By now, you’ve no doubt become familiar with ongoing legal battles over the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). You may recall that I, myself, was targeted and faced years in prison. Fortunately, all serious charges against me were dropped as I prepared to present a comprehensive necessity defense outlining why I had no choice but to resist the pipeline and its threat to my homelands, our people, and Unci Maka, our Grandmother Earth. You might remember the Standing Rock Nation’s lawsuits to prevent the pipeline, and you also recently heard from me about my testimony in the trial between North Dakota and the federal government regarding who will split the costs of over-policing our peaceful protest camps.
Did you know that Energy Transfer, which operates the pipeline, has also targeted nonprofit organizations in the courts of law? Specifically — and preposterously — the oil company has gone after Greenpeace USA with a pair of lawsuits. Energy Transfer’s tactic is, unfortunately, increasingly popular. Extractive industry corporations seeking to suppress opposition to their exploitative projects file what’s known as a Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP). To give you another example, the lithium mine company operating at Thacker Pass is using SLAPP in an attempt to silence tribal activists, elders, and allies resisting the company’s destruction of Unci Maka and sacred sites on Paiute and Shoshone homelands.
A sign from a NoDAPL resistance camp perfectly sums up one reason why lawsuits against Greenpeace and other nonprofits are way off the mark. They discredit the Indigenous agency involved in frontline resistance movements.
Frankly, the latest lawsuit against Greenpeace is of a different magnitude — both in terms of the exorbitant amount of damages Energy Transfer is seeking and the specifics of the case. Greenpeace (and other entities resisting DAPL, including Standing Rock and other tribal nations) have evidence of clear legal violations committed by Energy Transfer in its rush to complete DAPL. Aware of the gravity of those violations and wanting to cast doubt on their veracity and rewrite the narrative, Energy Transfer has attacked Greenpeace with false allegations of defamation.
As Greenpeace has highlighted in this piece — which I strongly encourage you to read — none of the nine statements Energy Transfer claims as defamatory were originally made by Greenpeace. Rather, they were circulated publicly (and endorsed widely). I commend Greenpeace for hearing the call to join Native nations on the frontline of this fight and for accurately summarizing the problems with Energy Transfer’s SLAPP effort. Honestly, from our perspective, if you’re being sued for defamation by a major extractive industry corporation, you’re probably doing something right!
Of course, Native water protectors and land defenders are all too familiar with the oil company’s modus operandi. Our ancestors witnessed similar tactics when Indian agents exerted control over their lives in the wake of the Dawes Allotment Act. More recently, my parents, aunties, and uncles remember well the FBI’s attempt to infiltrate and destroy the American Indian Movement in the 1970s. Native Peoples understand deeply that a commitment to truth telling and justice invites backlash from wealthy and powerful interests — government, corporate, or both.
It’s extra important for us to have our allies’ backs now, as all of this is occurring against a stark backdrop: not only has DAPL already leaked many times, but it continues to operate without a valid Environmental Impact Study or easement to cross under the Missouri River upstream of Standing Rock. Furthermore, in 2022, Energy Transfer was convicted of criminal charges in connection to its disastrous operation of pipelines in Pennsylvania and Ohio. In other words, it’s essentially a criminal corporation committed to shifting blame onto activists fighting for environmental justice and tribal sovereignty. That’s why we’ll keep battling and shining the light of truth. We hope that despite all spurious and costly legal attacks, Greenpeace will, too. We are all in this fight together.
Wopila tanka — thank you for protecting water and advancing environmental justice! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
The future is now, and it’s looking brighter by the day. Recently, a youth group from the Oglala Lakota Nation — all members of the Lakota Tech High School Student Council — attended a meeting of the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance (GPTWA) to learn and talk about their inspiring efforts to uplift their community. I was honored and encouraged to witness that powerful interaction, the culminating event in a series of activities the students undertook early this year as leaders of their school and future leaders of the Oceti Sakowin (Sioux Nation). You can watch our new video to see them in action!
Watch: future leaders of the Lakota Nation detail their vision. Opening musical track provided by Hundred in the Hand (featuring Tokata Iron Eyes).
My son, Zaniyan Iron Eyes, was joined by fellow student leaders Derrick Merrival, Antoine Running Bear, Wazilya Fuller, Marcel Swallow, Keldon Weston, and advisor Marlin Kingi to address Doug Crow Ghost, Reno Red Cloud, Syed Huq, and Mary J. Gourneau of the GPTWA. The students’ words are eloquent, so again, I urge you to see for yourself what they had to say.
Highlights include recaps of the students’ various community projects, their plans for their own futures, Marcel’s frank and poignant reference to the hurdles faced by young people on the reservation, and his gratitude for the mentoring provided by GPTWA. In turn, the leaders of the alliance, whose membership is composed of people from seven Sioux tribes, conveyed their concerns for all waters in the Oceti Sakowin, from the Big Horn Mountains to east of the Missouri River. I can confidently report that the students took to heart the necessity to protect Unci Maka (our Grandmother Earth).
Many of these same young leaders from Lakota Tech also presented to Lakota Law members at our Membership Event in February. That was such a special interaction, and I’m grateful to every member who listened in. On that note, I’m elated to report that our March membership drive was a huge success! 100 of you signed up, helping us shatter our goal of 60 new members, and I can’t wait to introduce members to other inspiring people from our community at subsequent events. In the meantime, please stay tuned right here, because I’ll have updates to share with you soon about further plans to engage with and support our youth leaders.
Wopila tanka — thank you for supporting us, and my enduring gratitude to you for lifting up our next generations! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
I was finally able to put together the book about my climate alteration exhibit in Second Life for Burning Man 2, back in October 2019. The years between 2019 and now have been totally chaotic, so much has happened. The topic is still appropriate and the points I made are still valid, even more so.
In 2015, Pope Francis published Laudato Si’, his encyclical acknowledging the climate crisis and extolling his flock to consciously act in accordance with Unci Maka, our Grandmother Earth. Then, in 2022, he visited Canada and apologized for the genocide of First Nations peoples in residential schools at the hands of the Catholic Church. Finally, in 2023, the pope denounced the Doctrine of Discovery, 15th century papal bulls responsible for underpinning centuries of colonization of Indigenous lands under European banners in the name of the Christian God.
The pope’s apparent desires to make recompense for the Church’s historic role in the genocide of Indigenous People and have his flock live with more respect for the Earth go hand in hand. As you well know, we have always known how to live in harmony with our natural surroundings, with a deep understanding of our own relationship to all living things. My ancestors fought the colonizers, and with respect for their sacrifice, I have stood up to Big Oil and all who disrupt the natural balance or threaten our communities. I also take the stance that we must build alliances — even unlikely ones — to create the future we want for our next generations.
Therefore it makes perfect sense for us to take the lead in encouraging the pope to work with Native nations to return sacred lands to Indigenous stewardship — and also with state governments who have benefitted through the centuries from their affiliation with the Church. Let me be clear about those benefits: it is no overstatement to say that the Doctrine of Discovery underpins both Federal Indian Law and property law here in the United States. Virtually every aspect of the legal system we encounter as Native People has been set up to keep us down — from day one into the foreseeable future.
But we won’t be kept down. Let us be united, creative, and diligent in seeking remedies that can benefit not just Indigenous communities, but everyone who shares space with us in this world.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your care and advocacy! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
As you know, very few things matter to me — and to this organization and to the planet we all hope our future generations can continue to inhabit — as much as a just transition to clean energy. That’s why we support communities fighting on the frontlines against harmful extractive projects, like the Standing Rock Nation and the Reno-Sparks Indian Colony as they resist the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) and Thacker Pass lithium mine, respectively. It’s also why we continue to ally with Native-led groups promoting climate solutions which encompass Indigenous knowledge and respect tribal sovereignty.
To that end, this week I traveled to the Muscogee Nation near Tulsa, OK, to attend the second annual Tribal Energy Equity Summit. I was honored to speak at this important gathering, hosted by the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy. It brought leaders from tribes and organizations across Turtle Island together with representatives from the federal government to share our viewpoints and advance equitable clean energy solutions. As part of my attendance, I sat down with Chéri Smith, the alliance’s president and CEO, to talk about the importance of Indigenous agency in creating a clean energy future for tribes. Please watch our short video, meet Chéri, and learn more about her organization’s mission.
Watch: I sat down with Chéri Smith, President and CEO of the Alliance for Tribal Clean Energy, to talk about the importance of Indigenous agency in creating a clean energy future for tribes.
It’s been — if you’ll pardon the pun — an energizing week! The summit afforded me a great opportunity to network with like-minded people and organizations, meet new friends, and reconnect with old ones. I was especially happy to share space with Dennis “Bumpy” Pu‘uhonua Kanahele, head of the Nation of Hawai’i, which maintains its status as a sovereign government under international law, independent of the United States.
As our presence at the same summit that also hosted a pair of representatives from the White House indicates, this was a diverse gathering which welcomed a multitude of perspectives on how we can solve tribal energy issues in a just way and begin to remediate the climate crisis. As you know — and as exemplified by DAPL’s violation of our treaty lands, which hold so much potential for renewable energy development — those two issues are inextricably linked. I’m excited to see where we’ll go from here!
Speaking of DAPL: many of you have reached out to us after reading about my participation in the ongoing trial to determine whether the federal government should reimburse the State of North Dakota for exorbitant costs it alleges it incurred by over-policing our peaceful NoDAPL movement in 2016 and 2017. This article and this one can provide you a bit more of my perspective. I’ll also plan to report back to you with further thoughts once we hear of a judgment.
Wopila tanka — as always, thank you for supporting environmental justice! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
CINCINNATI, Ohio — They came to protect the water.
Nearly 200 people traveled from Michigan to Cincinnati on Thursday, March 21, to support the state of Michigan’s efforts to stay out of federal court with its legal case calling for a partial shutdown of Enbridge Line 5.
Several citizens and leaders of Michigan tribes were among those who joined the rally at Fountain Square, a major public space in downtown Cincinnati near the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
The crowd waved banners and signs calling for the shutdown of the Line 5 pipeline, with some calling for “people and planet over profits.”
Inside the courthouse, Michigan officials asked the federal appeals court to allow the lawsuit filed by the state attorney general’s office to remain in state court – a move supported by a coalition led by the Bay Mills Indian Community of more than 60 tribes from the Great Lakes region and beyond.
“I’m from the Bear Clan. My job is to protect the forest and make sure our water is safe,” Andrea Pierce told the crowd Thursday. Pierce, of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, is part of the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition.
Nicole Keyawbiber and Joe VanAlstine of the Little Traverse Bay Band of Odawa Indians in Michigan join a rally in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 21, 2024, supporting Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s efforts to keep her office’s lawsuit seeking shutdown of Enbridge line 5 in Michigan state court. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who filed the legal action to shut down the pipeline, addressed the crowd during the rally at Fountain Square on why she wants to keep the issue in state court.
“This is a Michigan case brought under Michigan law by Michigan’s chief law enforcement officer on behalf of the people of Michigan on behalf of our Great Lakes and it belongs in a Michigan court,” she told the cheering crowd.
The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Wisconsin, which is litigating to keep Line 5 off of reservation lands, also signed onto the brief. All 12 of Michigan’s federally recognized tribes passed resolutions calling to decommission Line 5.
‘Public nuisance’
Line 5, constructed in 1953, runs 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, east through Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and under the Straits of Mackinac before it terminates in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada.
In the original 2019 lawsuit filed in Michigan circuit court, Nessel sought a shutdown of four miles of Line 5 pipeline that ran under the Straits of Mackinac. The lawsuit contends that the pipeline is a public nuisance and that allowing Enbridge to continue operating it is a violation of the public trust doctrine and the Michigan Environmental Protection Act.
The Straits of Mackinac link Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, and constitute one of the most ecologically sensitive areas in the world, according to Oil and Water Don’t Mix, an advocacy organization based in Michigan.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel tells a crowd of supporters in Cincinnati, Ohio, on March 21, 2024, that her case seeking shutdown of Enbridge Line 5 belongs in Michigan state court rather than federal court. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)
Nessel won a restraining order from a state judge in June 2020, but Enbridge successfully moved the case into federal court in December 2021.
Nessel asked U.S. Circuit Judge Janet Neff to shift the case back into state court, but Neff refused, prompting Nessel to appeal to the Sixth Circuit appeals court.
Enbridge filed a separate federal lawsuit in 2020 arguing the state’s attempt to shut down the pipeline interferes with federal regulation of pipeline safety, and could interfere with interstate and international trading of petroleum, driving up oil prices. That case is still pending in Neff’s court.
Enbridge has insisted the section of pipeline that runs beneath the Mackinac Straits is in good condition and could operate indefinitely. Enbridge has proposed encasing the pipes in a protective tunnel.
Assistant Attorney General Daniel Bock told the three-judge panel of the court in Cincinnati Thursday that the challenge to Enbridge’s Line 5 deals with the public trust doctrine, a legal concept in which natural resources belong to the public. He said that concept is rooted in state law.
Water protector Nicole Keyawbiber wears a “Water not War” button on her hat at a rally on March 21, 2024, in Cincinnati, Ohio, supporting efforts to keep a Michigan state lawsuit seeking shutdown of Enbridge Line 5 out of federal court. (Photo by Mary Annette Pember/ICT)
Bock went on to assert that Enbridge, the Canadian company that owns the pipeline, missed its deadline to shift the case from state to federal court.
Enbridge attorney Alice Loughran countered that the case should remain in federal court because it affects international trade. She said the company didn’t have to comply with the standard 30-day deadline for requesting removal to federal court because it lacked enough information to formulate the request.
In an email sent to ICT, Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy accused Nessel of forum-shopping in an effort to secure a favorable outcome.
“We are confident that ultimately the Sixth Circuit Court will agree with the lower court’s decisions from August 2022 and November 2021 that this dispute—which has generated a US foreign policy controversy—properly belongs in federal court,” Duffy wrote.
Protests continue
The protesters outside the courthouse were among thousands in recent years to protest the pipeline in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and even in Canada.
“Near and far, Anishinaabe people have united to protect the Great Lakes,” said Whitney Gravelle, president of the Bay Mills Indian Community, in a statement released Thursday to Earthjustice, a nonprofit environmental law organization.
“We stand behind Attorney General Nessel because we know that shutting down Line 5 is the only way to protect everyone who depends on the land, water, and natural resources within the Great Lakes,” Gravelle said, “including Anishinaabe people exercising our treaty rights.”
This article contains material from The Associated Press.
Joe Heath, a lawyer for the Onondaga Nation, at Onondaga Creek, south of Syracuse, N.Y., Nov. 30, 2023. (Lauren Petracca/The New York Times)
ONONDAGA NATION TERRITORY, N.Y. — Four or five years ago, Sidney Hill’s young son came to him with a question that Hill didn’t know how to answer.
The boy had learned that day about the millions of acres of land that his people, the Onondaga, had once called home, and the way that their homeland had been taken parcel by parcel by the state of New York, until all that was left was 11 square miles south of Syracuse.
“We lost all this land,” Hill recalled his son saying. “How can that be?”
In many ways, Hill was the best person to answer that question. As Tadodaho, the spiritual leader of the Onondaga Nation, he was responsible for protecting its legacy and guiding it into the future. He was one of a handful of elders who have worked for decades on a legal and diplomatic strategy to fight back against the historic wrongs his son now sought to understand.
Even so, it caught him off balance.
The younger generation needed to know, he said. “But it doesn’t make much sense to them.”
Hill tried to reassure his son that all that injustice was in the past.
But he knew how hard it was to accept past wrongs, particularly when their consequences so informed the present. It was why he had spent so long pushing — first Onondaga elders, then the U.S. justice system and, finally, an international human rights commission — for a correction to that history.
The Onondaga claim that the United States violated a 1794 treaty, signed by George Washington, that guaranteed 2.5 million acres in central New York to them. The case, filed in 2014, is the second brought by an American Indian nation against the United States in an international human rights body; a finding is expected as soon as this year.
Even if the Onondaga are successful, the result will mostly be symbolic. The entity, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, has no power to enforce a finding or settlement, and the United States has said that it does not consider the commission’s recommendations to be binding.
“We could win against them, but that doesn’t mean that they have to abide by whatever,” Hill said in an interview.
The 2.5 million acres have long since been transformed by highways and utility lines, shopping malls, universities, airports and roller rinks.
The territory encompasses the cities of Binghamton and Syracuse, as well as more than 30 state forests, dozens of lakes and countless streams and tributaries. It is also home to 24 Superfund sites, the environmental detritus of the powerhouse economy that helped central New York thrive during the beginning and middle half of the 20th century.
Most notorious of these is Lake Onondaga, which once held the dubious title of America’s most polluted lake.
Industrial waste has left its mark on Onondaga territory, leaving the nation unable to fish from its streams and rivers. The history of environmental degradation is part of what motivates the Onondaga, who consider it their sacred responsibility to protect their land.
One of their chief objectives in filing the petition is a seat at the table on environmental decisions across the original territory. The other is an acknowledgment that New York, even if only in principle, owes them 2.5 million acres.
Across the nation, government officials have grappled with the notion of reparations to address historical injustices. In 2022, officials in Evanston, Illinois, began distributing $25,000 to Black descendants of enslaved people as reparations for housing discrimination.
In New York, people who were once imprisoned for marijuana crimes received preference for licenses to sell cannabis; Gov. Kathy Hochul last year also created a statewide task force to examine whether reparations can be made to address the legacy of racial injustice.
Some Native nations have been willing to drop land claims in exchange for licenses to operate casinos. But the Onondaga say they are not interested in cash. Nor are they interested in licenses to sell cannabis or operate a casino — which they consider socially irresponsible and a threat to their tribal sovereignty.
There’s really just one thing that Hill says would be an acceptable form of payment: land.
The Onondaga insist they are not looking to displace anyone. Instead they hope the state might turn over a tract of unspoiled land for the nation to hunt, fish, preserve or develop as it sees fit. One such repatriation effort is underway: the return of 1,000 acres as a part of a federal settlement with Honeywell International for the contamination of Onondaga Lake.
The United States has not contested the Onondaga’s account of how the nation lost its land. Indeed, the lawyers representing the United States in the Onondaga case have centered their argument on legal precedence, noting that courts at every level — including the U.S. Supreme Court — rejected the Onondaga’s claims as too old and most remedies too disruptive to the region’s current inhabitants.
