Review: As Long As Grass Grows by Dina Gilio-Whitaker

Release Date: April 2nd, 2019

Genre(s): Non-Fiction, History, Environmental, Feminism

Publisher: Beacon Press

Pages: 224

Rating:⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Synopsis

As Long as Grass Grows explores the history of treaty violations and the protection of Indigenous land and culture. Through this, the book also explores different approaches to environmental policies and practices.

Review

As Long As Grass Grows is a very comprehensive read detailing not only the relationship between Natives and the U.S. government but also explores the needs and issues that Indigenous people historically and currently face.

Throughout As Long As Grass Grows, Gilio-Whitaker explores the many impacts of dispossession of land as well as redevelopment of land around territories on Indigenous people. While much of the current U.S. history curriculum solely focus few events involving Native Americans at a high-level, this book goes much further to show the number of ways that Indigenous people have been impacted by the deterioration of the environment. Common practices, for example, such as dumping on or near Indigenous land, as well as the re-development of land impacting their ecosystem caused a serious deterioration in health to those living on Indigenous land over time. Yet, the many efforts to bring these issues to the country’s attention do not succeed.

What I especially liked about this book are the number of quoted documents, treaties, and political figures that demonstrate the treatment of Indigenous land over time. This, in addition to how the author organized the chapters and topics in a natural progression, helps highlight the many issues that have been ignored for centuries.

I also learned quite a bit about the United States’ environmental policy over the last few decades, which I now realize I knew what was admittedly not much. Again, the number of sources Gilio-Whitaker incorporates into these sections provide so much detail that it really opened my eyes to what I didn’t know.

As Long As Grass Grows is definitely more academic in its writing style, but I absolutely recommend it. There’s so much information and historical perspective here that’s not given the attention that it needs to have, as well as actionable steps to move forward to in the future.

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