Dr. Andrew Curley’s book, Carbon Sovereignty: Coal, Development, and Energy Transition in the Navajo Nation, offers a timely and significant contribution to energy geographies. This is a field in geography in which tribal perspectives are particularly underrepresented but badly needed, given the long, mostly troubled, history of energy extraction from indigenous spaces. This book, at its core, gives agency to the Diné people and informs us how they have constructed their relationship with coal.

The central question posed in the book is: What is it about coal that has left it so entrenched in the Navajo Nation? Dr. Curley develops the idea of “carbon sovereignty” to address this question. It is a concept built by integrating concepts/theories from capitalism and colonialism. It is a variant of Timothy Mitchell’s idea of “carbon democracy” in which Mitchell challenges ideas of the resource curse to argue that oil was essential to state-making in the Persian Gulf. Dr. Curley builds on this notion to examine how coal provided a basis for the Navajo nation to survive. In developing carbon sovereignty, Dr. Curley challenges primarily Western notions of sovereignty, time, space, bureaucracy to illustrate how the Navajo make sense of coal—economically, politically, socially.

As we learn from the book, without Navajo coal, the US Southwest would not be. Based on over two years of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research, Dr. Curley presents a rich analysis of Navajo tribal governance processes and resultant impacts to the Diné people associated with this development. Throughout the book, Dr. Curley offers a Navajo perspective on key concepts in geography and associated social science fields. Below, I provide some insights into his interventions on capitalism, colonialism, and the resource curse.  

On capitalism: With US westward expansion came infrastructure and resource development. Railways were built. Large scale dams were constructed to harness the power of water. The roads and railways did not traverse the Navajo nation. Navajo lands were devalued. The state of Arizona and federal officials were threatening to build more large dams and proposed flooding the Grand Canyon to hold water for these dams. Doing so would have literally washed away a good portion of the Navajo nation. Establishing a coal economy allowed the Navajo to stay on the land and fulfill their cultural responsibility to be present on their ancestral lands-- t’aa hwo aji t’eego. The Navajo Generating Station was established, which was one of the largest coal-fired power plants in the country until it closed in 2019. It provided power and water to major southwestern cities but not to the Navajo nation, though it did provide jobs through coal mining and plant operation.

On colonialism: Colonization of the Navajo happened through violence and internment. It also happened continually through treaty and bureaucracy. This is where Dr. Curley makes his intervention. The US government imposed a system of governance on Native American communities whereby Tribal Councils were created to govern the communities. This differed markedly from traditional forms of governance and decision-making in the Navajo Nation. Women, in particular, were disenfranchised through the establishment of Tribal Councils.

On the resource curse: Dr. Curley builds on Mitchell’s critique of the resource curse concept that typically finds a negative association between resource development and social welfare. In contrast, Mitchell argues that developing resources can help to build states and, in some instances, may be beneficial. Importantly, most resource curse analyses from economics and political science do not integrate historical analysis into their accounts. As such, in one moment in time, resource development can be viewed negatively. Dr. Curley provides a historical perspective of the Navajo-coal resource curse throughout the book. Specifically, Dr. Curley embeds the Navajo’s decision to develop coal in its broader political economic context. In this regard, Dr. Curley’s insights on the resource curse dovetails with some core tenets of political ecology—namely, efforts to dispel notions that land users are backward and degrading. Instead, political ecology aims to situate land use within its broader political-economic context. The critique of the resource curse presented in this book does just this. When the decision to mine coal is presented within its broader historical context, the Navajo’s decision can be viewed as one that allowed the community to stay present on their ancestral lands largely on their own terms, t’aa hwo aji t’eego.  

This book is an impactful documentation of the Diné peoples’ historic relationship with coal. Such an account fills important research gaps across the social sciences because indigenous perspectives on extraction are under-represented. Yet, as Dr. Curley notes, some major funding agencies did not consider the case worthy of stand-alone analysis. In recalling the comments from an unfunded grant proposal, he notes how reviewers encouraged him to develop a comparative case study analyzing Navajo coal in relation to West Virginia coal. Dr. Curley’s book is a compelling example of why individual cases matter. I will therefore end with a charge to readers and future reviewers. A core principle of many of today’s social justice movements is to give voice and access to historically disenfranchised communities in hopes of dismantling structural barriers to inequality. To make good on these goals, it is essential to ask ourselves when reviewing scholarship who might be better seen or heard if this article were published or grant were funded, absent their comparison to other groups. Today, the Navajo Nation has some of the highest poverty rates in the US, in terms of unemployment rates, income, access to electricity and clean water. Yet, the US has the highest GDP of all countries in the world--$20.9 trillion dollars. Understanding the historic processes that facilitated this uneven development from an indigenous perspective are worthy of individual case study analysis. Carbon Sovereignty does exactly this.

Dr. Jennifer Baka is an Associate Professor of Geography and an Associate at the Earth and Environmental Systems Institute at Penn State. She conducts interdisciplinary research on how energy systems impact human-environment relationships and environmental governance. Since 2020, she has been a Member of the Environmental Justice Advisory Board for the PA Department of Environmental Protection. Prior to joining Penn State, she was an Assistant Professor of Geography and Environment at the London School of Economics from 2013-16. She earned a PhD in Environmental Studies from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies and a Master's in Public Policy from UC Berkeley. Prior to graduate school, Dr. Baka worked in the energy industry for numerous years first as an economic consultant in Washington, DC and second as a consultant for the United Nations Environment Programme in Paris, France.