To the Onondaga, the logic required to square these contentions seems unfair. Why should the United States be allowed to steal their land and face no obligation to give some back?
Joe Heath, a lawyer representing the Onondaga, said the refusal to acknowledge the past stands in the way of healing the future.
“If we don’t admit that those things have happened, how do we move forward together?” he said. But Heath understood that such an admission would have serious legal and practical implications.
“The problem is that all of the land in New York, in the United States, is stolen Indian land,” he said. “What does that mean in terms of U.S. property law?”
‘All of Our Country and for a Very Trifle’
There was a time when the United States worked with the Haudenosaunee, the confederacy that includes the Onondaga, Cayuga, Oneida, Tuscarora, Mohawk and Seneca nations, as the fledgling government sought to defuse conflicts in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War.
The federal government entered into three treaties that affirmed the confederacy’s sovereignty and ownership over much of the northern part of New York state. Critically, those treaties guaranteed that no one but the federal government would have the authority to deal with the Haudenosaunee.
But as early as 1788, New York state had started to chip away at the Haudenosaunee land and sovereignty. Over the next 34 years, the state would come to control nearly all of the Onondaga land — as well as most of that owned by the other Haudenosaunee nations — because of a series of transactions that the Onondaga say were illegal.
“The [New] York people have got almost all of our Country and for a very trifle,” Onondaga chiefs told federal officials in 1794, according to the papers of U.S. Indian Commissioner Timothy Pickering.
For the next two centuries, the Onondaga continued to fruitlessly press their case in numerous face-to-face meetings with presidents, members of Congress and governors of New York.
Legal options were limited: In New York, for example, Native people were not considered to have standing to sue on their own behalf until 1987.
When Indian nations did make it into the courtroom, many claims were dismissed.
The Onondaga’s decision to go to court was decades in the making, with the first discussions beginning more than 40 years ago. For the next 20 years, the council debated in the long house — a long, low structure made of whole logs used for ceremonial events and Haudenosaunee gatherings.
Hill is one of 14 chiefs on that council, each of whom represents a different clan. In the Onondaga tradition, these chiefs are male, but they are appointed by the clan mothers.
The chiefs did not initially embrace the idea of a lawsuit, seeing it as another venue for broken promises.
“Our elders were always afraid of going into courts,” Hill said. Many were concerned that losing in court could lead them to lose what little land they had left.
“We finally said: We have to do something,” Hill said.
In 2005, the Onondaga filed a version of their current claim in U.S. District Court in the Northern District of New York, naming as defendants the state of New York, its governor, Onondaga County, the city of Syracuse and a handful of the companies responsible for the environmental degradation over the past centuries. A similar case filed by the Oneida Nation was, at the time, pending before the Supreme Court.
But just 18 days after the Onondaga filed their petition, the Supreme Court rejected the Oneidas’ case. The decision referenced an colonial-era legal theory known as the Doctrine of Discovery, which holds, in part, that Indigenous property claims were nullified by the “discovery” of that land by Christians.
The “long lapse of time” and “the attendant dramatic changes in the character” precluded the Oneida nation from the “disruptive remedy” it sought, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote in the majority decision.
The ruling appeared to doom the chances of any Native nation seeking recompense through the courts. The history seemed settled.
‘Disruptive to Who?’
Of the more than 1,600 words in the Supreme Court’s ruling, one stood out to Hill: “disruptive.”
“When I heard that, I said, ‘Well, OK, disruptive to who?’” he recalled. “It’s already been disruptive to us, as Indigenous people.”
Some might have left it at that: an admission that Native people could never be made whole for the profound wrongs perpetrated on them.
Instead, lawyers for the Onondaga used the rejection as the premise for a new argument. They contended that the U.S. court system’s refusal to find in their favor proved that they could not find justice in the United States.
The petition filed before the international commission amounts to the most direct challenge of the United States’ treatment of Indigenous people to date in terms of human rights — and the first to apply the lens of colonialism.
“What the Onondaga litigation is doing right now is to force a political dialogue with the colonial occupier,” said Andrew Reid, a lawyer representing the Onondaga, adding that a favorable finding could prompt a political conversation about the United States’ treatment of native people on the world stage.
Representatives for the State Department declined to be interviewed and did not respond to requests for comment. But in legal documents, the United States contended that the Onondaga’s central claims have been rejected in prior cases; that they have had “abundant opportunity” for their case to be heard; and that they are merely unhappy with the outcome. It also contended that the commission has no jurisdiction, given that the bulk of the nation’s losses took place two centuries before it was established.
“The judicial process functioned as it should have in this matter,” the United States wrote in legal papers.
The commission’s decision could come at any time, but Hill is trying not to focus on it.
Most days he is glad to have tried.
“We aren’t sure how it’s going to go,” he says. “But at least it won’t be hanging there for the next generation.”
51 years ago last week, my relatives powerfully announced themselves on the world stage. In response to the ongoing subjugation of our people, more than 200 Oglala Lakota and American Indian Movement (AIM) activists occupied the town of Wounded Knee, right down the road from me, here on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. You probably know some of what happened next. The armed standoff with federal government agents lasted more than two months, garnering regular coverage on the nightly news and waking people across the planet to our struggle in a new way.
Today, I encourage you to become more familiar with what this occupation meant at the time and explore its lasting legacy. Please read my article on Last Real Indians from a few years back and watch this video from my daughter, Lakota Law spokesperson and organizer Tokata Iron Eyes, who was on the ground (and horseback) for the anniversary last week.
More than 50 years after the fact, I still have questions — some similar to those my relatives must have asked at the time they rose up in 1973. How could the U.S. government expect traditional people to live under the conditions colonialism forced upon us? How could such treatment escape the accountability of the law, and how could we be expected to forgive it? And, now, as we continue to fight for basic things like clean water and meaningful input — and as we continue, too often, to question one another — what will be the legacy of AIM, and of our resistance decades later against the Dakota Access pipeline?
Those are hard questions to answer, but I do know one thing. Without a doubt, the United States is responsible for all of it. This is how colonization works. An occupying force gains by instigating, arming, funding, and providing legal cover for murder. It gains by dividing and conquering. It gains land, minerals, and wealth. Our continued subjugation and our infighting are good for the colony.
About two years after the occupation ended, on the very day that FBI agents Ronald Williams and Jack Coler were killed on the Jumping Bull compound (for which AIM activist Leonard Peltier was later falsely convicted), the Oglala Sioux Tribe signed over a huge chunk of land containing mineral deposits to the United States. Consider that colonizers often use diversionary tactics and counterinsurgency measures to lower the cost of extracting whatever minerals the corporations want — and to eliminate opposition.
In the 1970s, that opposition was coming domestically from hippies, Black nationalists, the Brown Berets, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Weathermen, AIM, the National Indian Youth Council, and so forth. America was still openly racist, people were dying, and BIPOC (Black/Indigenous/People of Color) had no choice but to take public stands to shed light and call attention to the conditions we faced, regularly enforced by a government that either didn’t care or wanted us gone.
Thus, in our lexicon, we say that AIM liberated Wounded Knee. We celebrate Feb. 27 as “Liberation Day.” To this day, we remember the liberators with pride — and we remember that we are always susceptible to manipulation by outside forces. That’s exactly why we rose up once again at Standing Rock in 2016. And while it’s troubling that we continue to have to make such stands, I also see reason for hope.
More and more Americans are beginning to understand that most of their elected leaders have little interest in defending our country from extractive and/or war-profiteering corporations. Many Americans find themselves on our side now; they see corporate encroachment invading every aspect of their lives. I’m grateful that you recognize we must celebrate liberation, celebrate a patriotism which defends sacred lands and waters — and, by extension, ourselves, our birthrights, and our constitutional rights.
Wopila tanka — thank you for supporting Indigenous sovereignty! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel
You’ve heard from me a few times already this year about the importance of coalition building to achieve a new level of effectiveness — not just in our own work, but in the work my Indigenous relatives are undertaking at tribal nations across Turtle Island. To that end, today I share with you about a trip I took to spend a few days earlier this month with people I greatly respect at the Wind River Reservation in so-called Wyoming.
The seventh largest reservation in the U.S., the Wind River Nation encompasses more than 2 million acres of incredible wildlands, and it’s home to people from both Northern Arapaho and Eastern Shoshone tribes. I went to visit a few friends there, including Wes Martel, who you may remember from his keynote speech at the Great Plains Water Alliance’s Winter Water and Climate Conference, featured in our 20th Dakota Water Wars chapter. I also spent time with Jason Baldes, a central figure helping to return American Buffalo to Wind River and other tribal nations. I encourage you to watch “Homecoming,” a short documentary on PBS, about his wonderful work.
Watch: Buffalo return to Wind River in “Homecoming,” a PBS short documentary featuring the voice and good work of Jason Baldes.
To you, the inextricable link between Native people and buffalo is likely no mystery. Jason speaks to this eloquently in the documentary.“To restore that animal to our communities means that we can begin to heal,” he says. “From atrocities of the past, from loss of land, from loss of culture, loss of language. It’s foundational to who we are.”
That’s just one example of good Indigenous storytelling emanating from Wind River. While there, I also discovered the great music of Christian Wallowing Bull, a talented Northern Arapaho singer-songwriter featured in the new documentary film “Lone Wolf,” which premiered in California a few days ago. I then spoke with Dave Herring, the film’s director. I hope that you’ll watch their film and be as inspired by Christian’s story as I was.
As you can see, we’re taking extra time this year to build connections with people, organizations, and tribal nations. In order to create a better society, it’s critical to advance not just our own priorities as Lakota People, but also those of all our relatives with their own traditional knowledge systems, art, and dreams. Between us, we’ve got much more in store to share with you. Stay tuned!
Wopila tanka — My continued thanks for supporting all Indigenous people, art, and culture. Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
Greetings from Las Vegas, where I stopped to observe the mayhem of Super Bowl week. As my dad wrote to you a few days ago, we remain committed to changing the Kansas City Chiefs team name — and all racist characterizations of our people in the sports world. Also, I want to take a moment to say that because we are all human, and no matter how big our differences, I offer my sincere condolences to the Kansas City community in the wake of yet another instance of senseless gun violence. I pray for the day when we find better ways to listen to one another, discover common ground and understanding, and stop killing each other.
On a happier note, on my way to Vegas, I journeyed through some spectacular, sacred places. These included some of the Trail of the Ancients and traditional homelands of the Diné (Navajo) and Ute Peoples, including Monument Valley and Bears Ears National Monument — where something wonderful has occurred. I encourage you to watch my short video, recorded onsite, to hear about the recent gift of land back to Indigenous stewardship in Cottonwood Canyon.
Watch: I visited the sacred lands of the Ute and Diné Peoples to see Cottonwood Canyon and share with you about the importance of Landback efforts like the one in Cottonwood Canyon.
In many ways, the process undertaken with Cottonwood Canyon can serve as a model elsewhere across Turtle Island. A nonprofit organization bought available land and synched with a consortium of Native Peoples to preserve a beautiful place featuring rare views of spectacular rock formations and ancient dwelling sites. That’s something I dearly hope we can eventually replicate on a much larger scale with the Black Hills — but I’m also happy anytime we see the return of sacred lands to Indigenous care.
I’ll also say that the model isn’t perfect. Such transfers shouldn’t come with conditions. Isn’t the point of Native stewardship to respect our traditional knowledge systems regarding the land? So, while I appreciate the intent behind a condition of the transfer that will limit access to the site, I would also suggest that it shouldn’t be about eliminating human contact. Human beings should, in fact, have the opportunity to visit sacred places and relearn how to live in harmony with them, just as my relatives and ancestors have done for time immemorial. Even our allies can learn something here: please stop holding us to rules designed by colonizers.
In any case, a win is a win! Ultimately this gift will ensure that a special place displaying the ingenuity of our relatives’ ancestors and the vistas they loved will remain unspoiled for generations to come. And for that, I am truly grateful.
Wopila tanka — thank you for supporting landback efforts! Tokata Iron Eyes Spokesperson & Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
Global Warming: a very passive title to address a very lethal problem. Example: It is getting a little warm outside, nothing to worry about.
Climate Change: a perfect setup to generate perfect rebukes. Example: The climate is always changing. climate is just doing what climate has always done and human activity has nothing to do with it.
Climate Crisis: a very selective term. It is only a crisis for the people immediately affected. Also falls into the maligned category of ¨alarmist¨
The term I adopted: Climate Alteration: A very pointed terminology to address the impact human activity is having on the global climate. Our activities are altering climate systems on a global scale causing extreme weather events. Yes, temperatures on average across the globe are rising and this disturbance is causing extreme temperatures (hot and cold) extreme drought, extreme flooding, and extreme storms. The rise in global temperature has upset the balance. This alteration has been building up slowly as the oceans absorbed most of the extra heat. But now, plain to see for everyone paying attention to weather-related news or looking out their own windows, extreme weather is pushing organisms and plants to extinction. Our crops are being destroyed. The range of many insects, birds, and animals has shifted. Here on this thread are the thousands of articles, references, and comments that illustrate Climate Alteration. We have documented how some are being innovative in developing mitigation strategies. Some are also being manipulative and stupid and we are intelligent enough to research and decide for our communities what we need to do if our governments do not act.
As animals and plants are forced to shift their range because of extremes in weather, so do people.
By now, you’re likely well aware of the climate crisis and its significant dangers to Indigenous communities the world over. The problem is especially magnified on islands and in coastal regions, where sea level rise can wipe away traditional homelands and make climate refugees of those who have been displaced. That’s true even right here on Turtle Island, where hundreds of Native communities — in South Dakota, Alaska, Florida, Hawai’i, Washington, and Louisiana — face existential threats.
And now, the first community to supposedly be moved from harm’s way — the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation — is facing a new set of problems. Just before the new year, the tribe filed a landmark civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) against the state of Louisiana. In 2016, HUD granted Louisiana $48 million in aid to resettle the tribe. But, its complaint asserts, Louisiana failed to properly implement the grant and has ethnically and racially discriminated, violated tribal sovereignty, excluded cultural components central to a proper relocation program, and provided poor replacement housing.
The Jean Charles Chactaw Nation has always lived here, on the Isle de Jean Charles. The climate crisis and resultant rising sea levels have endangered the tribe’s homeland and forced many members to move to inadequate replacement housing in a new location. Photo credit: Chantel Comerdelle.
The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation has resided on the Isle de Jean Charles for five generations, since the ancestors of its citizens escaped the Trail of Tears in the early 1830s amid President Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act. Its homelands and burial grounds are located in a region facing perpetual devastation and erosion by storms and sea level rise. Since 1955, the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation has lost over 98 percent of its lands to the encroaching ocean.
It’s also worth noting that the tribe is located in Terrebonne Parish, a region notorious for oil extraction, high pollution rates, and environmental justice violations. The Parish and over 90 percent of its property are largely controlled by non-local fossil fuel and chemical companies. The infamous “Cancer Alley” is just upstream.
Watch this short documentary detailing the tribe’s relocation.
By filing its complaint with HUD, the Jean Charles Choctaw Nation is looking to the federal agency to investigate the grant-funded resettlement program, currently run by Louisiana’s Office of Community Development (OCD). The tribe hopes HUD will order OCD to respect tribal needs and authority as the program’s implementation proceeds.
The lawsuit is also significant in that, while the tribe has state recognition from Louisiana, it does not have federal recognition, which would extend access to more grants, disaster assistance, and various legal powers — including constitutional protections and self-governance recognized by the United States. Lakota Law will keep an eye on this case and report back to you. As always, we’re grateful to you for standing in solidarity with every community of color on the frontlines of environmental justice.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your unwavering dedication! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Oyate watch party at Noon Pacific Time on January 20th
I’m looking forward to a new year working together for Native sovereignty and justice with you. It’s appropriate that our first 2024 event is gathering to watch a crucial film contextualizing the movement to stop the Dakota Access pipeline. You may have heard that we’ve joined with local Santa Cruz groups and the filmmakers of “Oyate” to host our in-person screening at UC Santa Cruz on Jan. 20 at noon PST, which will also be streamed online in real time!
To quickly update you, my daughter Tokata and I will present at the event, joined by the film’s producer/director and the two other producers. Please note that the event’s venue has been moved to the Merrill Center on the UC Santa Cruz campus, and we’ll stream all the festivities from there.
We’ll send you reminders with the link for your party to join our livestream. Look out for those the day before and on the morning of this very special event, Jan. 20!
“Oyate” elevates the voices of Indigenous activists, organizers, and politicians, offering our perspectives on our complicated history and present-day circumstances and illuminating the interconnectivity among the issues facing Indigenous People today. It features excellent music, tells some of our personal stories, and delves deeply into our movement for Native and environmental justice.
In the ongoing spirit of wopila — a meaningful acknowledgment of our gratitude and a desire to share the best of ourselves with you — we offer this opportunity to come together, watch, learn, and move forward with purpose. We thank UCSC, the American Indian Resource Center, and the Resource Center for Nonviolence for making this event possible, and we hope you’ll join us on Jan. 20!
Wopila tanka — thank you for your support and attention! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
I did not even imagine that my trip to Standing Rock, North Dakota from Sacramento, California with a banner signed by members of the elementary school would end up on the front of the guard shack at the main entrance to the camp.
It is a story.
After watching the news of attacks on peaceful protestors and reading about the oil pipeline being rapidly approved, I felt that I must act. I designed a banner, had it printed, and scheduled a signing party at the elementary school where I taught. Everyone at William Land Elementary placed their signatures on the banner during the event on November 17, 2016.
When I arrived in Bismark, I had one mission. I needed to deliver the banner to the tribe.
I was in contact with a woman on Facebook who said she had a friend who was on her way to Standing Rock. This friend, her name was Katie, was going to meet me at the hotel but was delayed. I met her instead at the main gate in Standing Rock. I witnessed the live feed of a major action against the water protectors the night before.
Katie (not her name) had a friend (Billy) come with us to pick up supplies from the Walmart in Bismarck. I found the guy to be very untrustworthy – he shoplifted a hat in Walmart. He did not seem to have the spirit of a person participating in prayer vigils or protest of an oil pipeline. I found Katie to also be very suspect. I thought they might be agents of some sort. I found out on our drive into town that they had already been in Standing Rock and had been involved in the action the night before. They were still coughing from the tear gas.
We delivered the supplies to the various tents at camp: medical, food, and school.
