Indigenous Climate Action team is excited to announce the launch of our latest report Healing the Land: Indigenous Perspectives on Divestment!

Indigenous Perspectives on Divestment

In the last two decades, Divestment strategies have been increasingly utilized by social movements to combat the climate crisis, interrupt fossil fuel development and to destabilize public trusts of the fossil fuel industry. Globally, fossil fuel divestment has moved more than $40 trillion in financial investment out of the fossil fuel industry. 

Indigenous peoples have been using a rights-based framework to defend our rights and lands by disrupting the flow of capital to the fossil fuel industry for decades. These tactics have proven to be effective, and as a result, numerous North American and international banks have divested from a number of fossil fuel projects, particularly fossil fuel types (ex: coal, tar sands), and some have even went as far as terminating all financial investment in the fossil fuel industry.

Objectives of the Report

1. Explore the overall concept of an Indigenous rights-based divestment strategy. We do so by outlining many tools used by Indigenous divestment organizers and examining the relationships between divestment and other strategies for realizing Indigenous sovereignty.

2. Spotlight the work of the water protectors, land defenders, and divestment campaigners and other Indigenous rights advocates who have and continue to dedicate their lives to defending Indigenous rights and sovereignty, and to protect the sacredness of Mother Earth. 

Healing the Land: Indigenous Perspectives on Divestment builds from legacies of Indigenous resistance and widespread Indigenous-led movements across Turtle Island and globally that have been successful in stopping carbon emissions.

Key Questions Explored in the Report

1. If we’re trying to divest from fossil fuels, what are we trying to invest in?

2. What is Fossil Fuel Divestment in an Indigenous Rights and Sovereignty Context?

3. What does it mean for Indigenous peoples to intervene in a financial system designed to steal our lands and erase us?

4. What have organizers learned about the inner workings of the global capitalist economy that we can use in future campaigns?

Instead of narrowing our focus on carbon emissions and climate impacts, we leverage the power of the rights of Indigenous peoples to push corporations to divest from the fossil fuel industry. This framework positions Indigenous sovereignty, title, and opposition as a Financial Risk in a way that banks and other financial institutions understand.

Indigenous-led Divestment strategies recognize our rights and title for what they are: responsibilities to protect the land as instructed by Indigenous legal orders, as well as powerful tools for transforming the economy from extraction to regeneration.

Learn More & Take Action

• Read the Full Report here & check out our other Publications here!

• Learn More about Indigenous Divestment on our website here!

• Donate and invest in Indigenous sovereignty at: www.indigenousclimateaction.com/donate 

Subscribe to be the first to know about any future Divestment programming & resources from ICA below!

Acknowledgements & Note on Authors

We would like to thank all the incredible people across these lands who spoke to us in the surveys and interviews. We are deeply grateful. 

We would like to also acknowledge the support of ICA staff who have contributed to this project over the last few years: Robin Tress, Alexa Metallic, Jayce Chiblow, Eriel Deranger and the entire ICA team that has helped to bring this project to life.