“Indians walk softly and hurt the landscape hardly more than the birds and squirrels, and their brush and bark huts last hardly longer than those of wood rats, while their more enduring monuments, excepting those wrought on the forests by fires they made to improve their hunting grounds, vanish in a few centuries.” ~John Muir
Introduction
Sustainable Architecture Development is the future! Historically, the Native American community has been discriminated against and disproportionately relocated by the U.S. government, stimulating an increase in industrialization, carbon emissions, and toxic pollutants released into the atmosphere. Traditional architecture contributes to 50% of all carbon emissions in the U.S. alone. Enter sustainable development. With little to no government funding, this Op-Ed emphasizes the historical environmental injustices of Native Americans and the importance of Indigenous self-governance and proposes ideas for mainstream sustainable development.
Sustainable housing, and sustainability for that matter, is a critical strategy to combat climate change and mitigate humanity’s carbon footprint. Sustainable housing thinks outside the box; it progresses toward the future and how this generation and future generations can sustain Earth’s natural resources. This tactic focuses on producing houses with zero-carbon emissions coherent with the surrounding environment.
Before the arrival of Europeans, Native Americans have always lived a sustainable lifestyle. Although dispersed through tribes, all had a profound respect and relationship with the ecosystem and understood the unison between living organisms. It is only fitting to label Native Americans as the first environmentalists and recognize their way of living as an approach to benefiting their living conditions today. They understood that the actions of humans had a direct impact on the environment.
Throughout history, Native Americans have been systematically oppressed by the U.S. government, causing them to move constantly to government-allocated lands. Most of these reservations are federally recognized in poor conditions, overcrowded, low-income, and lack economic prosperity. It is critical to understand, know, and learn about the discrimination against Native Americans to comprehend why they are situated where they are today.
It was not until after the events of the Holocaust that human rights across the world would and should be universally recognized. This is why in the later 20th century, society witnessed an increment of non-profit and federal organizations to give attention toward (or not) native peoples.
One approach to solving the disparities of the Native American population is through sustainable development. Sustainable development meets the current generation’s needs and demands while not compromising future generations’ resources. Sustainable development is a fix; however, it is not spatial. This tactic applies to the Native American community through the enactment of self-governance, which in return, boosts economic growth and prosperity.
The whole idea of sustainability, in terms of housing, focuses on protecting the environment and creating affordable housing for Native Americans and under-represented communities. The keyword to take away from the sustainable housing definition is ‘affordability.’ Applying suitable sustainable development to the Native American community is only right given the historical context of U.S. government relations with the community. From white privilege to white supremacy and white liberalism, these traits contribute to the system’s failure to confront its racial past against natives.
In addition, Native voices should be present in federal decisions on carbon markets. What is meant by this? Big-name corporations like Amazon, Google, and Apple possess large industries that emit toxic pollutants into the air. There are three ways the Native American community can mitigate society’s carbon footprints through carbon taxes, credits, and offsets which can facilitate carbon production into the atmosphere. Although these are just some ideas, realistically, these would need to be implemented to ensure not only the welling being of native peoples but also incorporate their voice in federal/nature issues.
Much of the disparities that the Native American population face today can be blamed on the system and the structure from which the perspective was built: through a white, heterosexual viewpoint. Capitalism and democracy were built through power; the hegemonic politics of White maleness influenced the ideology of how a system should operate. This ideology was then integrated into the American schooling system, which is fully engrained into the psyche of American children when they enter school.
Thus a way to combat mainstream capitalism is through education. Educating society and future generations about the benefits of native self-governance and sustainable development is critical to advance their societal norm. These resolutions offer sustainable ideas about bettering the economy and how humans, specifically in the United States, should handle natural resources. The concept of Foucault, knowledge as power, can be gained through the power of education.
The evidence of impoverished life is apparent within the Native American community. As society progresses toward a more open and inclusive environment, action must be taken. This can be performed by promoting native self-governance or sustainable development, which serves as public discourses against capitalism.
