Ryan Emanuel > Ryan's Quotes

“Whatever the intentions behind land acknowledgments, I am intrigued that otherwise well-educated listeners (especially university audiences) require continuous reminders that they occupy stolen land. Settler colonialism not only erases, it feeds on its own forgetfulness.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“I am not sure that energy company executives who say they want to understand the concerns of Indigenous people can actually do so unless they can grasp the emotional weight and social obligations carried by people who balance on the knife-edge of permanent cultural loss.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“The good news is that colonialism is powerful but incomplete.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“If a Lumbee worldview exists, it radiates from Robeson.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“These are the ancestral lands of. . . .' The phrase carries both truth and trauma that can slip past uneducated ears. Indigenous homelands on the Coastal Plain are places of deep connection and remembrance, but they are also places where horrific colonial experiences befell our ancestors. The trauma of those experiences still flows through our communities today. The pain of racial oppression and cultural loss combines with the radical transformation of our homelands, and it haunts us from generation to generation.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“Meanwhile, hemlocks kept their footings in the deep, shady wrinkles of lower mountain slopes— coves shaped by intimate creeks and gorges carved by thundering rivers. Even east of the mountains, hemlocks survived on steep, north- facing slopes. In all of these places, microclimates continued to mimic conditions experienced in the region during the ice age. These isolated pockets are the last vestiges of a forest that once covered much of the Southeast. They are refugia.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“Paleoecology teaches that refugia are not only physical places, but they also represent bottlenecks along a timeline. Large populations of trees, insects, birds, and more shrink down to tiny remnants during times of adversity, but when glaciers retreat and weather warms, populations rebound. If conditions permit, populations spring from their refugia into their former ranges or, perhaps, into new places with favorable soils and climate. Sometimes I imagine that Lumbee ancestors who sought refuge in the remotest parts of their lands were biding their time, waiting to spring forth into a radically transformed world.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice

“Indigenous survival in the face of erasure speaks to our resilience, adaptability, and—when necessary—an obstinance that has survived three centuries of oppression. So the next time you read or hear in a land acknowledgment that "these are the ancestral lands of..." remember that we never left.”
― Ryan Emanuel, On the Swamp: Fighting for Indigenous Environmental Justice