When your neighbor says no: The Yakama fight to save Goldendale, WA, from the renewable rush
What happens when your neighbor says no? In Goldendale, Washington, the Yakama Nation raised a clear ‘no’ when the land they use for first-food gathering, life practice, and ceremony was sited for construction of a hydroelectric pumped-storage energy project. Under the smoke of climate-fueled western forest fires, the rush to site clean energy projects is a new gold rush. Addressing climate change is a moral imperative. But how should we go about it? Can we really address the harms that have led us to the brink of climate collapse with yet more stolen land?
Join us for a moral conversation about faith and climate action at the Climate Cafe Multifaith on Jun 6th. Our guest is B. Toastie Oaster, a Choctaw citizen and award-winning journalist with High Country News, who has been writing about and following this story.
June 6th, 11:00am Pacific Time / 2:00pm Eastern Time. Register.
B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster (they/them) is a staff writer for High Country News. Their journalism has appeared in a number of publications including Street Roots, Underscore News, the Portland Mercury, Willamette Week, Columbia Insight and Foreign Policy Magazine, and has won awards from the Native American Journalists Association and the Society of Professional Journalists, Oregon. This year their feature on the tribal fight for Pacific lamprey was a finalist for a National Magazine Award from the American Society of Magazine Editors, and they were awarded ProPublica's Local Reporting Network grant to continue their investigation into green colonialism in the Pacific Northwest. Toastie is a two spirit person and a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.