Book Review: Indigenous environmental justice by K. Jarratt-Snyder and M. O. Nielsen

• Author: Karen Clark
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/1057567721989406
• Published date: 01 September 2022
• Date: 01 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

and low employment rates for children. Many children, nationally and globally, are deprived of

receiving an education. For example, the attack on education by Boko Haram seemed inescapable

for some individuals; if girls attended school, they were attacked and, on many occasions, killed.

Becker also discusses the presence of child labor and how it invoked efforts toward creating the

Worst Forms of Child Labor Convention, which mandated states to prohibit labor work for individ-

uals under the age of 18. Within the Challenges Faced section of this chapter, Becker presented failed

efforts by advocates and legal professionals. For example, despite the efforts and legal repercussions,

one third of workers for the sugarcane harvest (including Coca-Cola) were children under the age of

18. However, Becker indicates that between 1980 and 1990 continued efforts for the prohibition of

child labor f‌inally led to zero-tolerance clauses in 2007.

Throughout the book, Becker also highlights the global implications of the U.S. government’s

attempts to advance children’s rights, noting that U.S. advocates fought on behalf of child soldiers

to implement the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. This Act was adopted in 2008 by U.S. President

George W. Bush to prohibit funding to countries that use child soldiers. However, U.S. President

Barack Obama decided to issue waivers to four countries allowing the disbursement of military

aid, despite the use of child soldiers. This was a signif‌icant setback that inhibited other countries’

awareness of the maltreatment and potential eradication of the use of child soldiers. In 2012, persis-

tent advocacy and awareness led the Obama administration to reverse its decision and withhold mil-

itary funding and training until countries complied with the Child Soldiers Prevention Act. As a

result, in 2015, 8,000 children were released from armed forces and groups.

Overall, Campaigning for Children: Strategies for Advancing Children’s Rights explicates and

illustrates the conditions children ensue within the United States and other countries. Becker encour-

ages the perseverance of advocates working with policy makers and researchers, and how this col-

laboration can make children’s rights achievable. This book would be benef‌icial to scholars and

graduate students interested in better understanding children’s rights issues, as well as professionals

and policy makers.

Jarratt-Snyder, K., & Nielsen, M. O. (Eds). (2020). Indigenous environmental justice. University of Arizona Press.

209 pp. $35.00, ISBN 978-0-8165-4083-9.

Reviewed by: Karen Clark ,University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA.

DOI: 10.1177/1057567721989406

Indigenous Environmental Justice combines historical laws, events, and development on Indian

lands as a backdrop to argue that these actions have created a challenging collection of both nebulous

and specif‌ic consequences to tribal members and their lands. Specif‌ically, the book is a collection of

short essays covering the topics of practice of American Indian rituals on lands which may or may not

be under indigenous control, uranium mining on Indian lands in the American Southwest, energy

development (e.g., solar power, oil/gas), water quality issues on Indian lands, and the role of

American Indian women in urban settings as environmental activists. All of these topics are

viewed through the lens of environmental justice as def‌ined by the U.S. Environmental Protection

Agency, which encompasses the role of the community as part of the broader physical environment

and addresses potential damages to the human population as a consequence of degraded natural

resource or diminished resource allocation.

Throughout several essays, authors incorporated legal cases involving environmental justice and

American Indians. An example is the case of Healing v. Jones (1959), which resolved the conf‌lict of

competing land claims between two tribal nations. The Hopi brought suit against the Navajo, and the

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