Virtual Speakers – Fireside Chat – Saving Our Planet? What We Need to Do Now to Combat Climate Challenges and Secure Our Future

Talk and Discussion – Earth Day Lecture 2022

American Indians’ Fight for Climate Justice

The U.S. Embassy in Berlin and U.S. Consulates in Germany are continuing their Virtual Speaker Series that engages extraordinary American experts and visionaries with counterparts and audiences here in Germany.

We are excited to welcome you to our next event featuring Dina Gilio-Whitaker, activist and educator and Rose-Anne Clermont, moderator.

Streaming of the next event: April 26, 2022 at 19:00 – 20:00 CET (10:00 am PST)

Please register here:

On the occasion of Earth Day, journalist, activist, and educator Dina Gilio-Whitaker will discuss climate justice in the context of settler colonialism, American Indian history and current movements with moderator Rose-Anne Clermont. Defining climate justice as a subset of environmental justice, Dina Gilio-Whitacker understands environmental justice in terms of theory, activism, praxis, discourse, law, and policy. She critiques the concept of environmental racism as “too narrow of a framework to contain our issues as a colonized people,” and for collapsing “all ethnic minorities into one category.” She calls for the field of environmental justice to be indigenized by recognizing Native nationhood and sovereignty and American Indians' “different histories and relationship to land.”

You can download the program here

Speakers

Photo: © Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Activist and educator, lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent educator in American Indian environmental policy and other issues. At CSUSM she teaches courses on environmentalism and American Indians, traditional ecological knowledge, religion and philosophy, Native women’s activism, American Indians and sports, and decolonization. She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. As a public intellectual, Dina brings her scholarship into focus as an award-winning journalist, with her work appearing at Indian Country Today, the Los Angeles Times, High Country News, Time.com, Slate, History.com, Bioneers, Truthout, the Pacifica Network, Grist, CSPAN Booktalk, The Boston Globe, and many more. Dina is the author of two books; the most recent award-winning As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. She is currently under contract with Beacon Press for a new book under the working title Illegitimate Nation: Privilege, Race, and Accountability in the U.S. Settler State.

Rose-Anne Clermont

Moderator

Rose-Anne Clermont, is a Haitian-American journalist, editor and writer who first came to Germany on a Fulbright Fellowship in 1999. She permanently moved to Berlin two years later and wrote about migration, integration, and climate, among other topics, for Clean Energy Wire, Spiegel Online, Die Zeit, The New York Times and other international media. For almost two years she wrote a weekly column about identity, race, and politics for Berliner Zeitung. In 2020, Rose-Anne was an English editor at eu2020.de, Germany’s official EU Council Presidency website. She spent many years working with NGOs that support journalism in developing countries, and she was a lecturer of journalism at the University for Applied Sciences (HMKW). She is the author of a humorous memoir entitled Bushgirl: How I Got Stuck with the Germans (Random House Germany). Rose-Anne holds a liberal arts degree from Sarah Lawrence College and a master’s degree from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.