Indigenous Philosophy in Contemporary Environmental Ethics

Since the early twenty-first century, Indigenous American philosophical concepts — reciprocity, kinship with non-human beings, and the rights of nature discussed throughout this module — have moved from the margins toward the center of global environmental ethics and policy debate, driven both by direct Indigenous-led political mobilization and by a broader recognition among Western environmental scientists and philosophers that Indigenous communities steward a disproportionate share of the world's remaining biodiversity. A landmark moment in this shift came with the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe's 2016–2017 opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline's planned route beneath the Missouri River near the tribe's reservation in North and South Dakota, which drew thousands of Indigenous and non-Indigenous demonstrators (self-described as "water protectors") to the Standing Rock camps under the Lakota-language slogan Mni Wiconi, "Water is life," framing opposition to the pipeline explicitly in terms of Indigenous relational ethics rather than solely in terms of conventional environmental-regulatory objection.