7. At the Cost of Our Lives?

The bullet went through her and she survived. They didn’t think she would. But she lived. Raje Oyam, 44, was shot in Central India’s Chhattisgarh where there is incessant mining. The bullet hit her as she tried to protect her child.

Currently in India, being a tribal woman is in itself an act of resistance. To access and mine Adivasi lands, the state employs any means necessary: establishing police camps deep within Adivasi territories, threatening and committing acts of sexual violence, executing extrajudicial murders, and incarcerating those, like Suneeta Pottam and Hidme Markam and Soni Sori (in the past) who dare challenge the status quo.

The extraction, use, and management of geological resources like minerals, water, and land have been shaped by colonialism, brahminism, capitalism, racism and casteism. This has created fractures in the relationships between living communities and the Earth’s resources, perpetuating inequality and environmental degradation.

For example, resource extraction processes are not only often unsustainable, but also at the cost of the displacement of communities that have historically lived within and sustained these forests. Industrial processes poison landscapes and exacerbate climate change. All of this disproportionately impacts our communities, placing us in the context of global blackness.