Dishonoring the Earth: Ecocide as Prosecutable Genocide Against Indigenous People

• Author: Abbey Koenning-Rutherford
• Position: Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. 2023; University of Oklahoma, B.A. 2018
• Pages: 1495-1531

NOTES

Dishonoring the Earth: Ecocide as Prosecutable

Genocide Against Indigenous People

ABBEY KOENNING-RUTHERFORD*

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1496

I. FRAMEWORKS: INTERNATIONAL LEGAL, ECONOMIC, INDIGENOUS . . . . . . . 1499

A. INTERNATIONAL LEGAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1499

B. ECONOMIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1501

C. INDIGENOUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1502

II. THE GENOCIDAL IMPACT OF ECOCIDE: A PROSECUTABLE CRIME?. . . . . . 1503

A. WHAT IS ECOCIDE? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1504

B. WHAT IS GENOCIDE? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1505

C. ECOCIDE AS PROSECUTABLE GENOCIDE IN THE INTERNATIONAL

CRIMINAL COURT . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1507

1. Element 1: Intention of the Harming Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . 1507

2. Element 2: Parts (b) and (c) of Article 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1512

III. CASE STUDIES: AMAZON RAINFOREST, NORTHERN ALBERTA, NIGER

RIVER DELTA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1513

A. JAIR BOLSONARO, DEFORESTATION, FIRES, AND BRAZIL’S

AMAZONIAN INDIGENOUS PEOPLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1514

1. Element 1: Intention of the Harming Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . 1514

2. Element 2: Parts (b) and (c) of Article 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1515

B. STEPHEN HARPER, THE ALBERTA TAR SANDS, AND ALBERTA’S FIRST

NATION PEOPLES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1517

1. Element 1: Intention of the Harming Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . 1517

* Georgetown University Law Center, J.D. 2023; University of Oklahoma, B.A. 2018. © 2023,

Abbey Koenning-Rutherford.

1495

2. Element 2: Parts (b) and (c) of Article 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1521

C. BRIAN ANDERSON, POLLUTION, VIOLENT REPRESSION AND THE

OGONI OF THE NIGER RIVER DELTA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1524

1. Element 1: Intention of the Harming Parties . . . . . . . . . . . . 1524

2. Element 2: Parts (b) and (c) of Article 6. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1526

IV. VICTIM PERSPECTIVE ON ICC GENOCIDE PROSECUTIONS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1528

CONCLUSION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1531

INTRODUCTION

Global Indigenous

1

people exist as one with the environment, with no western

binary between people and nature.

2

Destruction of Indigenous people is recipro-

cal with environmental destruction. Indigenous people, though only six percent

of the global population, protect eighty percent of the world’s biodiversity and

occupy exceedingly environmentally vulnerable regions.

3

Indigenous people are specifically at risk for their role in protecting the world’s richest resource

regions and biodiversity. See Climate Academy by Grounded, Why Protecting Indigenous Communities

Can Also Help Save the Earth, GUARDIAN (Oct. 12, 2020, 9:30 AM), https://www.theguardian.com/

climate-academy/2020/oct/12/indigenous-communities-protect-biodiversity-curb-climate-crisis [https://

perma.cc/6GG5-E8V8]; Marcia Langton & Zane Ma Rhea, Traditional Indigenous Biodiversity-Related

Knowledge, 36 AUSTL. ACAD. & RSCH. LIBRS. 45, 46–47 (2013).

Because of these rea-

sons, the International Criminal Court (the “ICC”) could be utilized to achieve

justice by prosecuting ecocide as genocide, should impacted Indigenous peoples

choose to utilize it.

The destruction of Indigenous communities via environmental and environ-

mentally related harm is nowhere more apparent than in the Amazonian rainfor-

ests of Brazil. Under President Jair Bolsonaro, the Indigenous people of Brazil

faced an unprecedented era of deliberate destruction, both directly and indi-

rectly.

4

Flavio Siqueira, Does Jair Bolsonaro Commit Crimes Against Humanity by Devastating the Amazon

Rainforest?, OPEN GLOB. RTS. (Feb. 17, 2021), https://www.openglobalrights.org/does-bolsonaro-commit-

crimes-against-humanity-by-devastating-the-amazon/ [https://perma.cc/WTN3-B8Q6].

The Bolsonaro Administration systematically dismantled environmental

1. Indigenous is hereinafter capitalized to affirm Indigenous people as autonomous subjects with

agency, rather than indigenous, which refers to a characteristic of a person. See DANIEL HEATH JUSTICE,

WHY INDIGENOUS LITERATURES MATTER 6, 8 (2018) (“The capital ‘I’ is important here, as it affirms a

distinctive political status of peoplehood, rather than describing an exploitable commodity, like an

‘indigenous plant’ or a ‘native mammal.’”).

2. See Sarah Wright, Kate Lloyd, Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Laklak Burarrwanga, Matalena Tofa &

Bawaka Country, Telling Stories in, Through and with Country: Engaging with Indigenous and More-

than-Human Methodologies at Bawaka, NE Australia, 29 J. CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY 39, 39–60 (2012);

Miguel Astor-Aguilera, Latin America: Indigenous Cosmovision, in ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF RELIGION

AND ECOLOGY 158, 161–62 (Willis Jenkins et al. eds., 2017). See generally ROBIN WALL KIMMERER,

BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: INDIGENOUS WISDOM, SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE, AND TEACHINGS OF PLANTS

(2013) (detailing the symbiotic and nonbinary intricacies between Indigenous people and nature).

3.

4.

1496 THE GEORGETOWN LAW JOURNAL [Vol. 111:1495

and Indigenous peoples’ protections, leading to alleged violations of Articles 6 (a),

(b), and (c) of the Rome Statute.

5

See HUM. RTS. ADVOC. COLLECTIVE (CADHU) & ARNS COMM’N, INFORMATIVE NOTE TO THE

PROSECUTOR: INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT PURSUANT TO ARTICLE 15 OF THE ROME STATUTE

REQUESTING A PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION INTO INCITEMENT TO GENOCIDE AND WIDESPREAD

SYSTEMIC ATTACKS AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLES BY PRESIDENT JAIR MESSIAS BOLSONARO IN

BRAZIL 3–5, 27, 33 (2019), https://apublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/e-muito-triste-levar-um-

brasileiro-para-o-tribunal-penal-internacional-diz-co-autora-da-peticao.pdf [https://perma.cc/8JKM-QN6Q];

Siqueira, supra note 4.

Bolsonaro called for attacks against Indigenous

land protectors, decriminalized invasion of Indigenous land, and explicitly incited

full-scale extermination of Indigenous peoples to access their land.

6

In a complaint

to the ICC, a coalition of Indigenous peoples alleged that, through these actions,

Bolsonaro committed and incited genocide against them.

7

The scenario in Brazil is but one of many. Indigenous people are under assault

by colonial governments and corporations, which continue to environmentally

displace, harm, and attack Indigenous people to maintain status within the nation-

state world order that, arguably, created the need for global human rights efforts.

8

Colonial governments leverage resources and land stolen from Indigenous

people to maintain power and privilege in a world order dependent upon cohe-

sive national identities, leading to the harm and exclusion of Indigenous

people.

This Note explores a potential route for justice, should Indigenous commun-

ities choose to take it. There are a variety of routes to honor Indigeneity and return

land sovereignty to Indigenous people, and the prosecution of ecocide as geno-

cide in the ICC may be one such route.

9

Despite being a potential route to justice,

5.

6. See HUM. RTS. ADVOC. COLLECTIVE (CADHU) & ARNS COMM’N, supra note 5, at 25, 33, 44.

7. Id.

8. See HANNAH ARENDT, THE ORIGINS OF TOTALITARIANISM 269, 271 (Harcourt, Inc. 1951) (2004);

Thalia Anthony, “They Were Treating Me Like a Dog”: The Colonial Continuum of State Harms

Against Indigenous Children in Detention in the Northern Territory, Australia, 7 STATE CRIME J. 251,

251–77 (2018) (arguing that violence committed against Indigenous children in Australia is a symptom

of settler-colonial structures that perpetuate state sovereignty at the expense of Indigenous sovereignty).

See generally Elizabeth Comack, Corporate Colonialism and the “Crimes of the Powerful” Committed

Against the Indigenous Peoples of Canada, 26 CRITICAL CRIMINOLOGY 455 (2018) (discussing how

“corporate colonialism” has produced harms against Indigenous peoples in Canada and continues to

produce harm to the present day); Kyle Whyte, Settler Colonialism, Ecology, and Environmental

Injustice, 9 ENV’T & SOC’Y 125 (2018) (examining how settler colonialism causes ecological violence

against Indigenous peoples by examining the effects of U.S. settlement on the Anishinaabe peoples);

Korinna Horta, Public-Private Partnership and Institutional Capture: The State, International

Institutions, and Indigenous Peoples in Chad and Cameroon, in THE POLITICS OF RESOURCE

EXTRACTION (Suzana Sawyer & Edmund Terence Gomez eds., 2012) (discussing how development

projects supported by the World Bank exacerbate power asymmetries between multinational

corporations and the Indigenous Bakola and Bagyeli peoples in Chad and Cameroon). Nation-state

world order refers to the current global power system, in which states are the primary actors and in

which, for a state to consolidate power, it must have a hegemonic national identity.

9. See HUM. RTS. ADVOC. COLLECTIVE (CADHU) & ARNS COMM’N, supra note 5, at 64; Walter D.

Mignolo, Geopolitics of Sensing and Knowing: On (De)coloniality, Border Thinking, and Epistemic

Disobedience, 1 CONFERO 129, 131 (2013) (discussing an alternative model of decolonialism as an

alternative to Western democracy and socialism to orient society’s thinking and doing, which promotes

communal ideas); Laura Cameron, Ian Mauro & Kevin Settee, “A Return to and of the Land”:

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