Connects California cannabis production to the violence and dispossession of Indigenous land and people
Young countercultural back-to-the-land settlers flocked to northwestern California beginning in the 1960s, and by the 1970s, unregulated cannabis production proliferated on Indigenous lands. As of 2021, the California cannabis economy was valued at $3.5 billion. In Settler Cannabis, Kaitlin Reed demonstrates how this "green rush" is only the most recent example of settler colonial resource extraction and wealth accumulation. Situating the cannabis industry within this broader legacy, the author traces patterns of resource rushing?first gold, then timber, then fish, and now cannabis?to reveal the ongoing impacts on Indigenous cultures, lands, waters, and bodies.
Reed shares this history to inform the path toward an alternative future, one that starts with the return of land to Indigenous stewardship and rejects the commodification and control of nature for profit. Combining archival research with testimonies and interviews with tribal members, tribal employees, and settler state employees, Settler Cannabis offers a groundbreaking analysis of the environmental consequences of cannabis cultivation that foregrounds Indigenous voices, experiences, and histories.

Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) is assistant professor of Native American Studies at Humboldt State University.

Kaitlin P. Reed's profile page

Charlotte Coté is a professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of Spirits of Our Whaling Ancestors: Revitalizing Makah and Nuu-chah-nulth Traditions (University of Washington Press, 2010).

Charlotte Coté's profile page

Coll Thrush is professor of history at the University of British Columbia and the author of two books: Native Seattle: Histories from the Crossing-Over Place (University of Washington Press, 2007), and Indigenous London: Native Travelers at the Heart of Empire (Yale, 2016) and coeditor of Phantom Past, Indigenous Presence: Native Ghosts in North American Culture and History (University of Nebraska Press, 2011). He serves as a series editor for the University of Washington Press's Indigenous Confluences series.

Coll Thrush's profile page

"This book may interest a variety of audiences as it covers topics such as environmentalism, Indigenous history, decolonization, California history, and more. It is an important inclusion in the current scholarship, but it is also important for a broader audience as it shows the steps forward for a better future in a time where we have no choice but to make changes to survive."

Western Historical Quarterly