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Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—Case Dismissed:
In Chapter 27, Kimmerer cites a case the Onondaga Nation brought against the Honeywell corporation and several other entities on behalf of the Onondaga Lake region. She uses pathos to demonstrate how urgent and reasonable the case was and to underscore the situational irony of the court ruling:
Clan Mother Audrey Shenandoah made the goal clear. It is not casinos and not money and not revenge. “In this action,” she said, “we seek justice. Justice for the waters. Justice for the four-leggeds and the wingeds, whose habitats have been taken. We seek justice, not just for ourselves, but justice for the whole of Creation.”
In the spring of 2010, the federal court handed down its ruling on the Onondaga Nation’s suit. The case was dismissed.
The Onandaga Nation and activist groups have fought a long legal battle against Honeywell to try to get the company to take responsibility for polluting the land. The Onandaga Nation has an especially strong claim: even the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2005 that the land had been illegally taken from them and that they had a right to it. What to do, though, with land that has been destroyed? Honeywell eventually began making some lackluster attempts to clean up, but it was not enough to make amends.
The case Kimmerer describes here was an attempt to get Honeywell and the State of New York to put in real effort to restore the ecosystem. Kimmerer notes that this case did not push for the Onandaga Nation to receive more control over the land, even though they had a legal claim to it. She notes that the case explicitly avoided asking for anyone to be displaced from their home and that the ultimate goal was "justice for the whole of Creation." The Onandaga Nation was asking the court to demand that the land be restored for the benefit of everyone living there, human or non-human. By emphasizing this goal, Kimmerer draws on the reader's own sense of justice and fairness to convince them that the Onandaga Nation had unimpeachable motives in this case. There was only one just, rational outcome, which was for the court to find in their favor.
Instead, in an ironic twist, the court dismisses the case altogether. It doesn't find in favor of either the Onandaga Nation or Honeywell. What should have been one of the easiest cases in history to decide is instead all but erased from the legal record. Kimmerer leaves white space on the page immediately after this passage. The effect is that the reader must sit with the disappointment and the irony that the Onandaga Nation said to the United States justice system, "we seek justice" for "the whole of Creation," and the justice system—which is, of course, included in Creation—told them to go away.
Related Themes:
