Brainstorm Week 9 - Albert Lam

In Indigenous Matters, Dian Million, an Associate Professor in our very own UW American Indian Studies Department, details the plight that the indigenous population has suffered and how their culture and community have been wronged. Million's narrative connects to buen vivir, Mother Earth, and the readings we did last week in that they all share the idea of respecting nature as a party that has agency, has identity, and has rights. Although this is seemingly simple and obvious, current legislation, and the fact that Ecuador is relatively novel in their approach, suggests otherwise. The Indigenous ways and school of thought, as described by Million, presses that it is imperative to "[confront] the hierarchies that do violence to matter, including the matter that humans are" (107). And, the new section of the Ecuadorian constitution was just that: a law to protect matter (Mother Earth, the greatest origin and creator of matter), from the hierarchies that do violence to matter, namely neoliberalist hierarchy.

Likewise, Ybarra adds to the discussion by describing the findings of a Yale study that found that "Hispanics more than any other single ethnic group in the United States favor changes in current energy policies in order to address climate change" (4). What is baffling to mainstream media is logical to Ybarra; she states that  "Latinas/os have sustained a reciprocal relation with the natural environment over many years and by means of unique values and practices, even in the fact of environmental injustice" (4). By examining literature between 1848 and 2010, she unearths the values of goodlife writing, simplicity, sustenance, dignity, and respect, which go hand in hand with a respect for Mother Nature and buen vivir.