The world has reached a tipping point in its treatment of the environment. The capitalist drive to maximize production has led to vast degradation of the natural environment: our world has warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, ocean acidity has risen 30% since the start of the Industrial Revolution, the ice sheets across the globe are rapidly melting, and 75% of land surface has been significantly altered for starters. Furthermore, documents and legislation, such as the Paris Agreement, have failed to instigate change in the world’s treatment of nature. Western environmental research and policy has fallen significantly short of halting the changes to our world, and the clock is ticking to find new solutions. This thesis employs knowledge, principles, attitudes, and practices from indigenous cultures to compliment the dominant societies’ efforts towards achieving environmental sustainability.
Current global and national environmental policy has been insufficient in catalyzing change in capitalist interaction with nature. The Paris Agreement’s legal character does not compel any legally binding changes to behavior, seen in the use of “should” versus “shall” in the document, leading to the recommendations to behavior being much more constructive to environmental sustainability efforts than the obligations. The United States legislation surrounding indigenous people is lackluster: failing to recognize historical implications of the relationship, lacking support to the groups, and failing to acknowledge disadvantages that these communities face.
As a case study to examine the potential of indigenous knowledge integrating into environmental legislation, the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) environmental approaches and principles were compared to New York State environmental law. New York state has progressed in many ways since the 1880s when Onondaga Lake was first polluted and desecrated by industrial waste, but this thesis has shown that the integration of indigenous principles into New York’s environmental law could create an amplified sense of respect and reciprocity for nature.