Kaitlin P. Reed, "Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California" (U Washington Press, 2023)

New Books in Environmental Studies · Apr 27, 2026 · 1h 20m

Despite it's centrality to a hippie counterculture which claimed an environmentalist ethos, California's "green rush" of cannabis growing from the mid-twentieth century onwards has been anything but. In Settler Cannabis: From Gold Rush to Green Rush in Indigenous Northern California, Cal Poly Humboldt Native American Studies professor Kaitlin Reed (Yurok/Hupa/Oneida) argues that the state's booming cannabis industry can be situated squarely within other extractive settler colonial enterprises such as gold mining and overfishing. From illegal land use practices to toxic pollutants in rivers…