Colonization and Climate Change
Colonization lies at the root of today’s climate crisis.
Native peoples have been living in the Midwest and stewarding this land since time immemorial. European settlers used violence and other unjust means to colonize what is now Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and Nebraska and forcibly remove native nations in order to make way for white settlement.
Today, over 98% of private rural land in the US is owned by white people (USDA)
Such colonization has led to ecological disruption and the destruction of healthy soil — and lies at the root of today’s climate crisis. In her essay Tallgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer writes,
Before 1800, more than 60 million bison roamed the continent, playing a vital role in thriving prairie ecosystems, and sinking carbon into the soil. When Indigenous people resisted imprisonment on reservations, U.S. cavalrymen forced submission by intentionally destroying the buffalo herds on which they depended. By 1870, no bison remained in Iowa.
Forced displacement of Native people has led to ecological disruption and destruction of healthy soil. Again, colonization lies at the root of today’s climate crisis.
The Indigenous-led Great Plains Action Society seeks to resist colonization by rematriating land in Iowa.
“It all got ‘broke’ at the same time — the prairie, the treaties, and the relationship between people and land. Between 1800 and 1930, 95% of the world’s Tallgrass prairie was converted to farmland. What took 12,000 years to become rich with thousands of species, took only 120 years to turn into an ecological desert, composed essentially of two species: corn and soybeans.”
Why Iowa?
Due to the forced removal of Indigenous people and colonial agriculture, Iowa is the most biologically altered state in the US:
There are no Old Growth Forests left
99.9% of Prairies are gone
95% of Wetlands are gone
About 2/3 of Iowa’s 36 million acres are corn and soybeans, requiring massive amounts of fertilizer, insecticides, herbicides, and petroleum
Over 97 percent of Iowa has been altered for cities, roads and agricultural use
Iowa (and all the Midwest) is losing topsoil 10-1000 times faster than it can be replenished
Due to chemical runoff from agricultural practices in the Midwest, there is a Dead Zone larger than the state of Connecticut in the Gulf of Mexico