Why Indigenous Communities Oppose New York’s New Industrial Park

Nov 17, 2023

The state of New York is building a massive, green-energy-powered industrial park in Genesee County—the Western New York Science & Technology Advanced Manufacturing Park (WNY STAMP). The Genessee Economic Development Center, which is responsible for the development, says its mission is “to facilitate local economic growth and development which fosters investment and job creation for the benefit of our residents and children.”

But Indigenous communities have opposed the project, saying they were not properly consulted. Robin Wall Kimmerer, writer and distinguished teaching professor at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, has called WNY STAMP a project of “habitat destruction” in a story she wrote for YES!. Kimmerer spoke with YES! Racial Justice Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about Indigenous opposition to the project.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute’s Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice (2023) and Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence (2005). Her forthcoming book is called Talking About Abolition (Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women’s Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master’s in Astronomy from the University of Hawai’i, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on “My Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host” in her 2014 TEDx talk of the same name.

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