On the third day at Standing Rock, I was able to formally present the banner to the tribal chief. I had purchased tobacco in Bismarck to give as a gift first. Then I handed the chief the banner and asked him to accept it from all the signatories in Sacramento. He accepted it and told me that I had permission to hang it at the front gate. There were hundreds of banners from around the world and around the country in the camp. Each had to get permission from the tribal council to be hung. I was very lucky to get to hang ours on the front gate near the main entrance. In the video it is fleetingly visible, the third banner to the left of the large EnbridgeLies banner.
Unknown water protector, Katie, and Billy with the banner.Me and Katie with the banner.
I felt I was supposed to be there. None of the staff of my school had even heard about what was happening at Standing Rock. The mainstream media was not covering what was happening. Here I was, able to deliver a signed banner all the way from California to Bismarck, North Dakota!
I found out from Katie that Billy was kicked out of camp for not complying with camp rules.
On the day I left Standing Rock, I heard that people were told to evacuate the camp. I worried about the banner and I called and asked Katie to take it down and send it to the tribal offices on the reservation. She told me that she found two guys who would deliver it because she was on her way out of the camp also.
Katie sent me this photo. But instead of delivering the banner to the reservation, they hung it in front of the guard shack! I can only speculate that they put it there temporarily and that it would be taken to the reservation later. I did not know of the ritual burning of everything in the camp as it was evacuated. I left on the 28th.
So, by the time I got back to Sacramento, imagine my shock to see images of our school banner being burned up!
William Land Elementary School in Sacramento, California is forever part of history.
An iconic photo of Big Foot left frozen from the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee of a dead and frozen Big Foot. (Photo/Public Domain)
Opinion. Today marks the 133rd anniversary of the Massacre of Wounded Knee during the wintry week between Christmas and New Years back in 1890.
Nine days before the massacre that left hundreds of Sioux men, women, and children dead, an obscure weekly newspaper in South Dakota ran an editorial about the death of the Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull. In the opinion piece, L. Frank Baum, publisher of the Saturday Pioneer, wrote:
“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled.”
Early in the morning on Dec. 29, 1890, across the state of South Dakota at Wounded Knee Creek, the Sioux, who were captured the previous afternoon by members of the US 7th Cavalry Regiment, were surrendering their weapons. A shot was fired. The Calvary proceeded to shoot unarmed and innocent Sioux elders, women, and children. While an accurate account will never be known, it is believed between 250 and 300 Sioux were massacred that day.
Snowfall was heavy that December week. The Sioux ancestors killed that day were left on the frigid wintery plains of the reservation before a burial party came to bury them in one mass grave.
After the mass killing of Natives, Baum picked up his poisonous pen again and wrote another editorial for his Saturday Pioneer newspaper. This time, he wrote:
“The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination [sic] of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”
Ten years later, Braum wrote a children’s book called The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. Yes, that one. It was eventually made into one of the most famous movies of all time. When I was a youth, my siblings and I would make popcorn and sit and watch the movie when it was broadcast yearly. As an adult, I discovered Baum’s hatred and poisonous racism towards Native Americans. Suffice it to say, I stopped watching the film.
Now, I realize Braum did not single-handedly cause the genocide of Native Americans. But, he contributed to it with his editorials and his calls for the extermination of Native people. His family later apologized for Baum’s racist editorials.
This is why history matters. If you know your history, you know your place in this world.
In recent weeks, the Republican presidential front-runner, former president Donald Trump, has stated in his stump speech that immigrants entering the U.S. illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.” There has been pushback that Trump borrowed the line from Adolf Hitler’s rhetoric in his autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf, which set the principles behind Nazi Germany’s genocide of more than six million Jews.
Trump denies reading the book. I don’t doubt his claim because he is known for not being a reader. But I’m guessing that some of his speech writers and political advisers may have — and they certainly play a role in the words that come out of candidate Trump’s mouth.
I suspect most Americans don’t subscribe to the belief that immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country.
I also believe that most Americans would agree that racism has been a true poison in our country throughout the last two centuries, though it’s not something we’ve been able to eradicate.
That’s why it’s important we remember the Massacre of Wounded Knee, as well as the rhetoric and words used to justify it. Because it’s a potent reminder of what racism has led to in this country: the death of innocent Native people whose ancestors lived on this land since time immemorial.
Thayék gde nwéndëmen – We are all related.
About the Author: “Levi \”Calm Before the Storm\” Rickert (Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation) is the founder, publisher and editor of Native News Online. Rickert was awarded Best Column 2021 Native Media Award for the print\/online category by the Native American Journalists Association. He serves on the advisory board of the Multicultural Media Correspondents Association. He can be reached at levi@nativenewsonline.net.”
Contact: levi@nativenewsonline.net
Wounded Knee Massacre December 29, 1890
by Renee Michel 2020 Second Life Virtual Wounded Knee Memorial
I wanted to research more about Wounded Knee and how past events led to today’s events. I find that many do not grasp history; this causes many not to understand when people protest.
In this memorial, I centered on the physical space, a reconstruction of the massacre, and what led to it. In the surrounding area, I related many of the current issues facing First Nation people.
Some questions one might ask: How did Custer lose the Battle of Little Big Horn, and what did that loss have to do with what happened at Wounded Knee? How did the discovery of gold in the Black Hills affect the lives of the Lakota? How does the presence of natural resources and mineral deposits on reservation land affect First Nation people today? What are the lingering effects of the forced assimilation on native children in boarding schools? Where is the effort to find missing indigenous women?
We tend to focus on the victims of oppression, but I would challenge anyone to research the effects of being an oppressor. How has our government evolved over the decades from rationalizing the genocide of First Nation people to granting corporations the rights to destroy the environment today, to militarized police using pepper spray and rubber bullets on unarmed peaceful protestors, to mining companies deliberately contaminating drinking water? Is there any difference? If not, when will we stop this madness? When will we heal?
It is all connected, and nothing has fundamentally changed. The educational system is no help; the school textbooks relate how the people enjoyed life at California’s missions. There is no mention of the genocide of California tribes during the California Gold Rush.
The First Nation people are still here, but they are still holding on to their cultures, languages, and way of life. An excellent question to ask is, “Do you know whose land you live on?” We will need their knowledge of this land to deal with climate change.
Aliens. Extraterrestrials. Little green men and women. Call them what you want, and question if you will. In many Native cosmological traditions, we call them Star People — and many of us have been questioning for a long time. As it turns out, the U.S. government, too, has been looking into things, setting up what began as a secret program to study Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAP) in 2007. In 2017, The New York Times published articles exposing the program’s existence, but some of those who worked inside it say there’s far more the public should know.
For many years, Daniel Sheehan, who co-founded the Romero Institute and the Lakota People’s Law Project, has been working to achieve government transparency around UAP. Now, at a time when misinformation runs rampant, the health of our democracy depends on trust in institutions more than ever — and yet the federal government continues to hide much of what it knows. That’s why the Romero Institute has founded the New Paradigm Institute (NPI), a project dedicated to exposing UAP truth. If you care about this issue, I urge you to take the New Paradigm Institute’s call to action and contact Congress today to demand full disclosure regarding UAP. You can also opt in to continue hearing from NPI going forward.
Watch: Romero Institute and NPI president Danny Sheehan discusses UAP disclosure.
I acknowledge that this message may seem tangential to our usual work to achieve Indigenous and environmental justice. But Uncle Sam has let Native nations down many times, and we Lakota understand better than most the importance of holding the federal government accountable. If we are ever to build trust, establishing proper governmental oversight and full transparency is important.
I’ll also say that Lakota Law exists in part to preserve our cultural heritage and share our traditional ways of understanding the universe. So in that spirit, I’ll tell you that many of our stories contain references to the Star People and interactions with the cosmos. One of our teachings says that we come to this plane of existence through the Big Dipper (or as we call it, Matȟó Thípila — Bear Lodge), and if we live well and honorably, our souls earn the right to return through that same portal at the end of our lives.
Another tells of when Matȟó, the bear, gave chase to a group of our people who had become lost. This particular bear was enormous, and there was no way the group could outrun its massive strides. They fell to their knees to pray for divine intervention. Hearing their desperate call, Tunkasila (Creator) came to their aid! He lifted the ground beneath the people higher and higher, rising them up on a precipice nearly a thousand feet in the air, just beyond even Matȟó’s impressive reach.
Before finally giving up, the great bear clawed at every edge in search of his human meal, creating vertical ridges along the sides of the newly formed mesa. And that’s how the earthbound Matȟó Thípila (known by colonizers as Devil’s Tower in Wyoming — the setting of Spielberg’s classic “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) came to be. And the lost ones? They couldn’t get down, so some say Tunkasila rescued them a second time, sending them to the heavens to live among the ancestors — and the Star People — as the Pleiades.
We look forward to sharing more of our traditional knowledge systems in the coming seasons. Meanwhile, my gratitude to you for reading, for considering our sister program’s effort to achieve government transparency, and especially for being an active participant in our mission to win justice.
Pilámayaye — thank you! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
P.S. To hear more from the New Paradigm Institute as it demands full disclosure around UAP, send your message to your reps asking for the creation of a governing body to achieve full transparency from the federal government.
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
I encourage you to purchase these accurate and beautiful maps. I had several in my classroom before I retired from teaching.
A story:
Outside my classroom, I had a very large wall used to display student work. My class was studying indigenous history and I had purchased a very large map showing all the tribal nations in the U.S. I hung the map on the wall along with recent artwork and reports my students had finished.
The next week was open house and many parents visited the school to view the classrooms. I noticed an elderly man sitting in a chair in front of the map. He appeared to be crying. I walked over and asked him if he was ok. He said that he was overcome with emotion to see this map with all of the tribes. He said he never thought anyone cared to do such research.
As a teacher, I went above and beyond the very limited curriculum. I made sure to add relevant materials, books, and maps to provide a more holistic and complete view of the world. My students did many independent research projects. These maps are very educational! Add them to your teaching materials and home.
When I retired I gave the maps to a student.
These are photos where you can see a few of the maps in the background.
“A lot of people from American society don’t understand our connection, our intergenerational connection, and how deep it runs within us to the land and the Earth,” Logan said.
Logan described a thanksgiving speech, or Ganö:nyök, that the Seneca recite to recognize the natural world around them.
“We start at the Earth and we go all the way up to the sky, to the creator, and it covers everything from the water, the plants, food, medicine, trees, birds, animals, everything in the natural environment,” Logan said. “If any one of those things goes away, eventually we will perish.”
Creating sustainable energy does not mitigate the problem. I used to get into these tremendous arguments with my father about progress. To summarize my stance: I used to take the bus because I did not have a car. I suffered through strange men groping me, people smoking, waiting in the rain for late busses, limiting my shopping because I could not carry a lot of stuff. It was sometimes unbearable. I was able to buy a car and at first, it was incredible. I had freedom! I had safety! It was convenient and I could go shopping in many places and load everything in the trunk!
But then one rainy day I drove by a crowded bus stop and realized all I had done was trade some problems for other problems. I now had a vehicle in which I had a traffic accident: someone ran into me and the car had to be repaired. I could get parking tickets so I always had to hunt around for parking space, and in some places, I had to pay for parking. I had insurance to pay, and I had to spend my Sundays washing the car. I had maintenance and car repairs. Instead of a monthly bus pass, I now had a car loan to pay off. I had a driver’s license to renew at the DMV. I had a yearly car registration to renew. I had to have a car inspection to get the registration renewed. I worried about someone trying to steal the car, so I bought an expensive car alarm system. Instead of being able to dose off when riding in the bus, I had to stay alert at all times when driving the car. I now got stuck in traffic jams on the freeway and ended up taking a longer time to get home from work than if I had taken the bus! When I added it up, I actually had more problems than when I rode the bus.
Energy is not created or destroyed – it just changes form.
I think this law applies to everything we do. There is no such thing as progress. We just change out one set of actions for another, one set of problems for another. We are not getting anywhere from where we started. We are making things worse.
We used to know how to make the things we needed, but now we are dependent on people and systems for everything.
We used to be able to drink water from the rivers and fish/hunt for our food. Now we use self-checkout at stores that sell us contaminated and processed unnutritious food.
We used to work in our fields growing the food from sun up to sundown. Now we sit in cars in traffic for hours to get to work and then back home so we can afford a gym membership to try and stay fit.
We used to sit on our front porches on hot summer evenings because we had no air conditioning and would talk to our neighbors to get the daily gossip. Now we are isolated in air-conditioned homes with security systems behind locked doors.
So, back to the article I cited. Little has changed in relation to the land and indigenous people. They have a pristine forest with old-growth trees. How are they able to still live there and the land has not been destroyed? – that is the big question.
We are clearly missing some knowledge. We come along and want to build a potentially polluting ¨Green¨ plant right next to their land because, you know, progress.
We live an unsustainable, nonregenerative lifestyle. That is why their forest is beautiful and all the other land is polluted, exploited, and dead.
Thursday, November 24th, 2016 I thought at night very hard about why I was there in Oceti Sakowin Camp. The area is filled with spirits. They are in the wind as it blows over the hills. One can feel that many things have happened here. So, the question was, are you ready to die for this cause? Because if you are not serious about it, you should not be here at all. I thought about how I was a guest, an ally to help others. They have always been here fighting to live. I cried this night knowing that if I was called to do an action, I would willingly go with a prayer and make the stand full of peace as many others have done before. There are some things worth dying for and water is surely one of them. In acknowledging this, I understood fully what everyone here is going through. I knew that I was there for the right reason. I had seen people crying, I had seen some people walking alone looking very sad. But overall, peace and hopefulness in the power of prayer hovers about over the whole camp. No matter where anyone is from, no matter what style or condition of clothes, no matter the language, everyone is united and I could feel the power in that and everyone comforted and helped each other. This is the front line of a very serious battle. A battle between peace and violence, between right and wrong, between the oppressor and the oppressed, between common citizens and corporate power. Every thought, every word uttered, every action must radiate the peace and love we have for each other and to the people watching us on the hills overlooking the camp. There is no profanity at camp, no hateful words. One might be asked to leave if they are overheard saying negative things about others or swearing. There are children all playing about the camp and no one wants to upset them. I heard about people being led out of camp for breaking the rules. Anyone thinking this is a Woodstock or some sort of hippy camp-out is very mistaken. The camps are sacred places for prayer, these lands are filled with spirits and people must respect those spirits.
Morning. I got up before dawn, it was overcast, frosty, and cold, and I went to the California Kitchen to help with breakfast. I helped clean the tent floor, it was getting muddy with the wet frosty footprints. I helped organize the service tables. There were already many people working in the kitchen getting the Thanksgiving food prepared. The California Kitchen is actually three tents, one central large cabin tent and two smaller circular tents at each end connected by swinging doors. The Central tent has all of the food on shelves, the food prep tables, and the wash basins with water. The rear tent has the stoves and ovens hooked to generators. The front tent has four tables and a few chairs for people to sit and eat. Someone had decorated this space with Christmas decorations and lights. There are service tables against two sides and here are where you can find condiments, utensils, plates, and cups. They had a lot of paper donations but were trying to be mindful of waste and use metal utensils and real plates. Everyone is encouraged to bring their own mug, plate, and eating utensils.
After breakfast was served, I sat and talked to people I met until about 12:00 noon. I met a filmmaker doing a documentary, a retired sailboat lady, Travis from a children’s school, a man from Bishop, California, a Washington State hippy dude who lived in a commune, a woman from New Zealand who was there with a group to perform a Haka, Nan, her husband, and two sons (pictured with one named Salmon). I also met two friends cutting the apples for apple pie and vegetables for Thanksgiving dinner (pictured). It was these conversations that later sprouted an idea.
There was someone who announced that there would be a raid on the camp. However, one of the security asked where this news came from. That a person should evaluate everything and not spread rumors that could disturb the peace. There are instigators and those people are quickly exposed when everyone is calm and connected and knows where to get the accurate information. Besides, no one cared what this rumor stated. No one was going to leave.
I sat in my car to get warm and to write some notes. I fell asleep as I was writing. It was here that I formed an idea. These people are not protestors and rioters, they are mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, aunties, uncles, grandmothers, cousins, nurses, medics, lawyers, teachers, farmers, vets, retired people, rich, poor, educated, wise, homeless, they are everyone. I met in this one day people from over 10 different countries. I met people from all over California – yes even a few from Sacramento. One must humanize who is here.
I AM………. WATER IS LIFE
I took a walk to the sacred fire around 2:00 p.m.. This fire must not be photographed. You must approach it with peace in your heart. You must respect this fire as a spirit.I brought a gift of tobacco for an elder and a gift of the Water is Life stickers. I thanked him for allowing me to be an ally. There were some singing performances happening and then I heard of buses that were going to Ft. Yates to a high school for Thanksgiving dinner. I knew the California Kitchen was going to be very busy and crowded, so I got on a bus. I met a woman from Oakland and a school teacher and his aunt. As we were going to the high school, the driver had the radio on and was listening to a football game. An announcement interrupted the game coverage, it stated “Important! There are rioters and protestors in town. If you observe any suspicious activity or see any suspicious people, immediately call the Morton County Sheriff’s Department.” Wow, I thought, I wonder who the announcement was talking about because I had not met any!
Thanksgiving Dinner. This dinner was provided by Jane Fonda. It was very beautiful and there was a great deal of delicious food. The servers were all volunteers and youngsters from the school. There were cards of thanks from children all around the world that were hung on the wall and placed on all of the tables. Archambault’s uncle prayed and spoke at length about the connection with the land and water. How we need to reconnect and teach the young people. He also told a story about Sitting Bull. How he always said he fought to defend the women and children. He never fought just because he wanted to fight from hate. He always fought to defend. We also heard a beautiful canoe song from the Pacific Northwest. There were many thanks to the celebrities who helped the camp and helped with the dinner.
Dinner: squash, mashed potatoes, carrots, stuffing, turkey, rice, bread, fry bread, tortilla, pumpkin pie. You are supposed to leave a little bit on your plate for the spirits.
It’s that time of year again. Thanksgiving is upon us. I encourage you to read a piece I wrote for The Nation magazine and watch my segment on CNN arguing that we should scrap this holiday and replace it with “Truthsgiving.” (Note that the CNN segment starts after the ads about four minutes and ten seconds in.) This is not, perhaps, an entirely novel idea. We’ve tried it before — a popular rebranding of Thanksgiving as “Thankstaking,” communicating that there should be no pride in genocide. But this year I am committing to the concept of Truthsgiving, which I feel better embodies the right spirit of generous sharing and listening.
