On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

by Ryan Emanuel

Despite centuries of colonialism, Indigenous peoples still occupy parts of their ancestral homelands in what is now Eastern North Carolina—a patchwork quilt of forested swamps, sandy plains, and blackwater streams that spreads across the Coastal Plain between the Fall Line and the Atlantic Ocean. In these backwaters, Lumbees and other American Indians have adapted to a radically transformed world while maintaining vibrant cultures and powerful connections to land and water. Like many Indigenous communities worldwide,they continue to assert their rights to self-determination by resisting legacies of colonialism and the continued transformation of their homelands through pollution, unsustainable development, and climate change.

Environmental scientist Ryan E. Emanuel, a member of the Lumbee tribe, shares stories from North Carolina about Indigenous survival and resilience in the face of radical environmental changes. Addressing issues from the loss of wetlands to the arrival of gas pipelines, these stories connect the dots between historic patterns of Indigenous oppression and present-day efforts to promote environmental justice and Indigenous rights on the swamp. Emanuel's scientific insight and deeply personal connections to his home blend together in a book that is both a heartfelt and an analytical call to acknowledge and protect sacred places.

Genres: Nonfiction, Indigenous, Nature, History, Environment

304 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 25, 2024

Reviews

[Hana · Rating 5 out of 5]

super informative and educational but also just a pleasure to read. can’t wait to meet this man. amazing to see the connection between corporate capitalism and colonization spelled out so explicitly and convincingly

[Joel Beebe · Rating 5 out of 5]

I met Ryan Emmanuel a month after he published this book at a reading. His tender voice imbued my read of his book, and his warm presence helped me attach an earnest heart to this book.

While he is a hydrologist, this book is a deeply inter-disciplinary work. It involves political science, biology, hydrology (obviously), history, natural history, archaeology, and anthropology. Its wide scope is helped by the focus on his local territory of the Lumbee tribe. This is "the towns of Prospect, Saddletree, Pembroke, and all the other places that collectively define Lumbee people as a tribal nation." Emmanuel documents sites of contested use and their progression through time, he describes the inadequacy of our current infrastructure to deal with the looming threat of climate change, he recounts the draining of the swamp and the detrimental effects of industrial agriculture as a colonial practice. There is a lot in this book, and it is handled with a masterful and easy to follow scholarly voice.

This important work documents the complex web of relationships and policy that will determine the future of the Piedmont Wetlands. He relates to us a framework for citizen participation rooted in Sherry Arnstein's "Ladder of Citizen Participation", which can be used to navigate the milieu of NGOs, tribes, multinational corporations, legal red tape, local government, and other interests involved in the direction of environmental use of the wetlands. He urges us to center indigenous epistemology and peoples in the fight, while acknowledging the ideological assimilation that has affected the Lumbee nation. Through all of this, the book becomes a valuable tool in discerning and navigating the political landscape and fighting for environmental justice in the area.

Central to this work of discernment is the acknowledgement of the ongoing use of colonial epistemologies and practices. These are; recognizing corporations and profit over relationship and natural sovereignty, a dividing and conquering of various interests towards the acquisition of land, the dismal science of economics taking precedence over ecology, and the mainstream historical narrative of the US that engages in the erasure of Indigenous voices and peoples and their ongoing, integral presence in the management of the environment. Emmanuel says,

"Industrialized agriculture is an inherently colonial practice [that] operates on the assumption that the best use of the land is to extract as much wealth as possible as quickly as possible... [it] ignores the harms caused to people and the environment."

This ideology is definitely tacitly observable in the organization of the landscape in the piedmont region. In a world full of strip malls and monoculture, and with an ongoing deconstruction of environmental protections by Lee Zeldin and company, it can be hard to find a way forward. The documentation of the ongoing struggle of environmental advocacy and the natural history that is integral to it is one way forward that the book provides. Education, not only about the history, but the framing of the history and the embodied relationships that accompany it, are important steps to moving forward in a way that preserves the environment and ensures our own resilient adaptation to it.

Towards this end, Emmanuel uses a good amount of the book to describe his process for discerning historical narratives and the present day practice of land acknowledgements. He views the practice of land acknowledgements to point out the shallow, appeasing nature of our institutions and calls on us to orient ourselves to them in a way that acknowledges the complex history behind the land and its use. He discusses travelogues as a biased account that can be used to learn about the people who have historically occupied the land, despite their biases and colonial purposes. He discusses the value of local, oral histories in combatting mimetic colonial ones.

This is a large part of the book- reorientation and reclamation. Standing in the way of indigenous representation and environmental justice is the rigid adherence to a regime of private property and the siloing of actors that can be directly involved in the governing of the land.

In order to combat these things, we must organize and appeal to a system of higher law that is in place. Not only human-made laws and policies, but the natural laws inherent in our ecological existence. In terms of the human-made laws, there are many avenues that Emmanuel explicates upon. There is UNDRIP, or the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which is tacitly undermined by multi-nationals and the federal government. In order to adhere to these ideals set forth by our law, we must carve out a body of people who can collectively recognize and oppose colonial practices that destroy our environment. We must adhere to the principles of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) and assert a collective responsibility over the land that centers the indigenous perspective.

