Kaitlin P. Reed, "Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California" (U Washington Press, 2023)

About this episode

Kaitlin P. Reed discusses the impact of the cannabis industry on Indigenous communities in Northern California, framing it within the context of settler colonialism.

Despite it's centrality to a hippie counterculture which claimed an environmentalist ethos, California's "green rush" of cannabis growing from the mid-twentieth century onwards has been anything but. In Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California, Cal Poly Humboldt Native American Studies professor Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) argues that the state's booming cannabis industry can be situated squarely within other extractive settler colonial enterprises such as gold mining and overfishing. From illegal land use practices to toxic pollutants in rivers, cannabis growing in northern California has been disruptive to Indigenous relations to the land and nonhuman life, and has been for decades - a problem only worsening as the industry grows from an underground enterprise into an economic engine worth billions. Yet, as Reed argues, cannabis-as-colonialism is only part of the story, as the Yurok and other California Native people engage in acts of survivance from the court room to the cannabis field here, fighting and insisting that northern California is still Native land. Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) is assistant professor of Native…

People in this episode

Host: Marshall Poe

Guest: Kaitlin P. Reed

Topics covered

• cannabis industry
• Indigenous relations
• settler colonialism
• environmental impact
• cultural survival
• economic development

Keywords

• cannabis
• Indigenous
• settler colonialism
• California
• environmentalism
• cultural survival
• economic engine
• extractive industries

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Cal Poly Humboldt, U Washington Press

Books & works: Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California

Places: California, Northern California

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