ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on two ecofeminist stereotypical formulations: those of Native American culture and those of Asian Indian women's activism. In both cases, it argues that white ecofeminist discourses of racial difference implicitly attempt to resolve three contradictions. One is the apparent contradiction of being an antiracist movement that is predominantly white, stemming from the segregated history of social movements from which ecofeminism arises. The second contradiction is the coexistence of an ecofeminist critique of the patriarchal connection between women and nature with the deep desire for a nonpatriarchal version of that connection. The third contradiction, ever more apparent in the early 1990s, is the continued orientation of ecofeminism toward radical politics while experiencing a growing separation from localized, issue-oriented direct action. Women in the environmental justice movement are in a multitude of class and race locations that cut across the "industrial" and the "tribal", concerned about the effects of structural racism on the material conditions of postindustrial society.
