indigenous contact and 

exchange which did not lead to a 

Garifuna-like cultural and linguistic 

fusion, is found in the case of Maroon 

societies, especially those of Suriname‘s 

rainforest Maroons, formerly referred to 

as ―Bush Negroes.‖ Richard Price 

(2011) has thoroughly documented how 

Maroons developed some aspects of 

their adaptation to the rainforest from 

their contact with their indigenous 

neighbors, who were sometimes allies 

but often rivals over land, resources, 

and women.  During what is called the 

historic ―First-Time,‖ when the 

Saamaka (called Saramaka in the 

literature), for instance, fought against 

the 18
th

 century Dutch colonialists for 

their autonomy, there was a paucity of 

women runaways (Price, 2002; 2011).  

Consequently, Maroons raided 

indigenous villages for women whom 

they abducted to adopt into their 

settlements.  Price recounts a number of 

stories about Amerindian women whose 

Saaamaka descendants retain the 

―memory‖ of their partial indigenous 

ancestry, which is integral to their sense 

of authenticity as sovereign rainforest 

inhabitants and communal stewards of 

ancestral territories.  

 

Claiming Collective, Tribal Rights: 

Important Legal Precedents  

 

The struggles of Afro-

descendants often have implications, 

legally and politically, for indigenous 

peoples—and vice versa.  One clear 

instance of this lies in Surinamese 

Maroons‘ petitions to the Inter-

American Commission on Human 

Rights and the subsequent litigation for 

rights via the Inter-American Court of 

Human Rights (Price, 2011).  The 

Maroons filed their grievances against 

the ―destructive resource exploitation 

that the state and transnational 

corporations promote in their relentless 

pursuit of development at the expense 

of Maroon and indigenous wellbeing‖ 

(Harrison, 2013b, page 128).  The court 

judgments have been important legal 

precedents that have benefited 

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claims. As we shall see, tribal status is 

roughly equivalent to the autochthonous 

status that Garifuna have achieved in 

Honduras.   

Richard Price‘s (2011) award-

winning Rainforest Warriors: Human 

Rights on Trial,  along with many 

articles in legal journals (e.g., 

Antkowiak, 2007), have documented 

how the Ndjuka and particularly the 

Saramaka/Saamaka have taken their 

rights claims to the Inter-American 

Court on Human Rights and won 

important judgments.  Three 

consequential Surinamese Maroon cases 

are: the 1993 Aloeboetoe et al. v. 

Surname; the 2005 Moiwana v. 

Suriname case, which built upon the 

1993 case as well as the 2001 Awas 

Tingni v. Nicaragua (which was the 

―first binding judgment recognizing 

indigenous peoples‘ property rights as 

being grounded in custom,‖ page 102); 

then in 2007 the Saramaka People v. 

Suriname case, which was made around 

the time of a shift in favor of indigenous 

rights due to the ratification of the UN 

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous 

Peoples. Each of these cases (which 

implicated the Suriname state for 

military incursions, massacres, and 

economic and environmental assaults 

against Maroon communities) built on 

earlier judicial precedents, taking the 

question of communal self-

determination a step further in human 

rights jurisprudence.  

 There has been a 

mutuality and symbiosis between 

indigenous (Amerindian) and tribal 

cases.  Key indigenous cases that have 

been particularly relevant to the 

jurisprudence are: Awas Tingni v. 

Nicaragua, 2001; Yakye Axa v. 

Paraguay, 2005; and Sawhoyamaxa v. 

Paraguay, 2006. The more recent 

judgment for the 2012 case of the 

Sarayaku v. Ecuador clearly drew upon 

the 2007 Saramaka case, which set an 

important international precedent for 

stipulations of consent and prior 

consultation (Fasken Martineau, 2012).  

According to one source: 
 

The standard regarding the need to 

obtain consent of indigenous peoples 

has already been established by the 

Inter-American Court in the 

sentencing of the case Saramaka v. 

Surinam, in which the court said that 

whenever large-scale development or 

investment plans have a significant 

impact within indigenous territory, 

the State has the obligation to 

consult, but also to obtain free, prior 

and informed consent, respecting 

their culture and traditions (Amazon 

Watch, 2012).  

 

Tribal Designation Recognized  

 

Drawing on jurisprudence 

developed from earlier court precedents 

and established policies such as the 
World Bank Group‘s policies on 

indigenous and tribal peoples adopted in 

1982 (Price, 2011, page 210), the Inter-

American Court strengthened the 

determination that the Saramaka 

constituted a:   

 
tribal community whose social, 

cultural and economic characteristics 

are different from other sections of 

the national community, particularly 

because of their special relationship 

with their ancestral territories, and 

because they regulate themselves, at 

least partially, by their own norms, 

customs, and/or traditions (Price 

2011, page 212, quoting the Court). 

 

According to ESCR-Net [or the 

International Network for Economic, 

Social, Cultural Rights] caselaw 

database, ―The Court decided [on 

November 28, 2007] that although the 

Saramakas were not an indigenous 

community, they had certain 

resemblances with traditional 

indigenous communities and therefore 

enjoyed the same rights. As a 



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 84
 

consequence, they did not need a title in 

order to own the lands (possession was 

sufficient)‖ (ESCR-Net, no date).    

