| The Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration process provides a group of authorities with focus on one goal: to address any release, or threatened release, of hazardous substances, pollutants, or contaminants that could endanger human health and/or the environment. The Onondaga Lake watershed holds a high level of tangible/intangible cultural significance to both the Peoples of the Haundenosaunee, and the Peoples of Onondaga Nation who have remained in Central New York as they have since time immemorial. I use the site of the Onondaga Lake watershed as the geographic area of study for this thesis. I assert that the baseline condition for environmental remediation sites that fall within Indigenous territories should be restored to a level that would enable Indigenous Peoples to maintain a traditional/customary life as they had prior to colonization, for reasons of health and wellbeing, and also to practice and foster the principle of sustainable self-determination. |