Watch: I appeared on CNN to discuss changing the Thanksgiving holiday to Truthsgiving.
Here’s some truth: gathered around our tables, we still eat turkey, corn, beans, squash, cranberries, and mashed potatoes. All these are Indigenous foods. In fact, 60 percent of all the food consumed by the human species has been created by Indigenous nations. Please understand that (despite the headline in The Nation), I am not trying to cancel Thanksgiving — for we give thanks every day!
Our celebrations, however, should also honor real history. We must tell the truth. The truth is a fire that burns all lies in its way. It is no secret that colonial project countries (e.g. the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) have hidden important truths from us. It’s no surprise settlers like governor Kristi Noem fight so hard to hide historical facts from students taught in South Dakota schools. How fragile the American settler identity is that it cannot abide teaching the truth. But until the truth is shared, there can be no justice. And if there is no justice, then peace is beyond our reach.
We have to tell the hard truths, painful as they may sometimes be. We must recognize that genocide is not a “dark chapter in our nation’s history,” but that it’s still imposed on tribal nations in the present. The first Americans are still denied real nationhood. In all ways “legal,” political, and economic, Indigenous nations across Turtle Island and around the globe remain captive to outdated institutional systems carrying out the centuries old Doctrine of Christian “Discovery.”
Let us, then, meet each other where we stand today. We don’t have to turn back the clock, but we must be truthful with each other in the here and now. It’s our mandate — as Native and allied activists — to reinvigorate the quest for truth. We have to show up and reorganize the very symbols of our culture and our shared identity. Like Columbus Day, Thanksgiving is one of these symbols, one of those rituals, a place where worldviews collide. That’s not a bad thing. Let us use these collisions to move forward, knowing in our hearts that we are all in a conscious evolution together.
Wopila tanka — my gratitude for your investment in truth! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
P.S. Our desire to share both the giving of thanks and the telling of truth is one reason we initiated our live-streamed Wopila (Gratitude) Gathering every year around Truthsgiving. Please RSVP now to join us online on Giving Tuesday, Nov. 28, and spread the word about this annual event to honor, inspire, and activate. The citizens of the Lakota Nation conduct wopila ceremonies to give back as a practice of gratitude, and this is our way of bringing you into the circle.
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
Reckless development proposals such as mines, mega-dams, and oil pipelines have a way of coming back from the dead. The controversial Keystone XL pipeline is a recent and classic example: a zombie project that just wouldn’t die. Now, in North Dakota, environmental groups and Native American tribes are seizing on a rare opportunity to shut down a fossil fuel project that’s already up and running—the fiercely fought Dakota Access Pipeline.
Earlier this month, tribal members and environmentalists gathered in Bismarck, North Dakota, to give public testimony on the draft environmental impact statement for a critical section of the Dakota Access Pipeline. Before the hearing, activists who had traveled by bus from the Twin Cities rallied on the sidewalk with members of the Cheyenne River and Standing Rock Sioux Tribes, which for years have led opposition to the oil pipeline.
Format of public comment meetings for Dakota Access oil pipeline upsets opponents
Updated 11:28 AM CST, November 2, 2023
BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — Opponents of the Dakota Access oil pipeline are taking issue with the format of private oral testimony in meetings for public comment on a draft environmental review of the controversial pipeline.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is in the midst of two public comment meetings in Bismarck, North Dakota, the first held Wednesday, the second set for Thursday. People wishing to give testimony may do so orally in a curtained area with a stenographer, or do so in writing at tables.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has long opposed the pipeline due to the risk of an oil spill contaminating the tribe’s drinking water supply. The four-state pipeline crosses under the Missouri River just upstream of the tribe’s reservation.
The long-awaited draft environmental review, released in September, outlines five options for the pipeline’s fate. Those include denying the easement for the controversial crossing and removing or abandoning a 7,500-foot (2,286-meter) segment, or granting the easement with no changes or with additional safety measures. A fifth option is to reroute the pipeline north of Bismarck, which would require new state, local and federal permits.
Future of controversial Dakota Access pipeline’s river crossing remains unclear
September 8, 20233:14 PM ET By The Associated Press
BISMARCK, N.D. — Federal officials on Friday released a draft environmental review of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, but said they’re waiting for more input before deciding the future of the line’s controversial river crossing in North Dakota.
The draft was released over three years after a federal judge ordered the environmental review and revoked the permit for the Missouri River crossing, upstream of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s reservation. The tribe is concerned a pipeline oil spill could contaminate its water supply.
I’m excited to announce that our third annual Wopila Gathering is almost here — and you’re invited! Please come spend time with me, other Lakota Law leaders, and special guests at the live-streamed event on Giving Tuesday, Nov. 28 from 3-6 p.m. PDT (6-9 p.m. EDT).
I’m very much looking forward to hosting you for this annual online celebration. In addition to entertainment and insights from artists and influencers, I will be joined by three powerful activists — Tokata Iron Eyes, Lily Joy Winder from People, Not Mascots, and Lakota Law Standing Rock organizer Phyllis Young — for candid conversations on topics important to Indian Country. This year’s topics are Resistance, Representation, and Resurgence.
Watch our promo video for more details on the big event — and RSVP to save the date!
The Wopila Gathering is one of the highlights of my work with Lakota Law. I get energized when thousands of supporters like you gather with us throughout the day to honor, inspire, and activate around curated content and conversations that build the movement for Native justice. And I encourage you to interact! You can join the chat during the event, and we’ll post and read comments over the course of the livestream.
I hope to see you there! RSVP to let us know you’re coming, and please extend this invite to those you love by clicking the social share icons — to Facebook, Twitter, and email — on our Wopila Page. Let’s continue to grow the circle of support and come together to make a difference for Indigenous justice! Stay tuned for more info soon.
Wopila tanka — thank you, always, for your friendship! Chase Iron Eyes Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
National Congress of American Indians Unveils New Visual Identity, Marking a Historic Milestone in 80-Year LegacyWASHINGTON, D.C. | To mark the start of Native American Heritage Month, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), the oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization serving Tribal Nations, is proud to announce the unveiling of its new visual identity. This transformative moment in NCAI’s 80-year history is the result of years of collaborative efforts led by tribal leaders and feedback from across Indian Country.
As NCAI approaches its 80th anniversary, this landmark rebrand signifies a bold step toward the future while honoring its rich legacy of tribal policy advocacy. The timely launch during Native American Heritage Month underscores the organization’s long-standing commitment to safeguarding traditional laws, cultures, and ways of life, while championing a more representative and empowered future. https://ncai.us6.list-manage.com/track/click?u=9a05d466a08334b9dbb97078e&id=b0ebf5cfc2&e=67d5b89d29
“Today is a pivotal moment in NCAI’s history,” said NCAI President Fawn Sharp. “It represents more than just a change in our visual identity—it is a profound commitment to unity, solidarity, and a brighter future for Tribal Nations. This rebrand is a symbol of our collective strength as Native peoples, and we invite all of Indian Country to join us on this exciting journey.”
Central to NCAI’s rebrand is a captivating new logo—a symbol of hope, unity, and the enduring spirit of Tribal Nations. The logo features key elements such as 12 feathers representing the 12 NCAI regions, a forward-looking eagle symbolizing progress and advocacy, and soaring wings embodying the spirit of hope for the next seven generations. The organization is also making waves in the digital landscape with a brand new website and recent launch of ‘The Sentinel’ podcast and blog, reinforcing its dedication to amplifying the voice of Indian Country.
“Within this rebrand, we have completely transformed NCAI’s digital presence, ensuring that our resources are more accessible than ever,” said NCAI Executive Director Larry Wright, Jr. “This new website not only showcases our fresh identity but also serves as a hub to explore NCAI’s 80-year legacy, discover key resources, and stay updated on issues that matter most to Tribal Nations. It is a true reflection of who we are, and it’s designed to be a valuable asset for all who rely on us.”
To celebrate Native American Heritage Month, experience the next chapter of NCAI’s journey at the upcoming NCAI 80th Annual Convention & Marketplace. Follow us on social media at @ncai1944 and use the official hashtag #NCAIRebrand to join the conversation.
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About the National Congress of American Indians: Founded in 1944, the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) is the oldest, largest, and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization in the United States. NCAI advocates on behalf of tribal governments and communities, promoting strong tribal-federal government-to-government policies. NCAI promotes an understanding among the general public regarding American Indian and Alaska Native governments, people, and rights. For more information, visit www.ncai.org.
Today, as the Standing Rock Nation continues to battle the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), I invite you to take a look back at the origins of this movement. Perhaps you remember those fateful days in 2016 and 2017, when DAPL’s construction first threatened our sacred lands, we formed our prayer camps, and we sent our message to the world: “Mni wiconi, water is life!”
Though the fully operational pipeline now crosses under the Missouri River, our battle is far from over. Tens of thousands of environmental justice heroes like you have already aided Standing Rock by flooding the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers with public comments contesting DAPL’s problematic draft Environmental Impact Statement. The Corps will also host two DAPL public hearings on Nov. 1 and 2, at the Radisson Hotel in Bismarck, N.D. from 6-9 p.m. CST. We’ll be there, and so will water protectors from around Turtle Island. We encourage you to watch the video streams on our social channels or attend and lend your voice if you can!
Watch: Standing Rock’s NoDAPL leaders, including Lakota Law’s Phyllis Young, take you back to the origins of the movement.
As you’ll hear in the latest chapter of our Dakota Water Wars video series, we have always understood our mission as water and land defenders. We stand not only for ourselves but for our neighbors, ancestors, and future generations. Produced by the Lakota People’s Law Project in partnership with the Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance and Standing Rock Nation, this video shares powerful remembrances and insights from many of my relatives who organized the camps and kickstarted this resistance.
As we near the Nov. 13 cut-off for submission of public comments, please continue to stand with Standing Rock. As our powerful women, energetic youth, and knowledgeable elders have shown us since they first organized our movement, we have enormous power together when we unite for justice. We’re grateful for every ounce of support, and we pray the federal government will ultimately listen and do the right thing.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your solidarity and action. Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
Over this last weekend, as news channels and social media were inundated with tragic reports out of Gaza, Australia’s electorate voted down a key referendum of vital concern to Indigenous Peoples the world over. The referendum would have created a national advisory board to counsel parliament on Indigenous issues, but 60 percent of the Australian electorate rejected what could have been an important advancement for Indigenous representation at the highest levels of government.
The board was proposed to include Indigenous representatives from Australia’s six states and two territories. Each would have been voted in by local Indigenous community member-electors. A majority of Indigenous voters polled supported the proposal, and although the board would have “non-binding advice” on issues affecting Indigenous Australians, many saw it as a step in the right direction toward reconciliation.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Minister for Indigenous Australians Linda Burney deliver a statement on the outcome of the Voice Referendum at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia October 14, 2023. AAP Image/Lukas Coch via REUTERS
The referendum, supported by the Prime Minister and Indigenous leaders, nevertheless faced opposition from both sides. Some Indigenous Australians and allies saw its goals as insufficient. Grassroots Indigenous sovereignty activists have said they want more significant reconciliation efforts, such as a formal treaty. On the conservative side of the fence, many Australians’ no votes seem to indicate they care little about following a path of truth, justice, and healing in regards to the nation’s Indigenous citizens, who comprise nearly 4 percent of the country’s population of 26 million.
Let me be clear with you: Aboriginal Peoples of Australia and Indigenous Peoples of the Americas share a collective experience of genocide and exploitation at the hands of settler-colonial interests. We both have resisted, gradually carving out a space to practice our cultures and exercise sovereignty. On Turtle Island, we at least have had the benefit of treaties (though, as you probably know, the U.S. government has never been known for honoring them). British settlers never even gave lip service to the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia, which is one reason any advancement in their status (the Australian Constitution fails to even recognize their existence) would have been welcome.
Indigenous Australians weren’t even allowed to vote until 1962, and the Australian state’s genocidal policies have repeatedly targeted them. Throughout the 1800s, they faced an onslaught of settler violence and dispossession of their homelands — a period parallel to the “manifest destiny” era here on Turtle Island. Continuing through the 1900s, Christian and white supremacist institutions such as boarding schools, missions, reservations, and corrupt child welfare systems abused Aboriginal children and families. I urge you to read more about the “Stolen Generations,” Indigenous children removed from their homes by the Australian government and other institutions in an attempt to eliminate the nation’s Indigenous population.
I may hail from the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, but I have spent my life advocating for the rights and humanity of Indigenous Peoples on the international stage. While one failed referendum might seem insignificant when placed along the Australian state’s lengthy timeline of violence and dispossession of Indigenous Peoples, it is nevertheless a crucial marker of a settler-colonial society’s inability to take accountability and respectfully listen to Indigenous voices. I stand with my Indigenous relatives on the Australian continent, and I call on you to join me. Let’s show solidarity with all Indigenous people in their various struggles against settler-colonialism and genocide.
Wopila tanka — my gratitude to you. Phyllis Young Standing Rock Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
Kelley Bova, right, receives a hug after speaking to a group of elders at the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota on Sept. 23, 2023. Bova, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, brought home a pair of moccasins that had been confiscated from a Native boy at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania more than 100 years ago. They were repatriated to the tribe along with the remains of two students who died there in the late 1800s. (Photo by Charles Fox for ICT)
WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about residential and boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list for trauma responses from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition in the U.S. In Canada, the National Indian Residential School Crisis Hotline can be reached at 1-866-925-4419.
LAKE TRAVERSE RESERVATION, S.D. — The moccasins sat for decades in the corner of a glass-enclosed bookcase in Pennsylvania, nestled on a shelf with a Davy Crockett trading card and Canadian Mountie knick-knack.
They had long been separated from the unknown Native boy who had worn them into the notorious Carlisle Indian Industrial School more than 100 years ago, where they were taken from him along with his Native connections to family, language and traditions.
By the time they returned quietly home to Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate lands in late September, however, their anonymity had made them universal, a reminder of the forced assimilation that had formed the mission of the Pennsylvania school.
“It’s all about those moccasins,” said Tamara St. John, a Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate historian and South Dakota state representative. “They are the symbol of everything that happened there.”
Their journey home – accompanying the remains of two Sisseton and Spirit Lake boys repatriated to their tribes and families – brought not only another step toward reconciliation and healing for those involved but also inner peace and a sense of purpose to others along the way.
Moccasin tracks
The skilled craftsmanship of the moccasins’ quill and beadwork apparently caught the attention of seamstress Susan Zeamer, who worked at the Carlisle school from 1895 to 1908.
At some point, she took them home for herself. Whether she slipped the moccasins into her pockets or was given permission to keep them is lost to history.
The moccasins were then passed down through generations until a great-nephew by marriage, John Baker, 72, now of Buckingham Township, Pennsylvania, became their owner in 2011.
A pair of moccasins and a medicine pouch that were confiscated from a student at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School more than 100 years ago were repatriated to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate on Sept. 23, 2023. They had been in the possession of a Pennsylvania family for more than a century before Kelley Bova, a tribal citizen, was asked to return them to the tribe. (Photo by Charles Fox for ICT)
Baker remembers being fascinated by the moccasins in the bookcase in his parent’s home as a boy in the 1950s, when Westerns were popular on television and movie screens. He visualized a young Indigenous boy wearing them on adventures.
Over the past decade, however, despite the sentimental attachment, Baker became uneasy with possessing them. Like many who grew up in the Carlisle area, Baker’s knowledge of the Carlisle school was limited, but being the owner of the moccasins had enlightened him to the reality of the harsh history of the school and the treatment of Indigenous children. He felt a new responsibility. He understood the moccasins were not his to keep, but his quest to find their home of origin was filled with frustrations.
Museums and tribes did not always reply to his queries, but his research convinced him the moccasins were Plains Indian in style.
He finally reached out to Arla Patch, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, a founding member of the Coalition of Natives and Allies advocacy, group which has led a fight against Native mascots. He showed her the moccasins on a Zoom call and told her of his desire to see them returned.
“I was getting pretty frustrated,” Baker said. “What’s going to happen to these? … They’re more than just an artifact, they’re actually part of a lineage that still is alive and well.”
Patch introduced him to her close friend, Kelley Bova, a fellow member of the Coalition of Natives and Allies, who is Dakota.
Bova, too, had been removed from her culture and traditions. Born in Sisseton, South Dakota, she was adopted as a 3-month-old infant by a White family and grew up far from her Native relatives.
Independent research with tribal historians and museum experts confirmed the moccasins were Plains Indian in style, though a specific tribe could not be pinpointed. Officials with the Blackfeet, Dakota, and Rosebud Sioux tribes all felt they were characteristic of their style.
Kelley Bova (not shown) shows the moccasins to Helena Little Ghost at the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota on Sept. 23, 2023. The moccasins were confiscated from a student at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School more than 100 years ago. They remained in the possession of a Pennsylvania family for more than a century before being repatriated back to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. (Photo by Charles Fox for ICT)
Bova believed her own tribe, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, should take the moccasins, and tribal officials agreed. Bova was tapped as the proper person to deliver them to their symbolic home.
“I find it mystical that Kelley and my path would cross, and that John’s and my path would cross,” Patch recalled. “It’s just so amazing. You couldn’t write a script like this.”
Baker presented the moccasins to Bova in November 2022, at Peace Valley Park in Bucks County. He said he felt both a void and a peace to no longer have them in his home in the antique bookcase that he inherited along with the moccasins.
“It was really strange to not have the moccasins in the bookcase anymore,” he said recently. “They’ve been there my whole life. I kind of lost this imaginary friend. But I can’t tell you how much peace that brought me. There was a real sense of well-being about it. Something definitely was settled.”
A different era
While Baker felt the absence, Bova quickly formed a close bond with the worn, leather shoes. They had been on similar journeys, more than a half-century apart, and Bova felt it was time to take them home.
“I would actually talk to them, tell them that they were safe now,” Bova said, as she waited to take the moccasins to Sisseton. “I have prayed with them, and I treat them like a child. I take care of them and plan to be able to bring them home.”
Finding your way home is something Bova knows about.
Her journey began as Rose Anne Owen, a Dakota infant taken from her family at birth and moved to Rosebud to await adoption. At age 3 months, she was placed into the hands of Salvatore and André Petrilli, a suburban Philadelphia dentist and his wife. The Glenside couple, of Italian and Irish descent, had struggled to have their own biological children and had arranged for the adoption through Catholic Charities.
