Environmental Justice

Introduction

Prior to the arrival of European explorers in the 16^th century, the indigenous population of the Americas was comprised of a number of vibrant and varied peoples and societies. Estimates from a number of sources range from a low of eight and a half million to about one hundred and twelve million.¹

After the arrival of European explorers, this population was decimated and by approximately 1692 most historians put the number of remaining indigenous people at about ninety percent of the pre-1492 total. This population loss was caused by a combination of factors including new diseases brought by the Europeans, military actions, and overwork of the enslaved indigenous population.² Today in the United States indigenous populations are at just over 1% of the pre-Columbian total. ³ Estimates from Brazil are just as dismaying. Of the roughly 2,000 separate nations and millions of people that existed in the sixteenth century, only about 300,000 remain, currently grouped into about two hundred nations.⁴In addition to the loss of life, indigenous people had to deal with a loss of their lands as well.

This unit will allow students to investigate how this loss of life and land constituted an environmental injustice, and how the practice of using and taking indigenous lands continues to this day.

School Information

I currently teach Ethnic Studies and other social science classes at Mt. Pleasant High School in San Jose, California. Mt. Pleasant is a racially diverse school within the city of San Jose but outside of the immediate downtown area. So, it is a cross between an urban and suburban school. According to information found on the California School Dashboard the student population is currently just under 1200 students. Roughly seventy-one percent of the students are LatinX while roughly sixteen percent of the students are Asian. Roughly six percent are Filipino and the remaining students are Native American, African American, Pacific Islander, and White.

Mt. Pleasant is experiencing declining enrollment, as are many schools in the greater San Jose area. This is primarily due to economic pressures in the form of rising rents and other costs that are squeezing lower income families out of the area. About two thirds of the students at Mt. Pleasant are socioeconomically disadvantaged based on the current California guidelines.

Because my students are predominantly students of color and from mainly lower socioeconomic status families they are especially attuned to the idea of individual rights and the inequality of the world around them. They understand that the world they live in is unfair, and are motivated to learn more about the plight of others in similar levels of inequality. They are attuned to environmental issues and how those issues will impact their future.

This unit will be situated at the start of the school year and taught in both Ethnic Studies and World History. It will set the tone for the entire year in both classes, as the discussion of current inequalities will be a jumping off point to study how societies evolved into their current inequitable state of being. While focused on environmental aspects, the research and learning that my students do at the start of the year with be transferrable to other specific units that we study and will anchor both classes in the perspective of identifying and describing the inequalities of the world in which they operate.