The Literary Heritage of the Environmental Justice Movement by Lance Newman

Author:Lance Newman
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030145729
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

The implications of this passage are clear. The Mississaugas would be perfectly well justified in responding to dispossession with violence. But instead of devising “schemes of murder,” they have decided to take the path of righteousness and respond to oppression with faith and reasoned discourse: “Give us but the Bible and the influence of a Press, and we ask no more.”96 Using these very tools, Copway makes a series of clear and radical demands on behalf of “the Aborigines of America.97” He calls for “missions and high schools,” equality before the law, political enfranchisement, and a clearly defined sovereign territory “so that they may represent their own nation.”98 These demands, which amount to a program for cultural survivance and tribal sovereignty within the framework of the U.S. nation-state, are directly supported by the doubled persona that Copway has maintained throughout the preceding narrative. Because The Life, History, and Travels of Kah-ge-ga-gah-bowh (George Copway) functions simultaneously as a conversion narrative and a narrative of awakening to political consciousness and commitment, it lends solid weight to the idea that, despite the dominance of the colonizers, indigenous peoples remain adaptable and resourceful inhabitants of their ancestral homes, where they are determined to do much more than survive. They will fight across generations for the right to access to their land, and they will work to maintain the well-being of the ecological systems that nourish their bodies and communities.

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