ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how Indigenous people often suffer disproportionately from the negative impacts of environmentally harmful activities but may also have their traditional rights upheld through exemptions in law—a situation whereby Indigenous people may be marginalised with respect of access to (some) natural resources (e.g., clean air, clean water), but, due to their ethnic and cultural status, may be able to continue with some activities that might otherwise be prohibited under environmental and wildlife legislation. In particular, this chapter contemplates examples of culturally endorsed animal harm, such as the whaling practices of ethnic minorities and Indigenous peoples, that would otherwise be unlawful under contemporary environmental protection legislation. The author discusses existing perspectives on Indigenous rights and how these align—or not—with contemporary ecological (and species) justice discourse. In doing so, the author highlights the cultural importance of certain natural resource exploitation practices in relation to specific ethnic or cultural identities such that, for example, animal killing activities continue despite legislative or political efforts to eliminate them. Drawing on some of his previous work, the author illuminates how animal harm is socially constructed to have different meanings according to the society in which it occurs and thus the same act may have multiple meanings: illegal wildlife crime in the view of animal activists and legislators, or legitimate cultural practice in the eyes of the Indigenous person committing the act. The chapter’s purpose is not develop a cookie-cutter approach to future issues or tensions of this nature, but to shed light on how Indigenous people’s historical environmental rights have been criminalised or become subject to challenge by contemporary environmental justice perspectives.