Rose made her 1,900-mile journey to Glenside, Pennsylvania, and was renamed Kelley Elizabeth Petrilli. A new birth certificate was created to reflect that she was the child of two Caucasian parents. Her American Indian heritage was wiped away on paper. A Montgomery County Orphans Court clerk, ironically with the last name of Custer, gave the final stamp of approval to the adoption.
She had become a child of the Native adoption era, a decades-long forced assimilation of Native children established under the Indian Adoption Project, which started in 1958 and evolved to include 50 private and public placement agencies across the United States and Canada.
By then, boarding schools had proven to be expensive and unsuccessful. Adoption was the new attempt at assimilation, but the expenses would be the responsibility of the adopting parents and not that of the government. Raised in a White home, without the communal support of other students, adoption was viewed as a more successful tool for assimilation.
In the next 20 years, until the Indian Child Welfare Act ended the adoption project, almost 13,000 Native children were adopted. Native children are still four times more likely to be removed from their families and placed in foster care than non-Native children.
Love without identity
Unlike many other adoptees, Bova did not suffer a childhood of abuse. The Petrillis provided a loving, middle-class home and private schools, while never hiding her Native heritage.
Eventually, they would have five biological children on their own, but Bova always knew she was different, a Native island in an ocean of White suburbia.
“You’re an Indian, you’re an Indian,” one of her cousins would taunt.
“No, I’m not,” she would scream back, a denial that still embarrasses her and causes her pain today.
“When I was younger, I wanted to be White; I still feel guilty about that,” Bova told The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2021. “I just wanted to fit in and be like my sisters. … I did not like being tall and brown and different.”
For Bova, that feeling of isolation led to what she calls her “dark years” after high school.
“Deep down, when you are adopted, you have a wound inside yourself,” she said. “If your parents gave you up, how lovable can you be?”
Sandy White Hawk, a Sicangu Lakota from Rosebud, knows the feeling. She was adopted at 18 months, and grew up to found the First Nations Repatriations Institute. She currently works at the Indian Child Welfare Act Law Center in Minneapolis.
“Even in loving families, Native adoptees live without a sense of who they are,” White Hawk told the Inquirer. “Love doesn’t provide identity.”
Bova, now 60, did not find her way back to her biological mother, Lillian Owen, and siblings, or her Dakota tribe, the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, until she was 50. Like students who attended Native boarding schools, she found herself split between two worlds and not fitting completely in either.
“When any child was taken, they were also not able to continue their journey of being Native American. We were robbed of our identity,” said Bova, who is now an enrolled member of the tribe. “I think that’s the hardest part for me to sometimes wrap around, that you’re robbed of that. And people don’t understand that, but I’m … grateful that I found my family and I try to learn as much as I can.”
Patch said the journey continues.
“Kelley does not have her Whiteness, and she does not have her Nativeness,” Patch said of her friend. “The healing power of Kelley’s story is that she is now getting to be Dakota. She’s getting to connect with that Dakota heritage.”
Rose’s story
On Memorial Day weekend in 2021, Kelley made her first visit to the former grounds of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School, drawn by a group of Native women and others from the Circle Legacy group who clean and decorate the graves each year.
She stood in the Indian Cemetery on a raw, rainy day with the white gravestones laid out in front of her in perfect rows, like desks in a classroom.
Kelley Bova, of Pennsylvania, pays her first visit to the Indian Cemetery on May 29, 2021, at the site where the Carlisle Indian Industrial School operated from 1879-1918. Bova was taken from her family as an infant and adopted out at three months old to a White Pennsylvania family. She later reconnected with her birth family and is now a member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate. (Photo by Charles Fox, courtesy of The Philadelphia Inquirer)
They marked the remains of the students who had died while attending the school but had not been returned home to their families. Most were victims of diseases such as tuberculosis.
Her eyes became transfixed on one particular grave. The gravestone simply read “Rose, Sioux.” It was the name she had been given by her biological parents.
“Just seeing that grave with her name, my name on it,” Kelley later said, “it just made me cry.”
It was the grave of Rose Long Face, also known as Little Hawk, Rosebud Sioux, who was among the initial group of 84 students to arrive at the school on Oct. 6, 1879. She died 18 months later on April 29, 1881.
Their journeys had been separated by 84 years but were nonetheless similar. Both had made the journey from Rosebud to a Pennsylvania town, to have their Native identities removed and be renamed in the process. Both had been separated from their families and the land that should have been their home by a government assimilation program.
Bova moved a few rows over and found the graves of two other Dakota students, Amos LaFromboise and Edward Upright. She knelt, placing tobacco bundles on their graves, speaking softly to let them know they were not forgotten and one day they would be home again.
Rose Long Face made it home first, however. In the summer of 2021, she was among nine Rosebud students repatriated from the cemetery to their homeland in South Dakota. She had been away 140 years.
Amos and Edward
Amos and Edward began their journeys home in September 2023, when they were disinterred from the Carlisle cemetery in a private ceremony that included tribal members, ancestors and others.
Their homecoming provided a chance to return the moccasins, as well, to Sisseton.
Amos and Edward were among six Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate/Spirit Lake students, four boys and two girls, who arrived at the Carlisle school on Nov. 6, 1879, along with seven students from other tribes. They arrived exactly one month after the first group of students had walked through the gates.
Chairperson Lonna Street, left, Spirit Lake Tribe, and Tamara St. John, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate historian and a South Dakota state representative, stand in the Indian Cemetery at the former site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School late in the evening of Sept. 17, 2023. Work in the cemetery disinterring the graves of Amos LaFromboise and Edward Upright had gone on for approximately 11 hours on a rainy day. (Photo by Charles Fox for ICT)
In 20 days, Amos was dead — the first student to die at the school. There is no record of the case of death, though a newspaper report at the time suggested he was sick when he arrived at the school.
Edward, son of Chief Waanatan II, was 12 when he arrived at the school, a year younger than Amos. He died on May 5, 1881, of pneumonia as he was recovering from measles.
Amos and Edward were among four students disinterred from Carlisle in September as part of the U.S. Army’s disinterment project at the Carlisle Barracks. The others, Beau Neal, Northern Arapaho, and Launey Shorty, Blackfeet, were also returned to their tribes and families.
Amos and Edward were taken by a caravan of nine passenger vans and vehicles that left Carlisle on the afternoon of Sept. 19 for the 22-hour drive to Sisseton.
Along the way, the caravan stopped in Ohio to pick up two more remains being returned by Oberlin College. Two additional remains, believed to be about 500 years old, were already waiting for burial in South Dakota after being returned by a North Dakota coroner’s office.
Amos and Edward arrived on Sept. 20 at the site of the former Sisseton Agency, where they had last said goodbye to their parents. This time, however, they were greeted by about 100 people gathered in celebration.
They were then taken to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate repatriation grounds to complete the traditional four days of mourning before a private ceremony and burial at the repatriation cemetery. The other four remains were also buried at the repatriation cemetery.
Bova made the same journey with the moccasins tucked inside a shoebox, boarding the caravan at Carlisle for the trip to Sisseton.
For her, the trip was an opportunity to take part in an historic moment for the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Spirit Lake people, but also an opportunity to continue her healing process. She had visited Sisseton more than 10 times in the past 10 years for Sundances, powwows, and family events.
“It’s like there’s this vessel and this wound and every time [I go to Sisseton] it gets filled a little more, then a little more and a little more,” Bova said afterward. “That’s why it helped doing this. Because that was able to fill [the void] even more. Fill that wound up and heal it.”
During the final three days of mourning at Sisseton, with ceremonies at sunrise and sunset, gatherings with food, and conversations with elders, Bova experienced events she had missed for 50 years. This was especially true of her time spent with the Buffalo Heart women.
“Those Buffalo Heart women allowed me to help with the remains,” she said. “That was such a gift to me.”
‘These are my people’
On Saturday, Sept. 23, the day of burial for Amos and Edward, about 100 people of all ages stood on the hillside overlooking the open graves.
The remains were taken down from a wooden scaffold and eventually bundled in buffalo robes along with a star quilt, moccasins, and other traditional items brought by relatives. They were then placed in their graves with the love and respect that should have been afforded them as the sons of chiefs.
Kelley Bova, Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, speaks to a gathering at the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota on Sept. 23, 2023, after bringing home a pair of moccasins confiscated from an unknown Native boy at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School more than 100 years ago. They had been in the possession of Pennsylvania family for more than a century. (Photo by Charles Fox for ICT)
“Whenever I am in the teepees, by the fire, and hearing the men drumming and singing, it takes me back to another time,” Bova said. “It’s something that makes me feel so special. …That’s my DNA; that’s my heritage. Not knowing it for 50 years and finally seeing things like that, it has a healing power inside of me that helps a lot. Seeing all of this, I come to the realization that these are my people. This is who I am… The biggest thing I have learned is to let go of how I was raised as opposed to who I really am.”
Then it was Bova’s turn to address the group. She spoke to a gathered group of elders at the front of the crowd where they could see the moccasins she held in her hands.
She told the story of the moccasins and their pathway to her, and then presented them to tribal chairpersons J. Garret Renville of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and Lonna Street of Spirit Lake, as well as historian St. John.
“It’s a privilege to be able to do this,” she told ICT. “And it’s a very spiritual thing. Because I feel like it’s my journey home, and now I can help these moccasins go home. I know they’re just a thing. But to me, there are symbols of every child that was taken, whether it was through adoption or through the residential schools. I think it’s just so important that these go home.”
Upon hearing the news of the moccasins’ return to the Dakota people, Baker responded from his Pennsylvania home that he felt “ relief, peace, and closure” and “a sense of gratification that comes with complete accomplishment.” The endeavor had taken over a century but was finally achieved.
St. John has big plans for the moccasins.
“I could build a museum around the moccasins to forever tell the stories of so many — past, present, and future,” she said. “I want them to be representative of our children and their journey home. I want them to represent how the federal assimilation tactics of places like Carlisle did not win.”
The moccasins can tell that story, she said.
“Our boys will be here and laid to rest on the homelands and protected ever on, but those moccasins will sit in their place in our collections with their story,” St. John said.
“To ‘keep one’s moccasins’ is said to mean that a Native person did not give up their traditional way,” she said. “Our children came home with moccasins.”
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This Monday, Oct. 9, we’ll be observing Indigenous Peoples’ Day. But in too many places around the country, others will still be celebrating Columbus Day. It’s 2023 — 531 years since Christopher Columbus landed on our shores and started a chain of events leading to the decimation of Native peoples throughout this hemisphere — and we must do better. It’s time to stop honoring Columbus and his legacy of genocide.
29 states (plus Washington, D.C.) have stopped observing Columbus Day, and many communities now celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day either concurrently or as a replacement. That’s a start, but it’s not enough. The U.S. government should do right by the original peoples of this land. Please tell your state’s federal lawmakers to actively support the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Act, which would replace the Columbus Day federal holiday with Indigenous Peoples’ Day nationwide.
By now, you’re likely aware of the difference between the mythology taught in schools about Columbus and the pilgrims and the bloody reality of real history. Upon arrival in the “New World,” Columbus promptly wrote in his journal about the apparent ease of subjugating and enslaving the Native peoples. This is not heroic behavior, fit to be celebrated by all on an annual basis.
Replacing Columbus Day with Indigenous Peoples’ Day nationwide would be a symbolic but serious gesture, helping to offset some of the generational pain and trauma begun when Europeans invaded our homelands. Native communities deserve to be seen, and non-Native communities should also be given the space to consider their impacts, both historically and in the present day. In this way, we can increase understanding, build compassion, and perhaps even start to heal together.
Wopila tanka — my deep gratitude for your solidarity! Tokata Iron Eyes Spokesperson and Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
On September 26, a good thing happened. In coordination with the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) and Civil Society Task Force, I spoke before the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) working group on Indigenous Rights and Self-Determination. I’m grateful for this rare opportunity to declare our sovereignty and present our case as Indigenous Peoples on a global stage. Today, I’m excited to share with you my thoughts, and I invite you towatch my short video presentation right here.
The ICCPR is a major international treaty that commits signatory nations to protecting individuals’ civil and political rights. In speaking on behalf of Native treaty rights and sovereignty, I quoted the wisdom of Chief Frank Fools Crow, advocating for land back and a renewed international commitment to justice for Indigenous Peoples.
Lakota Law was originally invited by the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, North Dakota, and Wyoming (special thanks to the ACLU’s Stephanie Amiotte) to sign on to a report presented to the UNHRC regarding threats posed to the Black Hills by mining. That report quotes my thoughts regarding innumerable sacred sites contained within the Black Hills, including Pe’ Sla, a cherished 2,022-acre mountain prairie home to buffalo that features pristine springs and ponds. I also discuss the deceitful history of the U.S. in its dealings with the Oceti Sakowin and the vital need to protect our sacred lands from extractive industry.
In addition to the ACLU and Lakota Law, the report, titled “Desecration and Exploitation of the Black Hills, South Dakota Indigenous Sacred Site,” has signatories from our friends and allies at the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance and Great Plains Tribal Chairmen’s Association. At the ICCPR working group briefing, other worldwide Indigenous sovereignty leaders — including chiefs, NGO directors, and legal operatives — joined me in providing important testimony.
The international human rights community must attend to the interests of Indigenous Peoples, particularly in the context of climate justice. In both my written and verbal statements, I emphasized the United States’ illegal seizure and ongoing occupation of the Black Hills. Our history — from the original occupation of our shores, through the Black Hills Gold Rush, to the present day — clearly demonstrates that colonizers will always prioritize taking lands and resources over respect for Indigenous knowledge and sovereignty. That’s why true and holistic justice requires the return of sacred lands to Indigenous hands.
Wopila tanka — thank you for recognizing our sovereignty! Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
As we close in on the submittal deadline for public comments on Nov. 13, please send yours to the Army Corps of Engineers demanding the shut-down of the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) and a new Environmental Impact Statement. I also encourage you to use the buttons below (or on our action page) to inspire your fellow activists in your networks to join the movement. It’s going to take all our voices to stop this dangerous, illegal pipeline.
To more fully understand exactly the real and present threat DAPL poses to the sacred waters of the Mni Sose (Missouri River), watch the latest chapter in our Dakota Water Wars video series. Produced by the Lakota People’s Law Project in partnership with the Standing Rock Nation and Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance, this video features important testimony from meetings with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers about its mismanagement of the river and the consequences for Lakota people.
Watch: Standing Rock has had enough of the Army Corps’ mismanagement of the sacred Mni Sose.
As you likely know, this could be a critical moment in history. It’s possibly our best chance to protect the water, health, and safety of Standing Rock’s people from DAPL — and we’re already making ourselves heard. So far, with the help of Standing Rock and activists like you, we’ve generated more than 55,000 comments to the Corps. Our press campaign also inspired an Associated Press story, subsequently picked up by major news outlets including PBS, FOX, and ABC.
That’s a good start, but we can’t let up until the deadline is behind us. We must keep building momentum and pressure over the coming few weeks to sway the government to act in the best interest of the tribe. It’s our job as friends of the Lakota people to fight with everything we’ve got for clean water, unspoiled land, and a liveable future. Please continue to stand with Standing Rock.
Wopila tanka — thank you, always, for your activism and attention. Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Over the past year and a half, Lakota Law has worked in support of the Paiute and Shoshone peoples near Peehee Mu’huh (Thacker Pass) in so-called Nevada. In those sacred homelands of our relatives, a lithium mine planned to become Turtle Island’s largest poses a grave threat to Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth) and the Indigenous communities who need clean water, air, and soils to live safely in balance with their natural surroundings.
I hope you agree that our society must transition to clean energy, and quickly. Our future generations depend on it. I hope you also agree that, as we make that transition, we must always center environmental justice. As with oil pipelines, lithium mines shouldn’t endanger frontline Black and Brown communities — or their land and water sources. As Thacker Pass water protector and Ox Sam Camp grandmother Justina Paradise shares in our latest short video, the relationship between Mother Earth and the water that flows through her rivers is akin to the blood in our veins.
Watch: Grandmother Justina Paradise discusses the importance of water to our Mother Earth in our new short video.
When the mine is built — and a hasty approval process that failed to seek permission from all the affected Native frontline communities means that, sadly, that will likely soon come to pass — it will destroy local ecosystems. Lithium Americas plans to extract more than 1.7 billion gallons of water annually from an aquifer in the Quinn River Valley. Uranium, antimony, sulfuric acid, and other dangerous substances will likely contaminate the groundwater. The cumulative effects of that would be disastrous for not just the nearby human beings, but for rare and protected species like the critically endangered spring snail (which only lives in the Thacker Pass area), the greater sage-grouse, and the Lahontan cutthroat trout.
The rush to build this mine is yet another indication that the federal government’s stated commitment to tribal consultation (a problematic term) is hollow, at best. It also means that dangerous man camps, temporary housing for extraction workers which often lead to an uptick in the epidemic of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives, are on the horizon.
During his visit last week to Peehee Mu’huh, the Fort McDermitt Reservation, and Reno-Sparks Indian Colony, my colleague, Lakota Law attorney Dov Korff-Korn, heard loud and clear that local Native communities consider the project to be a dishonest slap in the face carried out by an alliance of government and extractive industry. No matter how uphill the battle, we must ensure that Indigenous peoples’ safety and wellbeing are prioritized and that Native communities retain access to the sacred places their families have visited since time immemorial.
There’s much more we plan to do and say about that — and what it all means for tribal health and safety and the ongoing relationship between the federal government and tribal nations. Please stay tuned.
Wopila tanka — thank you for standing for environmental justice! Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
WHITE HOUSE — A young Indigenous girl walked through Lafayette Park in front of the White House with an American Indian Movement flag. Her tiny frame held the six-foot bamboo stake steady as the flag blew in the wind. A stark reminder of how many generations the movement to free Leonard Peltier from prison has gone on.
On Tuesday, NDN Collective, a national Indigenous-led organization, and Amnesty International, held the Free Leonard Peltier 79th Birthday Action in Washington, D.C., to demand clemency for the Native American rights activist who has been incarcerated for nearly five decades. Hundreds attended the peaceful rally where prayer songs echoed and at times people danced, but still thirty-five demonstrators were arrested, according to NDN Collective. At one point the U.S. Park Police brought out a sonic weapon and U.S. Secret Service created a barrier of agents on the sidewalk.
