What is Narrative Sovereignty?

Narrative sovereignty is the principle that communities should have and maintain authority over how their stories (and stories about their community) are told and shared. For Indigenous Peoples and Nations, narrative sovereignty is deeply interconnected with the right to political sovereignty and self-governance.

A deep history of storytelling within the environmental justice movement also makes narrative sovereignty important for frontline communities and environmental justice organizations more broadly. To learn more about the history of environmental storytelling, check out the Environmental Justice Oral History Project.

In this guide, we use the term narrative sovereignty as it can be upheld in any frontline community, including for Indigenous Peoples and Nations. To learn more about Indigenous narrative sovereignty, you can start by exploring the resources of the Indigenous Narrative Sovereignty Collective (ISNC).

Why is it important?

Recently, communities experiencing the “first and worst” impacts of climate change (called frontline communities) have seen a dramatic increase in attention paid to their stories and experiences of environmental injustice. External groups are eager to collaborate to share their stories, but in doing so they may unintentionally erode trust and prevent long-term investment in frontline communities.

Narrative sovereignty is a principle and goal for both frontline community-based organizations and external collaborators to hold. It ensures that frontline communities’ stories are told equitably and on a strong foundation of trust between storytellers and collaborators.