Narrator Almost Ruined It

This book deserves a 5, but the narrator was 1 step above AI. Because if the importance of the subject, I struggled through. I will actively avoid this narrator in the future.

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Intersectional and Informative

As a counseling student passionate about public health, food sovereignty, and community wellness, I found As Long as Grass Grows incredibly powerful. Dina Gilio-Whitaker weaves history, activism, and Indigenous perspectives into a compelling narrative that connects environmental justice to healing and autonomy. Essential listening for anyone who cares about decolonization, health equity, and Indigenous rights.

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Required Reading

If you want access to the perspective of Indigenous Americans, Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s book is an excellent start. Deep dive into the legal, political, cultural framework forced upon Native Peoples by Settler Colonialism and the historical and continuing damage it inflicts on them.

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2 people found this helpful

Powerful Book

I thought this book was excellent. Provides a good (as good as possible in one short book) overall background to contextualize the Indigenous experience with and in relation to nature and environmental injustice. Though the subject matter is obviously and necessarily “heavy” I love that the author ends on a relatively hopeful note and with several suggestions of concrete things the reader can do to be a part of the solution instead of the problem.

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3 people found this helpful

Important, powerful, but a bit tendentious

First of all, I probably agree with virtually everything the author presents in this book, regarding native genocide, environmental racism, institutional sexism, the evil of settler colonialism, the inadequate support of liberalism to affect change for indigenous empowerment, and on and on. The book provides many examples of these problems and many more. I highly recommend the book as a primer for those people unfamiliar, or unwilling to accept, the issues facing indigenous peoples. But there's the rub, while it does delve deeply into some particular issues like the establishment of a workable environmental justice program, and what it might look like, it touches only tangentially on supporting issues. There are many citations of other, better books, like "The Other Slavery" by Andrés Reséndez, "Killers of the Flower Moon", by David Grann, and (a much lesser book, imho) by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, making me think at one point this was merely a book of compilations.

In addition, the last half of the book descends into a polemic screed, using a reductive "with god on our side" argument, though I'm not entirely sure she's aware of her own narrowness. While like-minded people can all agree that environmental protection and respect is pragmatic and culturally important, the inextricable linkage to native spirituality, much less to the sacred, is rather counterproductive. Not the least reason being that the author herself acknowledges, in dealing with those pesky "hippies", there is no spiritual wisdom to be imparted by indigenous people, it's just a magical myth created by the dominant western culture. But, when it suits her cause, she's more than willing to jump on the magical, mystical native bandwagon.

I was tempted to give this 3 stars, as that denotes "pretty good", by Audible standards. But to be honest, my issues with the author's integrity notwithstanding, I do agree with the theme of the book, and the need for real progress for not only indigenous survival, but for everyone. I respect the effort made in the book, even if I find some parts dubious.

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Well done

I will be listening to this audio book again. It was well written. Once you start you won’t want to take breaks, and if you do you’re excited to get back to it.

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A must read for all Americans

This book provides so much information about our history and uncovers truths that have been buried. It offers perspective that will help to lead us in a way of living in harmony. I highly recommend this book!

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2 people found this helpful

Engaging non-fiction with an important message

Important lessons for non-Native environmentalists on the long history of inequality in the US and environmental justice for tribal communities.

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Incredible source of environmental justice and indigenous framework

This is a very handy source for those within environmental communities. This book brings light to the harmful legacy of white supremacy on this country’s native people (US) and how the environmental movements through the last century have been both helpful and incredibly hurtful when taking on western-centric perspectives.

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Unbalanced Information

I wish that this author had presented more balanced perspectives of both the green energy sector and the oil/coal/nuclear energy sector. She demonizes the oil, coal and nuclear energy sectors and fails to mention or acknowledge the indigenous land, populations and communities around the world that are currently being impacted by the United States’ demand for green/clean energy products.

It is not difficult to find information regarding the destruction of indigenous people‘s land in countries like Peru or the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). And it is happening right now. We have a severe problem in United States where if we don’t see energy production happening in our own cities or our backyards then it doesn’t impact us at all or affect our livelihood. The reality remains that even though California is not burning coal they are still using it for more than 50% of their electricity. They are still draining the Colorado river despite all of the laws and bills to stop damning water flow into the ocean. Just because it is not happening in your own state does not mean that it isn’t happening in someone else’s state or in another country.

In the US’s fight to stop climate change, they’re pushing ever greater amounts of green energy technologies, which are built on human misery and literally mountains of toxic waste.

Amnesty International and numerous media outlets have conducted research and reported stories showing most of the cobalt required for the batteries needed for US’s big electric vehicle push comes from small mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Cobalt is a necessary metal in the rechargeable batteries that power almost every electronic device in the world today, including cellphones, laptop computers, tablets, electric vehicles, and the magnets used in wind turbines.

The DRC produces more than half of the cobalt used today—more than all the other countries in the world combined.