A young girl in a ribbon skirt holds an American Indian Movement flag during the Free Leonard Peltier 79th Birthday Action in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. on September 12, 2023. (Pauly Denetclaw, ICT)
“Our goal with this event is to raise awareness and bring attention to the plight of Leonard Peltier and his incarceration. Because we’re at a point in time where the Biden administration has made it a priority for Native American civil rights, and yet the longest living political prisoner in American history, who is Indigenous, is still in there,” said NDN Collective President and CEO Nick Tilsen, Oglala Lakota. “And so we’re calling upon (President Joe) Biden and the Biden administration to release Leonard. This is a priority for Indian Country.”
Leonard maintains he did not commit the 1975 murder of two FBI agents on Oglala Lakota land.
Context in this case matters. It happened during the Reign of Terror where dozens of Indigenous people were murdered, found dead or just disappeared from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. This happened in the years after the 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee where AIM leaders seized control of the area and declared it the Independent Oglala Nation. The stand off between AIM and the federal government was at times violent.
From 1973 to 1976, the FBI targeted and harassed Indigenous activists in the area. During these years there were more than 60 murders and Pine Ridge had the highest murder rate per capita in the country.
Kevin Sharp, former federal judge and Leonard Peltier’s legal representation, attended the Free Leonard Peltier 79th Birthday Action in Washington, D.C. on September 12, 2023. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, ICT)
The 1975 murders in question took place during a shootout between Indigenous activists and the two FBI agents. The federal government didn’t have enough evidence to charge Leonard with murder. He was charged with aiding and abetting the murder of federal officers and a seven-year sentence for an escape attempt.
“If he was tried today, no way he gets convicted,” Kevin Sharp, Leonard’s attorney and former federal judge, told ICT. “That is not the law today. The violations that law enforcement committed, that the US Attorney’s Office committed at that time, the threats, the intimidation is a constitutional violation.”
This is why many call Leonard, Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, a political prisoner and are demanding President Biden grant him clemency.
“We’re not asking for a pardon,” Sharp said. “Pardon would require someone to admit that he committed a crime, which he did not. But he is clearly a prisoner of politics. This is about politics. So, it’s the politics that keep him there. But I think it’s the politics that are going to free him.”
Kathy Peltier, daughter of Leonard Peltier, attended the the Free Leonard Peltier 79th Birthday Action in Washington, D.C. Kathy is Navajo and Turtle Mountain Ojibwe. (Jourdan Bennett-Begaye, ICT)
Leonard’s daughter, Kathy Peltier, attended the rally in Washington to demand freedom for her father, “a dad figure” she never had growing up. She advocates for his freedom to younger generations across the country and overseas.
Kathy, Navajo and Turtle Mountain Ojibwe, last saw her dad three years ago. It’s difficult for her to calculate how many times she’s seen him. She only knows that her and her siblings could only see him for a short time so most of the allotted visitor time for him could be spent with lawyers.
Leonard missed out on a lot of Kathy’s firsts, said her mom, Ann Begaye, Navajo.
He missed her high school graduation at 18. Kathy is now 47.
“I was hoping my dad would be there. So when that day came and left, I was like, ‘wow, he’s gonna miss many more unless we get him freed.’ So I just want to free my dad,” Kathy said as her voice cracked. “I feel like it’s too late for me, but get my dad freed for his grandkids. So they get to know who he is, as a person, and not just locked up behind those bars.”
She also wished he could’ve been at ceremonies with her.
“When I first sat down, I wished my dad was right beside me to protect me in that circle,” she said. “Just teachings of what I should know as a woman and him telling me this is your auntie. Those are the moments I wish he was able to do. A lot of my aunties have gone and are not too well. So I’m not able to learn about what they could teach me as a young Turtle Mountain woman. So I had to rely on my grandma’s side and my auntie to teach me the Navajo side.”
Kathy said she would have wanted to know both sides of who she is.
A young boy looks back at a demonstrator yelling “Free Leonard Peltier” during the Free Leonard Peltier 79th Birthday Action in front of the White House in Washington, D.C. on September 12, 2023. Peltier has been incarcerated for nearly 50 years. (Pauly Denetclaw, ICT)
Under the hot sun with plenty of humidity was famed Native American rights leader and advocate Suzan Harjo, Cheyenne and Hodulgee Muscogee, her presence still larger than life and with her signature smile. She arrived at Pennsylvania Avenue behind the White House after demonstrators displayed a red and yellow banner, nearly as tall as (and perhaps taller than) the White House gates, painted, “President Biden, Free Leonard Peltier Now!”
Her message to Biden: “To reach deep, deep deep inside your heart. My old friend, Mr. Biden, and have all the compassion you can muster for my brother, Leonard Peltier. I’m pleading for family. I’m pleading for a relative. He’s not just a cause to me. He’s my family. Please, show compassion to this one man, this one Native man who needs to be free now. He wants to get out and look at the sky. He doesn’t want to go out in a wooden box. He wants to go out where he can talk to people and breathe free air, he said. Let him do that. He’s had two-thirds of his life behind bars. It’s time. It’s time.”
Today, it’s the 79th birthday of American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Leonard Peltier, and I’m on the ground in Washington, D.C. supporting a direct action at the White House. We’re asking President Joe Biden to grant Leonard long overdue clemency after he’s spent nearly half a century in federal prison.
Today I ask that you stand in solidarity with Leonard, who was wrongfully accused in the mid-1970s and, trapped in his cell, hasn’t been able to enjoy much of the progress we’ve made together toward greater justice for Native people over the decades. Please tell President Biden: Free Leonard Peltier — then use the social share buttons on our page to keep the pressure on!
Please watch, act, and share: Leonard Peltier has been wrongfully imprisoned for nearly half a century. It’s time to #FreeLeonardPeltier
AIM was a huge deal in the 1960s and ‘70s. A radical, Native-led organization largely responsible for achieving the right for Indigenous people in the U.S. to practice our religion again, its leadership also helped inspire the creation of the Indian Child Welfare Act. Leonard, a citizen of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa in North Dakota, was a key member of the movement — so the government went after him with everything they had the first chance they got. Now, he’s serving two life sentences as a scapegoat for the deaths of two FBI agents.
Here are the facts: After a shootout at the Jumping Bull Ranch on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota in 1975, two of Leonard’s co-defendants were found not guilty on grounds of self-defense. Yet, Leonard was still convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in 1977. The trial was a sham, and even the prosecuting attorney has now gone on record saying Leonard should be freed. For just under half a century, an innocent man has been unjustly imprisoned.
Kaka (Grandpa) Leonard is getting older, and concerns for his health have only intensified the urgency of this call for his release. For his birthday this year, his allies and supporters from across Turtle Island and beyond have gathered at the White House to rally and demand his freedom. Many of us have traveled from incredibly far to be here, myself included. I came with a caravan organized by NDN Collective from Rapid City, South Dakota, and over the course of three days we made the journey to D.C.
Let’s be clear: Leonard Peltier is a political prisoner and a hostage on behalf of all Native justice movements. He’s a martyr for the climate justice movement, in that he’s been criminalized for AIM’s work to return land back to Indigenous hands and protect Indigenous sovereignty. He is a martyr for all of Native people in America today who get to practice our ceremonies and enjoy our traditional ways of life. And he’s a martyr for peace, in that there will be none while we still suffer under occupation of a colonizing regime. Leonard’s liberty is intrinsically connected to our own, and we owe him every effort to achieve it.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your action and solidarity! Tokata Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Please read the article – then watch/read the Substack video and article.
There is a pattern here and all things are connected.
Over the last year, we’ve been sharing with you insights and updates from the frontlines of the Paiute and Shoshone Peoples’ resistance in Nevada. As many of you know, the fight is on at the massive Thacker Pass lithium mine in the northwestern part of the state. Despite the legitimate need to transition to renewable energy, under the guise of “innovation” and, increasingly, “green technology,” extractive industry continues to treat the earth and her ancient precious minerals as little more than profit-potential. Meanwhile, this self-dealing too often entails the wholesale exploitation of Indigenous Peoples and the destruction of the sacred lands and ecosystems upon which our communities depend.
Indigenous Peoples across northern Nevada are no strangers to this paradigm. In our newest video installment documenting the Ox Sam Camp resistance, our team interviewed Elvida Crutcher, an elder and citizen of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe. She recounts how decades of open-pit mercury mining has poisoned the air, water, lands, and health of her relatives.
Click the image to watch our latest video from the resistance at Peehee Mu’huh
Today, there are over 270,000 active mining claims in NV. From the 1930s to the 1980s, Shoshone and Paiute communities faced a barrage of open-pit mercury mining. Two projects in particular, Cordero Mine and Fort McDermitt Mine, both adjacent to Shoshone and Paiute reservations, left behind a path of destruction — and they still haven’t been cleaned up. While the Cordero and Fort McDermitt Mines closed in the 1980s, fifty years of surface mining tragically polluted the waters, air, and ecosystems of the northwestern Great Basin.
At Peehee Mu’huh (Thacker Pass) the tactics are the same: short-sighted extractive industry authorized by federal and state agencies, who collectively disregard the interests and wellbeing of Indigenous Peoples. The Cordero Mine was built on lands overseen by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM); the Thacker Pass lithium mine is similarly situated on BLM lands.
One would expect that mining technology has improved to minimize extractive projects’ negative impacts on the earth, people, and our animal relatives. Unfortunately, this isn’t so. The Thacker Pass mine is a perfect illustration: to extract lithium at the open-pit site, the mining company plans to pump the earth full of sulfuric acid, a process that leaches lithium out of clay and stone. Sulfuric acid is highly toxic to all living beings. To put its toxicity into perspective, even one teaspoon is fatal to humans. Even worse, the mining company was approved to build a sulfuric acid processing plant at Peehee Mu’huh to convert molten sulfur into sulfuric acid. Molten sulfur is a principal waste byproduct of oil refining. Ironically, Lithium Nevada plans to transport hundreds of tons of molten sulfur acquired from oil refineries—with, you guessed it, trucks and trains powered by fossil fuels—to process into sulfuric acid for its “green energy” uses. Earlier this summer, just to the northeast in southern Montana, a freight train transporting molten sulfur derailed, falling into the Yellowstone River. If the Thacker Pass lithium mine and its sulfuric acid processing plant reach completion, these devastating incidents could increase in frequency.
The simple truth is this: the current narrative pushed by industry and government is that lithium mining is “green” and that it is justified in the name of innovation. However, we can’t allow innovation to come on the backs of Indigenous Peoples and at the expense of Unci Maka (Grandmother Earth). “Green” energy is not green if it entails environmental injustice. Open-pit mining, or any mining for that matter, has no place in or near our communities and sacred sites without full tribal consent.
Wopila tanka! Tokata Iron Eyes Spokesperson and Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
Catherine Austin Fitts is a legend that needs no introduction. She has an incredible amount of knowledge and experience, both as an investment banker and working in government, and then being prosecuted by the government (former Assistant Secy of Housing) for trying to uncover and fight corruption. She is currently the publisher of the Solari Report.
I set up this conversation because I wanted to learn about the tactics that the criminal mafia posing as US federal and state governments are currently using against the people. We focus on the US, but many of my readers can probably recognize these tactics being applied all over the world. The goal of the criminal cabal is well advertised: “save the planet, reduce carbon” by which they mean “we need all the real assets and resources for ourselves, and fewer of you plebs around”.
While this attitude toward the people has been consistent, they have been very careful in hiding the true intent behind nice sounding slogans. This is easy to do when the times are good, financially speaking. When the bubble is being inflated by the central banking hot air, few people will question it or look too closely at the financial machinations. CAF did and was prosecuted for it.
The times are different now. We are at the end of the financial musical chairs game. All that “leverage” is about to un-lever very rapidly, the fake money will turn out to be, well – fake! The cabal are desperate to grab the real stuff. Attractive land is some of the most “real” of the real stuff. They are quite willing to burn and murder for it, as we have seen in Lahaina, HI, Paradise, CA and elsewhere.
Below is a note from Catherine on the tactics the government typically uses to drive people off the land they want and into the “enclosures” they prepare for them. This approach has been uses consistently, starting with the Native Americans, continuing with the poor black and immigrant neighborhoods, and now into the middle class areas that billionaires desire:
Moving people to quarantine is good if you want to install things – but if you are stealing real estate it gets pretty obvious pretty quick. Better to scare them out so they pay their own expenses of going elsewhere. As much as possible, you want “free range” solutions.
Based on what I saw at HUD and during the pandemic, tactics depend on local jurisdictions (local laws, local resources) as well as the covert operations they choose to use locally at the same time. The success of the operations depend on several lines acting in concert: intelligence/surveillance, government in health area, banks and insurance companies, media, real estate developers and investors. This coordination already exists in the management of places, but it is hard for most people to see or fathom. The sweet spot is the amount of real estate that can be picked up and the capital gains this translated into for investors, public traded company etc and the political donations that flow to politicians from capital gains.
Tactics revolve around various options of getting fee title to land and real estate:
1. Force a sale: Do things that shut down private business and personal income and or lower the value of the real estate (including by radically increasing costs, like cost of remediation or requiring installation in new sewer systems or equipment etc) and/or permit the cancellation of insurance. A lot of helpful tactics can be applied through lenders, banks and insurance providers who are playing ball.
2. Condemnation to deal with “pathogens” [this is what WHO Pandemic Treaty aims to do among other enslavement things]
3. Eminent domain – prices will be much lower presumably after the “pathogens” are found
4. Emergency money to help – except all the money goes to “insiders” who are moving in or are playing local person helping the insiders move in and take over
6. Poisoning – poisoning of individuals or failures of water systems will cause disability and death which are likely to force sales
In all cases you want to keep things as complex as possible under the guise of “helping” – you will have heavy surveillance of all parties and your covert operations and media in combination can take care of isolating or compromising individual parties who are slowing you down or stopping you. Covert operations will by and large be done by or through corporate contractors and mob (drug cartels)
I suspect they have perfected a lot of the tactics using response to weather warfare “natural disasters”.
In closing, quoting Catherine, you have to be a wealth builder in your mind. You cannot succumb to the mentality of doom and victimhood, no matter what. I hope we have conveyed this in our discussion.
As always, please share with your friends and family. We discussed several approaches to stay safe and preserve your assets/rights. Do not get into “we are doomed” mindset. We are not doomed. We have solutions, we can work with what we have and build resilient support networks. Most importantly, as you shake the sleepers out of their stupor, the cabal loses more and more of its willing foot soldiers. Do not comply.
Since 2017, Lakota Law’s team has worked with leadership at the Standing Rock Nation to help bring clean energy to my homelands. We’ve now assessed solar potential on a dozen tribal government buildings, and for the past few months we’ve worked overtime to help my tribe prepare to apply for historic sums of grant money. President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act has earmarked as much as $100 million for individual low income communities — including tribal nations — to transition to low-carbon technologies.
I’ve been working for years to increase solar and wind production on the Standing Rock Nation. High energy costs from our utility can leave our people without power during the Dakotas’ harsh winters. That’s not acceptable.
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, a $7 billion solar grant called “Solar for All” will make up to five $25-100 million grants available to different tribes or tribal consortia. The Lakota People’s Law Project aims to ensure that Standing Rock and several other South Dakota tribes can make their best case to collect and use a portion of these funds to install solar panels that will help the people pay less and stay safe.
That last part is important. In yet another example of injustice toward Native communities, tribal members at Standing Rock pay 33 percent more for electricity than people living just an hour away in Bismarck, North Dakota. That’s money most can’t afford to pay, which can result in life-endangering power shut-offs during winter months when midwestern temperatures can dip well below zero.
By collecting and storing energy from the abundant sun above the plains, tribal governments and communities can save — and even earn by sending power back to the grid. And by building out a cohesive clean energy system, Standing Rock and other South Dakota tribes can demonstrate a sustainable model for other tribal nations and communities to follow. I consider this to be one of the most important things I’ve ever worked on, and I deeply value your continued solidarity as we pursue this plan.
Wopila tanka — my gratitude for all of your care and support, Phyllis Young Standing Rock Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
My name is Dov Korff-Korn and I’m the new staff attorney at Lakota Law. I write to you to both introduce myself and to provide some important context regarding the fires in Lāhainā, Maui. For the last two years I’ve worked closely with this organization as a volunteer law clerk, supporting a variety of projects. I recently joined full-time after graduating from law school and passing the bar exam. It has been a true privilege to be a part of this organization, and I’m excited for all that we can continue accomplishing together on behalf of Indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice.
One of the most formative experiences I’ve had in 10 years of work around Indigenous sovereignty was my time spent last year as a visiting student at the University of Hawaiʻi. The week we visited Maui to work with a team on water access for Native Hawaiian farmers and local residents, there was a large wildfire raging in the valley up in the hills behind Lāhainā. In my new blog post I share with you my reflections on that experience in light of the recent disastrous fires.
This image is from the time I spent in Lāhainā before the catastrophic fire. There was already a fire burning there at the time. Little did we realize what a foreshadowing it was.
The short story is this: the news will tell you that the fires were caused by high winds, a downed power line, and/or climate change. These factors may have contributed to the tragedy. However, the underlying truth is that more than a century of systematic exploitation by wealthy colonizing interests, armed with the greenlight from federal, state, and military agencies, set the stage for this devastation. As I delve into the dynamics of dispossession in my blog post, decades of water diversions drained Maui of its water, evaporating ecosystems and suppressing sovereignty.
The Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island are familiar with this marriage between wealthy interests and government. As was the case with the intentional slaughter of the Tatanka (buffalo) to drive the people of the Great Plains onto reservations against their will, greedy entities strike at the heart of Indigenous Peoples and their sovereignty by debilitating once-abundant natural ecosystems. The situation in Maui is no different. As Lāhainā starts out on a path of rebuilding, it is critical that we support our Kānaka Maoli relatives by ensuring that their voices are heard and their sovereignty is respected. Only that way can justice begin to be restored to Islands held sacred by so many.
In Solidarity, Dov Korff-Korn Staff Attorney, Lakota Law
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
Here are also the links to the information in the Lakota Law Project article. I think it is important to look at all questionable disasters as if viewing a crime scene; what is the context? what interests are in play? Calling it a conspiracy puts up a wall against asking questions. I now view the words conspiracy theorist as a sign that some truth is about to be discovered.
Ada Deer, a “force of nature” and a legendary figure whose life and accomplishments are woven into the social and political fabric of Indian Country, died Tuesday night.