While this book is primarily political science and natural history, Emmanuel also relates the practices of hydrology and how our scientific construction of knowledge is essential to building up support for the environment. The scientific institutions involved in the monitoring and health of the environment also must play a role in facilitating beneficial relationships. The difficulty is that they often do play a role in facilitation, but against the interests of the natural environment and the people who have inhabited it from time immemorial. Emmanuel is a professor at Duke. He bookends the book with two experiences he has with the swamps of his homeland. He paints a verbal picture of the wetlands that motivates me to go look at them, to experience what they have to offer. He says,

"Moving from upstream to downstream, the river and its floodplain grow larger to accommodate flow from each successive tributary. Beneath it all, groundwater seeps, capillary-like, from one pore to another, through soils and sediments, until it emerges into the channel and joins the downstream flow."

From an ecological standpoint, Emmanuel points to different concepts and features of our landscape that can help us move towards an embodied ecological technique of relations. He describes "ecological refugia", or "small pockets of land within much larger regions... [that] maintain the right balance of temperature, precipitation, and other environmental conditions that allow certain ecosystems to survive." These pockets can be fostered and expanded upon in order to restore the environment in a tangible way.

Water is the blood of Pachamama, the channels, the swamps, the wetlands are her veins and heart, occupying many centers. Blood, both of the earth and the peoples who inhabit it, are integral to the health of the superorganism of the environment. We must educate people and elevate the indigenous perspective and the role of native peoples in the management of the land. Otherwise our culture is merely a vestige of a vestige- an extractive, invasive, toxic cancer that is sowing the seeds of its own destruction. On the Swamp is an invaluable book that pushes the needle on this discussion, and I hope that it can continue to affect scholarship, activism, and industry in the Piedmont and beyond.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

"The greatest thing is not to possess, but to belong."
- line from Strike at the Wind!, a long-running Lumbee play about Henry Berry Lowry

Listen. This book is academic. Read: this book can be dry. It reads like a 200-page paper in your environmental/social (socio-environmental??) justice grad school class. Lots of iterative statements to drive home the injustices that the Lumbee people and all indigenous people have weathered over the last 400+ years. The two exceptions: the intro and conclusion. Emanuel weaves his own narrative into the subject matter beautifully. You feel it. You feel the water come to life. You can almost hear it calling you to take a breath and listen. Reflect. Learn. To do better. With the help of those who have come before us.

Excerpt from intro (emphasis added):
"Here, the boundaries between land and water are fickle and subject to change. For Lumbees, floods mark the duality of water; it is a creator and sustainer of life, but it also immerses, divides, and kills. I have come to understand water from the standpoint of a hydrologist -- preoccupied with the measure of water as a substance -- and from the standpoint of a Lumbee -- respectful of water as place. I do not think that I have any special insight on the balance between these perspectives, but I do see both of them, at once, and all the time."

I came away from this book feeling strongly that if everyone knew the information in this book, we would collectively make better decisions. I came away from this book sad about our disconnection -- from the land, from the water, and from each other. How is it that something so simple -- connection -- could be the answer? Yet.

Kudos to NC Humanities for highlighting this book in its NC Reads program.

[Susanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an in depth exploration of what is meant by “environmental justice”, specifically from the perspective of the Lumbee native people from the SE portion of North Carolina. As a Lumbee water quality university scientist, the author has first hand knowledge of not just the cultural but the environmental insults and history that has been wreaked on Robeson county.
I was thankful to have read this book because I drive through this area occasionally and now will appreciate it with a fresh perspective. I also understand better the difficulty the residents must have when companies come through promising jobs for this impoverished area but rarely revealed at the expense of the land that nourish’s the tribe. The narrative is not all hopeless however; the author does share success stories of the area that hopefully will become more frequent.

While this is a very important read for all North Carolinians to have a better understanding of how colonialism still exists and affects native populations in the state, and by extension the country, I give it 4 stars as the writing can be a little dry.
This book was part of the 2025 North Carolina Reads program.

[Nicolette Cagle · Rating 5 out of 5]

On the Swamp is thoughtful, impactful, and beautifully written. The book combines the rare qualities of both being emotional engaging, connecting to the reader human-to-human, and deeply scholarly, relying on first-hand and published natural and social science. The interweaving of personal narrative throughout the book, and the focus on a local community creates a rich and varied context for engaging with powerful and difficult topics. Emanuel is a talented writer, a gifted scholar, and a passionate advocate for his community and homeland. This book is a must read.

[Marcelo Ardon · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful book. I learned so much about indigenous peoples of NC, about the water and wetlands they have lived in since time immemorial, and about the clashes between exploitative practice and environmental justice.

[Lori Baucom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super informative. Vivid descriptions. Educational without being bogged down or hard to read. Well-researched and much needed.

[Susan King · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very informative.