The government of the DRC has a terrible record of human rights abuses. Many of the workers in the country’s cobalt mines are enslaved or virtually enslaved tribe children. UNICEF estimated more than 40,000 children work in mines in the DRC, where hundreds, if not thousands, die in cave-ins and other mine accidents and from mining-related illnesses every year. Most of this cobalt is produced for, or purchased by, Chinese conglomerates operating in the DRC. Often, the cobalt is shipped to China, where it’s refined and put into all manner of electronic gadgets from cell phones to fighter jet display systems.

And it’s not just batteries for electric cars and battery backup for solar and wind industrial facilities that are built on slavery and human misery. Research from Sheffield Hallam University in the United Kingdom reports that a single province in China produces 45 percent of the polysilicon that makes up solar panels, the majority of which are assembled in China. The polysilicon and solar panels are produced by Uyghur Muslims under a huge forced-labor regime.

Solar panels are in huge demand because of climate change,” reports the BBC, discussing the study. “The global production of solar panels is using forced labour from China’s Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang province. … The [polysilicon] is obtained under a massive system of coercion.”

Cobalt and polysilicon are just two of the myriad minerals, metals, and composites underpinning all modern electronics for which the world depends on China and other oppressive regimes. Unless the Biden-Harris administration, other U.S. Democratic Party leaders, and the heads of other developed countries change course, child and slave labor will become even more prevalent, because each and every green energy technology they’re pushing for depends on these minerals and elements.

Huge amounts of earth must be mined to extract the sparsely spaced minerals and elements needed to create the batteries powering electric cars, as well as providing supplementary power when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun not shining. The refining of these minerals produces a toxic sludge that poisons adjacent and downstream peoples and environments.

Lithium is the lighter of all metals, and it is a crucial component in the production of batteries for laptops, smartphones, and the growing market of electric cars. According to "The United States Geological Survey in recent years, the global demand of lithium has skyrocketed, and its production tripled from 2015 to 85,000 tons by 2018" (BBC, 2019). Also, in 2018, the global market price of this mineral per one metric ton was 17 000 USD on average. This land in Peru was taken away by the government after the United States approached the Peruvian government for access to use their land for lithium production. Which poisons the ground water and the earth making it unusable for thousands of years. The United States did this knowingly because the Peruvian government could produce lithium at a lower cost and with less interference from the EPA.

Then there’s the huge waste problem being created by the push for green energy.

Even more energy-intensive mining and manufacturing are necessary to create the composite materials of which wind turbine blades and towers are formed. Massive amounts of energy are used to create and transport the tens of thousands of tons of carbon dioxide-intensive concrete necessary to anchor each wind turbine. Vast amounts of land, most often prime view areas, wildlife habitat, and migratory corridors, are transformed into energy-producing industrial parks when wind “farms” and vast solar arrays are erected.

And the results are huge piles of toxic trash when batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels fail prematurely or simply cease working at the end of their anticipated useful lives, which are difficult to process, recycle, or dispose of. Because of the way they’re assembled and the materials they’re made with, lithium-ion batteries are difficult to recycle. Attempting to disassemble a battery for recycling can result in a short-circuit, explosion, and fire that releases toxic fumes.

Yet, absent recycling, the millions of electric vehicle batteries that manufacturers expect to produce over the next few decades will wind up in landfills, taking up huge amounts of space in conditions that can result in the release of toxins, including heavy metals.

Even before US (Biden Administration) began its big push to expand the use of electric vehicles and wind and solar industrial energy facilities, cities and states were already struggling to deal with the mounting waste from disabled wind turbines and solar panels.

Municipalities running certified landfills are increasingly rejecting wind turbine blades, even when they can charge double the amount per ton for accepting them, because they take up tremendous amounts of space, must be crushed at considerable expense, require hundreds of years to break down, and often release methane and volatile organic compounds into the environment. Nor can they be recycled, because they’re made of a composite of resin, fiberglass, and other materials.

The sheer waste of human lives specifically indigenous people’s lives, freedom, and resources for the left’s climate obsession is appalling. Exploiting the most vulnerable people and environments of the world in the vain hope of preventing a minuscule sea level rise and slightly warmer temperatures in the world 100 years from now is unwise and morally bankrupt.

Or how San Francisco based water developing company, Bechtel bought up Bolivia’s indigenous land to outsource water. And privatize the water to the point where indigenous people couldn’t afford to drink the water from their land. In 1997, the World Bank made privatization of the public water system of Bolivia's third largest city, Cochabamba, a condition of the country receiving further aid for water development. Within weeks of taking over the city's water, Bechtel's Bolivian company, Aguas del Tunari, raised rates by more than 50 percent and in some cases even higher. Fortunately, in April 2000, Bechtel was forced to leave the country and the water company was returned to public ownership. Here we have another American (Californian) based company destroying indigenous land outside of the California. Just because California has made it virtually impossible to dam up rain water that flows into the Pacific doesn’t mean that it stops needed water or isn’t using it. That water comes from somewhere. And guess what? It’s destroying another indigenous group.

This author pushes for green energy and makes an argument in favor of green energy production but somewhere in the world (maybe not the US) an indigenous community or under represented community is suffering at the hand of the United States.

Oil, nuclear, coal, wind, solar, etc…they’re all negativity impacting communities all over the world.

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13 people found this helpful