Deer, 88, was the first Native American woman to run for statewide office and only the second to run for Congress. She was the first woman to serve as Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department. She was also the first woman chair of her tribe, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin.
On Wednesday, the tribe issued a statement.
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of Ada Deer, a prominent leader of the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin,” the tribe wrote. “Ada was a true inspiration to many and her legacy will continue to live on through her contributions to the Menominee community and her tireless work in advocating for Native American rights.”
Deer was an instrumental figure in the 1973 restoration of her tribe following its termination 15 years earlier. She later served as the first chair of the Menominee Restoration Committee.
“Ada’s contributions to the Menominee community and her dedication to improving the lives of Native Americans will never be forgotten,” the Menominee Tribe said Wednesday. “As we mourn her loss, let us also celebrate her remarkable life and the profound impact she had on all of us.”
During termination, the Menominee Tribe became a county instead of a reservation.
Deer once told ICT: “This is the story of Indian land ownership throughout the history of this country. It was lost after certain pieces of legislation have passed to allot Indian land to private Indian owners who have little real estate know-how.”
In order to fight for restoration of the tribal government, Deer dropped out of law school.
“I moved to Washington, D.C., in 1972 to lobby … I talked to everyone I could,” Deer said. “I held meetings with reporters. I held meetings with legislative aides. I went around to receptions. I smiled. I shook hands. I prepared bumper stickers and fact sheets and made it look like there were thousands of Indians, screaming about termination. That’s part of what it takes to get a bill through the Congress.”
Gwen Carr, a longtime friend of Deer’s and executive director of the Carlisle Indian School Project, said the Menominee restoration was a milestone in the efforts of tribes to regain federal recognition following the Termination Era of 1950s and 1960s.
“For a Native person to get their tribe out of termination is a prodigious effort,” said Carr, a citizen of the Cayuga Nation. “Nobody had ever done that before.”
Deer had a way of convincing people to do what she wanted, not by arguing with them, but simply by talking to them until they agreed with her, Carr said.
“She was a force of nature who was as gentle as a breeze,” she said.
Born in Keshena, Wisconsin, Deer spent her childhood in a log cabin on the Menominee reservation without running water or electricity, attended Shawano High School and studied at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and later at Columbia University.
In 1978 and 1982, Deer ran for Wisconsin secretary of state, and then for Congress in 1992. Many remember her campaign slogan “Run Like a Deer.”
She was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1993 as the Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs at the Interior Department, a position that included overseeing the Bureau of Indian Affairs. In that capacity, she signed off on federal recognition of hundreds of Alaskan tribes that, for decades, had been fighting for sovereignty. Many saw the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act as a termination bill. So Deer’s act fits a restoration of tribal government in that state.
She led the American Indian and Indigenous Studies Program at the University Wisconsin-Madison, chaired the board of the Native American Rights Fund and co-founded the Indian Community School in Milwaukee.
Carr said more than once she accompanied Deer to events where people would line up to meet her friend, but that recognition never inflated Deer’s ego. Instead, she had a profound gentleness and innocence about her, though she was nobody’s fool, Carr said.
She said Deer never married or had children, instead devoting her life to advancing the rights of Native people.
“A big page in Indian Country has turned,” she said.
Ada Deer (sitting), Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin. Deer died Tuesday, Aug. 15, 2023. She was 88. (Courtesy of Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin)
On Aug. 7, Deer celebrated her 88th birthday, leaving hospice care to attend a celebration that drew Wisconsin state and Menominee tribal leaders, including Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin and Menominee Chairwoman Gena Kakkak. All paid tribute to Deer’s legacy and influence in their lives.
The same day, Gov. Evers proclaimed Aug. 7, 2023, to be “Ada Deer Day.”
“It is my honor to proclaim today as ‘Ada Deer Day’ throughout Wisconsin to recognize her groundbreaking work as a champion for Tribal rights and Indigenous communities, an advocate for social justice, and a foundational changemaker in our state,” Evers wrote on social media.
Deer also spoke at the celebration.
Writing on social media recently, Ben Wikler, Deer’s godson and chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, summarized her final speech.
“She urged everyone, all of us — you reading this right now — to dedicate ourselves to advancing justice in this world.”
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Today, I share with you a piece of good news on the mining and Native justice fronts! In case you missed it, earlier this week, President Biden and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland of the Pueblo of Laguna traveled to Arizona to announce a new national monument designed to protect Native homelands in the Southwest. Afterward, Secretary Haaland appeared on PBS News Hour to discuss the monument’s significance and its impact for Indigenous people. I encourage you to watch that segment here.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland sat down with PBS News Hour to discuss the new national monument protecting Native homelands in the Southwestern United States.
We have rightly been critical of this administration and its failure to do more to stop mining in the Black Hills and at Peehee Mu-huh (Thacker Pass) in Nevada. Even as it has taken the most aggressive steps toward climate remediation that we’ve seen from the White House, the Biden administration is still falling short of its own climate goals. It’s just not enough. And, critically, Biden and Haaland must engage and adhere to the wishes of Indigenous communities on the frontlines of extractive industry — such as Standing Rock Nation with the Dakota Access pipeline and our Paiute and Shoshone relatives battling Lithium Americas at Thacker Pass.
Nonetheless, this near million-acre set-aside is a significant step in the right direction. We’re grateful that Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument in Arizona — will prevent new mining leases in this sacred and beautiful place.
According the administration’s fact sheet, the monument will protect “thousands of cultural and sacred sites that are precious to Tribal Nations in the Southwest – including the Havasupai Tribe, Hopi Tribe, Hualapai Tribe, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians, Las Vegas Paiute Tribe, Moapa Band of Paiutes, Paiute Indian Tribe of Utah, Navajo Nation, San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe, Yavapai-Apache Nation, Pueblo of Zuni, and the Colorado River Indian Tribes.”
Still, it’s up to all of us to hold the administration’s feet to the fire. Props to PBS anchor Amna Nawaz for pressing Secretary Haaland for an explanation of why many voters still feel a lack of satisfaction in the administration’s handling of the climate crisis. This national monument is significant and cause for gratitude and celebration — but it can’t stop there. Going forward, Biden and Haaland must be better and do more to support Native and environmental justice issues.
Wopila tanka — We deeply appreciate your care for Native homelands. Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Today, I share with you our new blog and video delving into the long, disturbing history of mining on Indigenous lands on Turtle Island. As we’ve written to you previously, the sacred lands of our Paiute and Shoshone relatives at Peehee Mu’huh (or Thacker Pass) in Nevada are under imminent threat from a massive new lithium mine. They did not give their consent for this project, and now it could despoil sacred ceremonial grounds, historic massacre sites, and sensitive habitat home to several protected species.
In our new, short video — which you can find near the top of my blog — Paiute elder Dean Barlese discusses the importance of protecting our shared world.
Thacker Pass isn’t the only mining project currently endangering Native homelands. The Yaqui people are struggling to effectively resist another massive lithium mine in Sonora, Mexico, and according to the Associated Press, our southern neighboring nation has become the world’s deadliest location for environmental activists. And in our sacred Black Hills right here in the Dakotas, lithium is joining gold, uranium, and other precious elements on the list of mining interests we’ve been confronted by for 150 years.
I encourage you to read my blog to learn more, and watch the accompanying video to get additional perspective from Dean Barlese, a respected Paiute elder. Our thoughts today are also with all those on Maui in the Kingdom of Hawaii. We are praying for the safety of all living things in that beautiful place as they confront deadly fires powered by fast winds fueled by yet another hurricane.
This is, of course, all related. Storm frequency and intensity rise in conjunction with the out-of-balance relationship we have with Unci Maka, our Grandmother Earth. Our society’s failure to listen to Indigenous knowledge and plan ahead accordingly exacerbates the climate crisis and puts the future in peril for my generation and those to come. The youth say it. The elders are saying it. It’s time to make big changes before it’s too late. That’s why your advocacy with our cause is so important. It’s up to us — working together — to change the game.
Wopila tanka — thank you, always, for your care and attention. Tokata Iron Eyes Spokesperson The Lakota People’s Law Project
For the past six months, our co-director, law clerk, videographer, and organizers have all been in and out of Nevada, joining others in the effort to force the federal government to respect Indigenous sovereignty. By now, you’re probably well aware of the cause: Thacker Pass, or Peehee mu’huh, the site of the largest lithium deposit in the United States, anticipated to produce 25 percent of global lithium in the near term.
Today, I ask that you give to support our stand in solidarity with the Paiute and Shoshone peoples of Nevada in their fight to keep Big Green Extraction honest. We stand at a crossroads. As we press forward to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy, we must answer a question: will we show respect for Indigenous nations by honoring their right to self-determination and land possession, or will we allow the same tactics deployed by the fossil fuel industry for generations to sully our transition to green technology? Let’s make Elon Musk and other green entrepreneurs respect Indigenous sovereignty.
This beautiful area, home to multiple protected species and sacred to our Paiute and Shoshone relatives, is under threat from a massive lithium mining operation.
At Thacker Pass, the Ox Sam resistance camp has been active in recent months, and arrests and temporary restraining orders have been issued against our staff and other allies. Founding grandmother Josephine Sam has been forced to watch as her relative, Ox Sam founder Dorece Sam, faces a civil lawsuit. I’m the former official liaison for the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe to the resistance camps at Standing Rock in 2016 and ‘17. As such, I know something about what it takes to push back against the Destroyers of Unci Maka, our Grandmother Earth. One of the first principles of environmental justice is to show up when needed, and to not back down.
Peehee mu’huh (which means “Rotten Moon” in the Paiute language) got its name from a pair of massacres, including one in 1865 of at least 31 men, women, and children by U.S. soldiers. It’s now the place where the soul of the Green Revolution will be measured. In the coming weeks, we plan to publish a series of short videos telling the story of the resistance at Thacker Pass in the words of those on the ground. Please stay tuned.
We expect this struggle to be bruising, but it must be fought. In the current era of runaway climate change and rampant loss of biodiversity, playing defense is never enough. If we’re not on offense, we’re losing — and in this case, the cost could well be a healthy future for the people and other living things that call Peehee mu’huh home. Please join us in this struggle!
Wopila tanka — thank you for your friendship and solidarity. Phyllis Young Standing Rock Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
Today, I share with you some great news and a big wopila! A couple weeks back, we asked for your support in helping us to transfer the title of Standing Rock’s teen center to our nonprofit allies and the people of the Standing Rock Nation. Today, I am proud and happy to announce that, with your assistance, this has been accomplished! Thank you so much for your friendship, which has helped make our long-term goal of providing a safe and productive space for teens and young adults on Standing Rock a reality.
The Iyuha Icu Youth Services Center is now open every weekday afternoon and evening, offering a space for simple leisure and a mix of spiritual and cultural learning activities. We take pride in having purchased the building and formed the right partnerships — most critically with our friend, Hoksila White Mountain — to incubate the idea from concept to completion.
Among other amenities and activities, the youth center features art depicting the core Lakota values (second from left above). Also pictured are the property’s tipi poles, sweat lodge, and sage harvested at Standing Rock.
You may remember learning of Hoksila in past Lakota Law newsletters. We helped raise consciousness around his unjustly contested candidacy for mayor, and we helped him push through obstacles to serving on the City Council in McLaughlin, South Dakota (Standing Rock’s Bear Soldier District). He’s been a driving force behind the youth center from the very beginning.
I’m delighted to say that, today, this invaluable resource for Standing Rock’s youth stands as a concrete example of what we can achieve when we work together for a common cause, across organizational lines. We’re grateful to Hoksila for his cooperation and for sharing his vision.
The cultural focus and activities the youth center empowers go beyond its walls. Recently, Hoksila took 29 youths and chaperones on a trip to visit cultural heritage sites in Oregon and Northern California. That’s rare, world-expanding exposure for a group of vulnerable young people.
In a world filled with inequity, and in a place where young people could use a lot more opportunity, your friendship with Lakota Law makes a real difference. Today, please know how much that means to me and to our youth on the Standing Rock Nation. Aho.
Wopila tanka — our deep thanks for creating access and improving lives. Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
After a protracted series of delays, we continue to await the long-promised draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL). In today’s Water Wars video — produced as always by us in partnership with the Standing Rock Nation and Great Plains Tribal Water Alliance — we take you inside a May meeting between tribal leaders and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. You’ll see our frustration: none of Standing Rock’s serious concerns about DAPL have yet been addressed, and both the tribe and public must soon be given the ability to review and provide input on the environmental impacts of the dangerous and illegal pipeline.
Watch The Army Corps doesn’t have any answers for us. It’s time for them to face the music!
You probably know the history. Late in 2016, President Obama heard the call of thousands and halted construction on DAPL, citing the requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act that a full environmental assessment be done. But Trump greenlit the project in violation of federal law as soon as he took office. Now DAPL crosses the Missouri River and our treaty lands with no effective plan, as far as we’ve seen, for handling a spill.
And we know the current DEIS process is a sham. Environmental Resources Management (ERM), the company tapped by the Army Corps of Engineers to prepare the study, is a member of the American Petroleum Institute. And that body filed a legal brief in support of DAPL in Standing Rock’s lawsuit against the Army Corps. That’s an obvious conflict of interest.
The Army Corps has routinely ignored Standing Rock’s many critical concerns, and that’s why we’re counting on you when the public comment period finally opens. That could be any week now. No matter what, please stay ready to demand that the Army Corps procure a new EIS prepared by an impartial party — and shut this pipeline down.
Wopila tanka — thank you, as ever, for standing with Standing Rock. Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
A few months back, I wrote to you about the digital release of “Oyate” on iTunes. This award-winning documentary (rated 100% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes!) about our Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL) resistance and movement for Native justice was produced by Films with a Purpose in association with the Lakota People’s Law Project. Now, we continue to assist with word-of-mouth distribution — we hope to get as many eyes as possible on this special movie — and we’re setting up a screening in partnership with the American Indian Resource Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
That screening will happen this winter at Santa Cruz’s historic Del Mar Theater, and we’ll keep you informed once the date is firmed up. Meanwhile, we’re hoping you’ll participate by hosting a local screening and then joining afterward for a question and answer session to be broadcast live online. I plan to be there for that, as will the filmmakers and other subjects including my Lakota Law colleague, Standing Rock organizer Phyllis Young. To set up a screening with your friends at your home, we encourage you to take the first step: purchase or rent the movie on iTunes and give it a watch.
Phyllis and I stare down the White House in a still from “Oyate.”
And if you represent a theater or educational group such as a university, you’re also encouraged to participate — either that night or independently at another time. To inquire about setting up a public or educational screening event, please contact the filmmakers directly using the handy “screening inquiries” form on their homepage.
I’ll finish by noting that this film remains interesting and timely. Its narrative incorporates unexpected elements, and it tells the story of Indigenous resistance from some very personal perspectives — making it both intimate and ambitious in scope. And it’s of this moment because we expect the public review period for DAPL’s draft Environmental Impact Statement any week now. The days of our resistance camps may be in the rearview, but soon we can stand with Standing Rock once again to shut the pipeline down.
Wopila tanka — thank you for supporting Native media and resistance! Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
GENOA, Neb. (AP) — In a remote patch of a long-closed Native American boarding school, near a canal and some railroad tracks, Nebraska’s state archeologist and two teammates filled buckets with dirt and sifted through it as if they were searching for gold.
They’re trying to find the bodies of children who died at the school and have been lost for decades, a mystery that archeologists aim to unravel as they dig in a central Nebraska field that was part of the sprawling campus a century ago.
People toting shovels, trowels and even smaller tools are searching the unmarked site where ground-penetrating radar suggested a possible location for the cemetery of the Genoa Indian Industrial School.
Genoa was part of a national system of more than 400 Native American boarding schools that attempted to assimilate Indigenous people into white culture by separating children from their families and cutting them off from their heritage. And the discovery of more than 200 children’s remains buried at the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school has magnified interest in the troubling legacy both in Canada and the U.S. since 2021.
“For all those families with students who died here in Genoa and weren’t returned home — and that information being lost for over 90 years now — it creates this perpetual cycle of trauma,” Dave Williams, the state archeologist, said Monday.
Williams added, “Finding the location of the cemetery, and the burials contained within, will be a small step towards bringing some peace and comfort” to tribes after a long period of uncertainty where children were sent to boarding schools and never came home.
The school, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Omaha, opened in 1884 and at its height was home to nearly 600 students from more than 40 tribes across the country. It closed in 1931 and most buildings were long ago demolished.
For decades, residents of the tiny community of Genoa, with help from Native Americans, researchers and state officials, have sought the location of a forgotten cemetery where the bodies of students are believed to be buried.
Judi Gaiashkibos, the executive director of the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs, whose mother attended the school in the late 1920s, has been involved in the cemetery effort for years and planned to travel to Genoa on Monday. She said it’s difficult to spend time in the community where many Native Americans suffered, but the vital search can help with healing and bringing the children’s voices to the surface.
“It’s an honor to go on behalf of my ancestors and those who lost their lives there and I feel entrusted with a huge responsibility,” Gaiashkibos said.
Newspaper clippings, records and a student’s letter indicate at least 86 students died at the school, usually due to diseases such as tuberculosis and typhoid, but at least one death was blamed on an accidental shooting.
Researchers identified 49 of the children killed but have not been able to find names for 37 students. The bodies of some of those children were returned to their homes but others are believed to have been buried on the school grounds at a location long ago forgotten.
As part of an effort to find the cemetery, last summer dogs trained to detect the faint odor of decaying remains searched the area and signaled they had found a burial site in a narrow piece of land bordered by a farm field, railroad tracks and a canal.
A team using ground-penetrating radar last November also showed an area that was consistent with graves, but there will be no guarantees until researchers can dig into the ground, said Williams, the archeologist.
The process is expected to take several days.
“We’re going to take the soil down and first see if what’s showing up in the ground-penetrating radar are in fact grave-like features,” Williams said. “And once we get that figured out, taking the feature down and determining if there are any human remains still contained within that area.”
If the dig reveals human remains, the State Archeology Office will continue to work with the Nebraska Commission on Indian Affairs in deciding what’s next. They could rebury the remains in the field and create a memorial or exhume and return the bodies to tribes, Williams said.
DNA could indicate the region of the country each child was from but narrowing that to individual tribes would be challenging, Williams said.
