This course centers Indigenous knowledge, sovereignty, and land-based practices as essential to climate justice. Students learn how Native communities have confronted settler colonialism, land dispossession, water injustice, pollution, fire suppression, fossil fuel extraction, and climate change while continuing to protect land, water, food systems, culture, and community. The course examines cultural burning as an Indigenous climate adaptation practice, explores how Native Americans have been impacted by and are resisting the causes and effects of climate change, and highlights Native-led environmental movements in California.
Across these lectures, students are introduced to Traditional Ecological Knowledge, food sovereignty, Land Back, water justice, cultural fire, and Indigenous climate resilience. Together, the course frames Indigenous climate action as both resistance to environmental harm and a pathway toward decolonial, community-led climate futures.