Price writes that some legal 

scholars claim that the Saramaka case 

―was the first binding international 

decision to recognize tribal peoples‘ 

rights to the natural resources located in 

their lands, indicating that tribal peoples 

are more akin to indigenous 

communities than they are to other 

ethnic, linguistic,  or religious 

minorities‖ (Price, 2011, page 234).  

However, Price explains that the 

Suriname Maroons gained recognition 

as ―tribal peoples‖ before the 2007 

decision.  Their tribal character was 

acknowledged in the 1993 judgment of 

Aloeboetoe v. Suriname, which was 

informed by the Court‘s use of 

definitions in ILO (International Labor 

Organization) Convention No. 169, ―a 

treaty ratified widely in the Americas 

and which applies to both indigenous 

and tribal peoples‖ (Price, 2011, page 

234).  Moreover, in Moiwana Village v 

Suriname, the court recognized and 

―upheld Ndjuka Maroon land and 

resource rights, though in a more 

limited context than in The Saramaka 

People v. Suriname‖ (Ibid.).    

 

Broader Implications of Human Rights 

Court Judgments 

 

 According to Price, the 

broader implications of the 2007 

decision and the Interpretive Judgment 

issued the very next year is  

 
that for the first time the Court 

addressed a people‘s corporate 

(collective) rights, instead of viewing 

them merely as an aggregation of 

individuals or as a 

community/village.  In this case, the 

Court established the Saramaka 

people‘s right to recognition as a 

corporate legal identity, despite the 

lack of such a possibility under 

current Suriname law.  In addition, 

the Court awarded monetary damages 

for the first time to an indigenous or 

tribal people for a State having 

caused environmental harm to its 

lands and resources (2011, page 235).  

 

 

Territorial rights include 

―recognition of ‗their right to manage, 

distribute, and effectively control such 

territory, in accordance with their 

customary laws and traditional 

collective land tenure system‘‖ (page 

235).  Price points out that indigenous 

and tribal peoples (whose territories 

contain ―large stretches of rainforest‖) 

should be participants in negotiating 

policies and programs related to climate 

change, the reduction of carbon dioxide 

emissions (―caused by deforestation,‖ 

page  236), and the development of low 

carbon development strategies. This can 

only be the case if states can be held 

accountable to the human rights 

principles emphasized in The Saramaka 

People v. Suriname and the UN 

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous 

Peoples. However, it is much more 

common for indigenous and tribal 

peoples to be excluded from these high 

stakes discussions.  This continues to be 

the case in Suriname, where the 

government and the transnational 

corporations with which it colludes 

have refused to comply with the Court‘s 

ruling (Price, 2012; Human Rights 

Brief, 2013). The 2012 French edition 

of Price‘s book ends with an updated 

and expanded afterword in which the 

author provides details on the ways that 

the Republic of Suriname has 

repeatedly repudiated the Inter-

American Court‘s mandates.  His 

discussion underscores the limitations 

of the international neoliberal human 

rights regime.  

 

Concluding Remarks 



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 Indigenous peoples and 

Afro-descendants have had trajectories 

of struggle that at times overlap or 

intersect in significant ways. It is 

important to recognize the convergences 

as well as the divergences in these 

histories and in present-day 

predicaments that inform human rights 

politics and legalities.  The 

interrelationships and interdependence 

between black and indigenous struggles 

are transnational in salience and scope. 

We need to map them from Standing 

Rock and Flint to San Jose, Costa Rica 

where the Inter-American Commission 

and Court on Human Rights does its 

adjudication, juridical work that is 

absolutely necessary but clearly 

insufficient, as the outcomes of positive 

judgments have revealed.  The 

international community has to find 
more effective ways enforce human 

rights law by compelling states, 

transnational corporations, and global 

civil society to comply with the 

judgments and recommendations of 

regional and international human rights 

courts.  Otherwise, the international 

human rights regime, as it is constituted 

now, cannot effectively operate to 

curtail the persistence of a global status 

quo in which humanity, human rights, 

and human dignity are—despite the 

universalist claims to the contrary—

differentially calibrated.  This results in 

some lives mattering more than others 

due to the racialized workings of modes 

of sociopolitical disciplining and tactics 

of population management that result in 

the division of the world‘s population 

into full humans, not-quite-humans, and 

nonhumans (Weheliye 2014).   

 We are facing many 

crises throughout the world, but those of 

highest priority are ecological and 

political-economic, implicating 

environmental injustices along with 

widening disparities of power, wealth, 

health, and life expectancy. The 

survival and sustainability of the Earth 

and human life are seriously at stake. 

The world‘s growing disparities cannot 

be adequately interrogated without the 

critical insights provided by an 

intersectional understanding of 

racializing processes.  Indigenous and 

Afro-descendant communities are 

among those that bear the brunt of the 

convergent crises that these processes 

engender.  The movements that have 

arisen from these peoples‘ predicaments 

can potentially offer decolonial visions 

and sensibilities for forging paths 

toward a more humane and sustainable 

future. Engaged scholars should be 

encouraged to illuminate and give voice 

to those critical insights.   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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V.2, N.1 – 2018 
ISSN 2526-6675 

REVISTA SOBRE ACESSO À JUSTIÇA E DIREITOS NAS AMÉRICAS ABYA YALA 

 

 

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