Environmental Justice Training
In conjunction with the Native American Student Development Center (NASD), the Associated Students of the University of California, Office of Student Senator Madapoosi (Eco Office) hosted a screening of the documentary “Beyond Recognition” as well as a Q and A session with Antônio Bastida, the assistant director at NASD.
Both events were designed to draw attention to the sustainability that Indigineous land stewardship promoted, the simultaneity of European colonization with destructive land, air and water practices, and a broader alliance between dismantling systemic Indigienous oppression and intersectional environmentalism.
The Eco Office noticed a historical predominance of white voices and biases in the environmentalism movement that failed to take into account how the same forces destroying the environment were also detrimental to marginalized non-white people groups. One of the goals of the Indigenious Sovereignty training module was thus to bring Indignious voices and challenges back to the forefront of the modern environmentalism conversation.
My department was mostly tasked with compiling additional resources for the personal reference of module attendees and running the actual event. To do so we spent a few weeks researching the topics related to our module, putting together a comprehensive pdf file and summarizing our findings for the newsletter. Furthermore, we spent a meeting or two to plan out the itinerary of the event, ushered seating at the event and put together a snack bar for afterwards. At its peak our event had around sixty participants.
The event proved to be a nice way to tie together different segments of the environmentalism community at UC Berkeley and see how our respective niche interests could still be applicable to broader environmental justice themes. Overall I think the event and its supplemental materials were rather comprehensive and educational; for future training modules I think we should also think more about marketing and publicity so as to increase turnout.
Project Year: 2021
Completed by: Josh Chou
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