As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice, from Colonization to Standing Rock
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In honor of the 10 year anniversary of this book blog, I’ve asked a few VIP book lovers to write guest reviews. This review is by Laura Hamby, a friend with a heart of gold and a knack for corralling zoo animals. Here’s her review of As Long as Grass Grows:
As a kid named Laura who grew up excitedly reading (and visiting the sites of) Laura Ingalls Wilder books, beginning to learn about injustices committed against Native people did not start for me until a Native lit class in college. Getting to know my grandmother, who is disconnected from the Karuk tribe due to colonialism’s harsh consequences, has expanded my interest in learning more too. It definitely takes deliberate effort to unlearn what we have all been taught and to uncover what has been intentionally hidden from us. Reading As Long as Grass Grows (and other books referenced within it- like Killers of the Flower Moon, Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, and Dispossessing the Wilderness) adds more to the knowledge base required for activism to be effective + well-informed by the people it most deeply affects.
This book is really a first-of-its-kind gathering of information related to environmental justice as it concerns Native nations in this country. Gilio-Whitaker is a devoted scholar of Indigenous rights issues and collaborates with other powerful voices doing similar work. As Long As Grass Grows is well-researched and presented in such a way that those just beginning their environmental justice journey gain an overview, brief history, and idea of the urgency of these issues. Protecting institutionally underserved groups can ultimately better serve everyone if we move forward from an understanding that no one wants to be poisoned by corporate interests on our planet.
As so many concerns are connected, it is difficult to know what to devote pages to within one book–personally, I would have loved for some of the lengthier explorations to leave space for more detail about traditional foodways, disappearing languages, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women due to man camps, and the plight of Hawaiian people due to colonialism and tourism. I would also love to read a second edition of this book considering all of the advances (and continued setbacks…) since its publishing in 2019, especially because intersectional environmentalism as a term and movement was not coined by Leah Thomas until 2020. I give this book four flames, and may it start a fire in many readers’ hearts!
