Environmental Justice

Teaching Strategies and Classroom Activity Overview

The first part of the unit will provide a background and framework for students to think about what makes up the study of environmental justice. Using the Pellow article from seminar in May discussed above, students will get an overview of the history of the discipline and be encouraged to think about the Principles of Environmental Justice as outlined within. Teaching strategies will include note taking and summarizing information. Students will work in groups to explain/describe the written principles using both text and visual communication. This investigation will show students not only what environmental justice is but will give them a sense of what environmental injustice looks like.

The second part of the unit will focus on two specific issues in the Western Hemisphere that involve environmental justice as it relates to land ownership and indigenous populations. The two examples that I will share with students are the deforestation of the Amazon in South America and the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the present-day United States.

Using the strategies of direct instruction and note taking, students will first review information about the historic treatment of specific native populations by European colonizers and settlers, learning about the injustice of their land being taken for the benefit of the dominant white population. Students will think about how the removal of land from the indigenous population, or the removal of the indigenous population from their land, fits the definition of environmental racism and environmental justice.

Once students have this background, they will look at specific issues and policies of land use that have continued into the present day and continue to affect the indigenous people. How and why are these specific groups of indigenous people subject to governmental actions that continue to harm them? Who benefits the most from these policies and who is responsible for the continued appropriation of land and resources? During this part of the unit students will be utilizing teaching strategies of guided reading and inquiry-based learning both individually and in pairs.

The third part of the unit will ask students to dig into other issues around the world that have affected and/or continue to affect indigenous populations and are related to land use (or misuse). Students will use what they have learned to identify and explain other environmental injustices and share that information with classmates, either presenting to the whole class or in small groups. Viewers of these presentations will generate questions and feedback that must be responded to, strengthening everyone’s understanding of the issues and sharpening the historical research and discussion skills.

More than just summarizing data, students will be responsible for identifying who is responsible for the injustice and who is getting harmed, outlining the power dynamic. Students will also be tasked with suggesting appropriate solutions to the issues that they have researched.

One reason for doing a culminating project such as this is to convey the message that while there is still environmental racism and there are still environmental injustices, the possibility that improvement exists.  Students will be asked to research positive changes using data available at the Global Change Data Lab and will use the teaching strategy of inquiry-based learning to examine this data.

Several examples may include child and infant mortality. According to their data infant mortality has dropped dramatically throughout the world and has dropped in the United States and Brazil as well (see Figure 1 below). While the data does not specifically reference indigenous populations in the United States and Brazil, students can see that the possibility that improvements in health are attainable. ³⁹ Other examples of positive changes also exist, and students will be guided in their inquiries to find, compare, and discuss this information.

Figure 1. Child and Infant Mortality, OurWorldlnData.org/child-mortality/

In order to provide balance, students will also look at the issue of trust, using data from the same website. The data in Figure 2 below shows that the percentage of people that agree with the statement “most people can be trusted” has not risen significantly in the United States in recent decades and has receded in Brazil. ⁴⁰ Again, one cannot make a direct connection between this data and the level of trust that indigenous people in the United States or Brazil have; but the students will still benefit from researching, comparing, and contrasting the data which will aid them in processing the information presented in this unit.

Figure 2 World Attitudes about Trust Source: World Values Survey (2022)

I expect that this unit will be taught in approximately two weeks, roughly 10 – 12 school days. Over the span of the unit students will transition from passive learning to active learning as quickly as possible. Although some modeling and scaffolding of the processes will be required, I want students to form their own opinions of the experiences of the indigenous populations and form their own opinions of the sources that they review. In order to facilitate this, I will create graphic organizers that students can use for reviewing different types of materials. Students will do some work independently but will also work in small groups to encourage academic conversations about what they are learning. We will review material as a group when necessary and students will be encouraged to review material on their own as well. Students working in small groups will also be given assistance in organizing and formatting the material for sharing with other groups and/or the whole class, once again to foster academic conversations about the material.

The entire unit will be rooted in the Historical and Social Sciences Analysis Skills listed in the California content standards for social studies. These include comparisons of past and present events, determination of the types of change that have occurred and identifying where change has not taken place. These standards also call for students to review multiple primary and secondary sources and integrate that information using it in both written and oral presentations.