Environmental Justice and Water Quality: Protecting Tribes’ Rights to Catch and Consume Fish
March 8th, 2007Environmental Justice Speaker Series
Environmental Justice: Tribal Government and Indigenous People
Catherine O’Neill, March 7, 2007
Catherine O’Neill | PowerPoint Slides (.pdf)
Professor Catherine O’Neill from Seattle University speaks on the law as it affects Tribal governments and indigenous people. Professor O’Neill’s work focuses on issues of justice in environmental law and policy. In particular, her work considers the effects of contamination and depletion of fish and other resources relied upon by tribes and their members, communities of color and low-income communities.
She has worked with the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council on its Fish Consumption Report, with various tribes in the Pacific Northwest and the Great Lakes on issues of contaminated fish and waters, and with environmental justice groups in the Southwest on air and water pollution issues. She has testified before Congress on proposed regulations for mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants.
Professor O’Neill has published numerous scholarly articles, including Variable Justice: Environmental Standards, Contaminated Fish, and “Acceptable” Risk to Native Peoples (STANFORD ENVIRONMENTAL LAW JOURNAL, 2000), Mercury, Risk, and Justice (ENVIRONMENTAL LAW REPORTER, 2004), and No Mud Pies: Risk Avoidance as Risk Regulation (VERMONT LAW REVIEW, forthcoming 2007).
Professor O’Neill received her B.A. from the University of Notre Dame, and her J.D. from the University of Chicago. After graduating, she was named a Ford Foundation Graduate Fellow at Harvard Law School. She then worked for the Washington State Department of Ecology in the Air Quality Program before teaching at the University of Washington, the University of Arizona, and, currently, Seattle University.
This podcast was recorded on March 7, 2007 from a video conference at Lewis & Clark Law School in Portland, Oregon and was sponsored by the Environmental Justice Advocates student group and due to the efforts of Adjunct Professor Monica Kirk, who is teaching the Environmental Justice Seminar Spring, 2007.