The federal government is taking a closer examination of the boarding school system. The U.S. Interior Department, led by Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of Laguna Pueblo in New Mexico and the first Native American Cabinet secretary, released an initial report in 2022 and is working on a second report with additional details.
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Ahmed reported from Minneapolis. Scott McFetridge contributed from Des Moines, Iowa.
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This story has been corrected throughout to note that researchers determined more than 80 children died at the school, not that there are more than 80 bodies buried there.
In 2023, Ben & Jerry’s received criticism for posting a tweet on Independence Day claiming that the United States was founded on “stolen Indigenous land” and that Mount Rushmore should be returned to the Lakota people.[117][118] In reply, the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation expressed interest in acquiring the Ben & Jerry’s headquarters in Vermont which is located on historical Abenaki territory.
In July 2023, the Ukrainian National Agency on Corruption Prevention included Unilever in the list of “war sponsors” for not ceasing operations in Russia, but continuing to profit from this market.
The common thread of both: appearing to be progressive and helping the environment, but doing only the actions that keep their profits.
When I got together with some friends a few years back to help amplify the landback movement, I could never have foreseen this week’s war of words between South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem and an ice cream company — and yet, here we are! I’m guessing you’re familiar with Ben & Jerry’s, who make delicious desserts; more importantly, they use their business platform to champion social justice issues. This year for the Fourth of July, they posted on their website asking people to sign our Lakota Law petition and commit to returning the Black Hills — and Noem’s beloved Mt. Rushmore — to the Lakota.
Thank you, Ben & Jerry’s!
Noem wasn’t the only one to pitch a fit in response. Just as they did when Anheuser-Busch dared to feature a trans person in a Bud Light social media campaign during this year’s Pride Month, conservative activists immediately began calling for a boycott. Outrageously, publicly hating on trans and Indigenous people — saying the quiet part out loud — has become all the rage for the far right in the summer of 2023.
At least there’s a silver lining to all the idiocy. The more anti-woke rabble rousers embrace the idea of canceling things they disagree with, the more their hypocrisy shows. The more they put their bigotry on display, the more they drive reasonable people into the progressive camp. And by coming after Ben & Jerry’s, Noem and her ilk actually amplified our very important message about Native justice and sovereignty, ensuring it showed up in another national news cycle.
So today we send our deep appreciation to Ben & Jerry’s and to you for helping us make a difference in the world. Let’s keep the discussion going and the pressure on. I pray that, one fine day, the Black Hills will be back where they belong: in Indigenous care!
Wopila tanka — thank you for helping to return the sacred. Tokata Iron Eyes Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
If you’ve been with us for more than a year, you know we’ve been incubating a teen center at Standing Rock. A separate nonprofit managing this effort uses the building we own in McLaughlin, South Dakota (Bear Soldier District) to run operations. Many of you sent us positive feedback about the teen center when it launched, so I’m happy to report that the project’s doing well! It’s now a reliable space for the reservation’s youth to learn, play, and enjoy — so much so that we’ve decided to donate our building to our nonprofit allies, providing a stable foundation for their ongoing work to lift up the next generations.
Because we’re assuming substantial administrative, logistical, and legal costs as we transfer the title to the building, today we ask for your financial support. Help gift this important building to the people by donating today! Your contribution to Lakota Law will also help offset other housing-related costs we accrue each month. These include operating our kinship care home (also in McLaughlin) and paying for lodging while we’re traveling to Thacker Pass in Nevada to fight the lithium mine that endangers frontline Native communities, a sacred massacre site, and a delicate ecosystem. As you know, we do whatever it takes and go wherever we’re needed to provide for the people and win Native justice — and your generosity makes it possible!
Photos of Standing Rock’s teen center. We’re gifting it to the people of Standing Rock!
At Lakota Law, we straddle universes: while we recognize that radical social justice work can’t happen if institutional concerns become too dominant, we also know that without structure — buildings, equipment, and regular travel to the frontlines — progressive intentions often won’t hit their targets. So we strive to strike the right balance, doing our very best to put your resources to ideal uses. Thank you from the center of our hearts for all your assistance!
Once the transfer of title for the teen center is complete, we’ll be in touch again with more updates about the ongoing work to serve children at Standing Rock.
Wopila tanka — thank you, always, for your support! Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
P.S. Please give to help transfer Standing Rock’s teen center to our nonprofit allies and the youth of Standing Rock. Your gift today will help solidify the present and provide a future for Standing Rock’s next generations!
The U.S. Supreme Court said the United States is not required “to take affirmative steps to secure water for the Tribe” because that provision is not explicitly stated in the Navajo Treaty of 1868, according to its ruling in a 5-4 vote in Arizona v. Navajo Nation, released Thursday.
The case was the third and final federal Indian law case this term.
Thursday’s decision reverses a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. The tribe cannot proceed with a claim against the Department of the Interior to “develop a plan to meet the Navajo Nation’s water needs and manage the main stream of the Colorado River in the Lower Basin.”
The court also ruled that the tribe cannot present a cognizable claim of breach of trust.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote the opinion and was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Amy Coney Barrett.
“And it is not the Judiciary’s role to rewrite and update this 155-year-old treaty,” Kavanaugh wrote. “Rather, Congress and the President may enact—and often have enacted—laws to assist the citizens of the western United States, including the Navajos, with their water needs.
Kavanaugh went on to write that the United States has no similar duty with respect to land on the reservation and it would be “anomalous to conclude that the United States must take affirmative steps to secure water.”
“For example, under the treaty, the United States has no duty to farm the land, mine the minerals, or harvest the timber on the reservation—or, for that matter, to build roads and bridges on the reservation,” Kavanaugh writes. “Just as there is no such duty with respect to the land, there likewise is no such duty with respect to the water.”
The Navajo Nation argued that securing water rights to the Colorado River for the tribe fell under the federal government’s trust obligations that were being unfulfilled.
Critics immediately reacted to the decision saying it is a virtual theft of water from the Navajo Nation.
Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren and Speaker of the 25th Navajo Nation Council Crystalyne Curley shared their disappointment in the decision in a joint press release.
As president, Nygren said it is his job to protect the people, land and future and that he remains “undeterred in obtaining quantified water rights for the Navajo Nation in Arizona.”
“The only way to do that is with secure, quantified water rights to the Lower Basin of the Colorado River,” Nygren said in the statement. “I am confident that we will be able to achieve a settlement promptly and ensure the health and safety of my people.”
“Today’s ruling will not deter the Navajo Nation from securing the water that our ancestors sacrificed and fought for — our right to life and the livelihood of future generations,” Curley added.
As he has done in the past, Justice Neil Gorsuch laid out the history of the tribe and the surrounding circumstances that led to this point in his dissenting opinion. He writes that it is known that the United States holds some of the tribe’s water rights in trust and the government owes the Navajo Nation “a duty to manage the water it holds for the Tribe in a legally responsible manner.”
In his concluding paragraphs, Gorsuch writes that the tribe has tried nearly everything and poses the question, “Where do the Navajo go from here?”
“The Navajo have waited patiently for someone, anyone, to help them, only to be told (repeatedly) that they have been standing in the wrong line and must try another. To this day, the United States has never denied that the Navajo may have water rights in the mainstream of the Colorado River (and perhaps elsewhere) that it holds in trust for the Tribe,” Gorsuch writes. “Instead, the government’s constant refrain is that the Navajo can have all they ask for; they just need to go somewhere else and do something else first.”
Derrick Beetso, Navajo, is an attorney and director of Indian Gaming and Self-Governance at Arizona State University Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. He also is a board member of IndiJ Public Media, the non-profit that owns ICT.
He said the opinion acknowledges that the tribe does have water rights, although they are unquantified.
“The tribe itself is pretty much in the same position they were in before this litigation and in some respects has to go back to the drawing board to figure out how they can get the administration to move forward on assessing their water needs,” Beetso told ICT.
He added that the Supreme Court is just one branch of the government and the Navajo Nation may switch focus to the Biden Administration and Congress in the future.
“The administration can do all the things that the tribe’s asking them to do without a court telling them to do it,” he said. “And so I think the Navajo Nation can shift gears and put a lot of pressure on the Biden administration and see what can get done under this administration.”
Native American Rights Fund executive director John Echohawk, Pawnee, said in a joining statement with the National Congress of American Indians that the decision condones a lack of accountability by the U.S. government.
“Despite today’s ruling, Tribal Nations will continue to assert their water rights and NARF remains committed to that fight,” Echohawk said.
Fawn Sharp, Quinault, called the decision a setback but added tribes and Native organizations will continue to fight for and defend tribal sovereignty and the preservation of Indigenous ways of life.
“Water is necessary for all life, and when our ancestors negotiated agreements with the United States to secure our lands and our protection, water was understood and still is understood to be inseparable from the land and from our peoples,” Sharp said in the statement. “Today, the Supreme Court has once again assisted in the United States’ centuries-long attempts to try to get out of the promises they have made to Tribal Nations by stating that treaties only secure access to water, but do not require the United States to take any steps to protect or provide that water to our people.”
The court ruled in mid-June on the other two federal Indian law cases. The high court affirmed the Indian Child Welfare Act in a major win that was celebrated across Indian Country. The same day the ICWA opinion was released, the court also ruled on Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians v. Coughlin.
In that ruling, the court stated that tribes cannot use sovereign immunity in Bankruptcy Court.
This is a monumental day for Indigenous and human rights. The Supreme Court’s decision is a huge win not just for Native children, families, and cultures, but also for tribal sovereignty. This ruling properly recognizes tribes as sovereign political nations with a right to self-determination and affirms our inherent right to care for our own. The impacts of this decision — which, had it gone another direction, could have created a domino effect threatening Native sovereignty far more broadly — will be felt in a positive way for the next seven generations and beyond.
The Supreme Court ruled in our favor, agreeing that Native children should remain in kinship care with their relatives.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, of all people, wrote the majority opinion detailing the High Court’s 7-2 decision (justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented). On the key issue of whether the law is somehow discriminatory against white people, the justices declined to rule, rightly pointing out that the petitioners have suffered no harm. “The bottom line is that we reject all of petitioners’ challenges to the statute, some on the merits and others for lack of standing,” Barrett wrote.
If you’ve been following our communications for some time, you likely know that Lakota Law published a widely read blog, gathered more than 166,000 signatures on various pro-IWCA actions, and submitted an amicus brief to the High Court, all to defend this absolutely critical, life-saving law. In the past we also drafted enforcement guidelines for ICWA, and its author, the late, great Sen. James Abourezk, chaired our advisory board.
Suffice to say, this is a day to acknowledge that all the hard work and long hours have been well spent. It’s a moment for us to look at one another with gratitude and appreciation and celebrate. On that note, if you took the time to write to the president, petition the Department of Justice, and/or ask your state to codify ICWA’s key provisions, I cannot thank you enough.
Let’s also remember this: despite its excellent decision today, this Court remains likely to continue rolling back the rights and freedoms of other groups with fewer protections under current law. So let’s not rest on our laurels. We must remain vigilant defenders not just of our Indigenous relatives, but of all vulnerable populations. As we say in Lakota, mitakuye oyasin — we are all related.
Wopila tanka — thank you for all you do to protect our children and sovereignty! Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
Arizona’s governor and attorney general announce crackdown on Medicaid fraud
May 16, 2023
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs and other top state officials announced a crackdown Tuesday on Medicaid fraud, particularly honing in on illegitimate group homes.
The Hobbs administration said many of those homes target tribal community members and have defrauded the state out of hundreds of millions of dollars.
An investigation that involved the FBI and the U.S. Attorney’s Office has resulted in at least 45 indictments by the office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.
Mayes said $75 million has been seized or recovered related to the schemes.
Authorities said the money was paid out by the state’s Medicaid program — the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System — and the illegal activity involved billing for mental health treatment and addiction rehabilitation that never was provided.
They also said illegal activity also involved billing for mental health treatment and addiction rehabilitation that was never provided.
AHCCCS has since suspended payments to more than 100 providers and the agency expects more in the coming months.
New actions announced include a third-party forensic audit examining mental health and addiction provider claims since 2019, new processes for concerning or unusual claims and an overhaul of the fraud detection methods used.
“Prior to my administration, AHCCCS had taken a piecemeal approach to targeting these fraudulent providers,” Hobbs said. “Under my administration this will change… Together, we are going to bring about the systemic reforms we need to root out this problem and deliver true accountability.”
Daniel Scarpinato, who served as chief of staff for Hobbs’ predecessor, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey, was critical of the announcement of the crackdown.
“The investigation revealed today has been underway for several years, well before the current occupants took office,” Scarpinato said.
Hobbs and Mayes appeared at a news conference that also included representatives of 13 tribes from around the state.
Hundreds of tribal members, mostly Navajo, living on Phoenix streets amid fake sober home crackdown
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Medicaid Fraud Indigenous Arizona
Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch speaks at a news conference on Monday, June 23, 2023, in Phoenix to offer an update on Operation Rainbow Bridge, a plan that aims to help tribal members who have been affected by a massive Medicaid fraud scheme. (AP Photo/Anita Snow)
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ANITA SNOW
Mon, June 12, 2023 at 6:27 PM CST
PHOENIX (AP) — Navajo law enforcement teams made contact with several hundred Native Americans from various tribes who are living on the streets in the metro Phoenix area, after the state cracked down on Medicaid fraud and suspended unlicensed sober living homes, Navajo Nation Attorney General Ethel Branch said Monday.
Teams that included Navajo police officers reported making contact with more than 270 Native Americans, the majority of them Navajo, Branch said.
Many tribal members accepted offers to stay in motel rooms or other temporary housing for a few days before moving to legitimate facilities, while others agreed to return home to their reservations, Branch said. The teams worked with local police agencies and Community Bridges, Inc., a nonprofit that provides services for people with addictions.
“Unfortunately, many of our relatives when they came out of these facilities didn’t have cell phones,” Branch said, adding that Navajo police officers allowed the people they found to use their own cell phones to call their families.
While the Navajo law enforcement teams have returned to the reservation for now, the tribe will maintain its presence in Phoenix through an operations center.
In response to Arizona’s announcement last month it was cutting off Medicaid funding to more than 100 unlicensed and fraudulent sober living homes, most of them in metro Phoenix, the Navajo Nation launched its Operation Rainbow Bridge. The targeted homes are closing, leaving many people who had sought professional help to overcome their addictions with nowhere to live.
The Operation Rainbow Bridge toolbox includes a Facebook page and a TikTok account now under construction. There’s also a 211 hotline that the tribe is advertising among its members that allows those affected to find a place to stay and get the services they need.
Navajo officials say that in some cases, people who ended up in the homes were picked up in unmarked vans and driven to the Phoenix area from faraway places on the sprawling Navajo Nation that stretches across northern Arizona, and parts of New Mexico and Utah. It’s unclear who paid to transport the people to homes.
The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, which oversees the state’s Medicaid programs, had been paying out money for addiction and other mental health services that state officials say the homes billed for, but never delivered, under the American Indian Health Program.
State officials believe the fake homes have defrauded Arizona out of hundreds of millions of its share of federal Medicaid dollars. Arizona authorities so far have seized $75 million and have issued 45 indictments in the investigation that also includes the FBI and the U.S. Attorney General’s Office.
Arizona officials have said hundreds of fake sober living homes are believed to be currently operating in the Phoenix area and other parts of the state.
I remain on the sacred grounds at Peehee Mu’huh, where the resistance to protect Thacker Pass from a massive lithium mine suffered a major blow last week. On Wednesday, police raided the two prayer camps set up by our Paiute and Shoshone relatives, extinguishing the sacred fire lit since May 11 when the grandmother-led action began, destroying the two ceremonial tipi lodges, mishandling and confiscating ceremonial instruments, and arresting an Indigenous land protector. Ox Sam Camp shared a video they captured with us. Please watch how it went down on our Facebook page.
Watch and share on Facebook: footage of the arrest at Thacker Pass captured live last week.
During breakfast, law enforcement arrived. Almost immediately and without warning, a young Diné (Navajo) water protector was singled out by Lithium Nevada security and arrested. Even as two non-Natives were allowed to “move” in order to avoid arrest, the Diné woman was quickly handcuffed and subsequently loaded into a sheriff’s SUV for transport to Winnemucca for processing.
While on the highway, she says — again without warning or explanation — she was transferred into a windowless, pitch-black holding box in the back of a pickup truck. “I was really scared for my life,” she told Ox Sam Camp. “I didn’t know where I was or where I was going. I know that [the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women] is a real thing, and I didn’t want to be the next one.” She was eventually transported to Humboldt County Jail, where she was charged with criminal trespass and resisting arrest, then released on bail. Again, I urge you to watch the video. Resisting arrest? I don’t think so.
Just hours before the raid, Ox Sam camp’s water protectors bravely stood in the way of large excavation equipment, shutting down construction at the base of Sentinel Rock for the second time that week. To many Paiute and Shoshone People, Sentinel Rock is a “center of the universe.” It’s been a site to gather traditional medicines, tools, and food supply for thousands of years, integral to many Nevada tribes’ way of life.
On Wednesday, at least five Sheriff’s vehicles, several Lithium Nevada work vehicles, and two security trucks arrived at the original tipi site containing the ceremonial fire. After the arrest and once the main camp was secured, law enforcement moved to dismantle the tipi site at Sentinel Rock, a mile away. There is a proper way to take down a tipi and ceremonial camp, and then there’s the way Humboldt County Sheriffs proceeded on behalf of Lithium Nevada Corporation. They knocked down tipis, snapped tipi poles, and rummaged through, mishandled, and impounded ceremonial objects and instruments. They approached and secured tents in classic SWAT-raid fashion.
As we mentioned to you previously, Peehee Mu-huh is the site of two massacres of Paiute and Shoshone people. The remains of the massacred ancestors have remained unidentified and unburied since 1865. They are now being bulldozed and crushed by Lithium Nevada without consent or permission from the area’s Indigenous Peoples.
It’s clear that Lithium Nevada and law enforcement are now doing all they can to stifle this resistance before it can grow. Our videographer, Chuck, was one of several people served with restraining orders over the past several weeks, and we’re hearing threats of further legal action designed to stop continued media coverage of the events now unfolding. Ox Sam Camp has put out a call for legal defense assistance. If you can help, contact them through their website. And please stay tuned for further developments and potential action opportunities.
Wopila tanka — thank you for standing with water and land protectors! Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
Last year, we helped mobilize support around a planned gold mine’s imminent threat to Jenny Gulch, the Pactola Reservoir, and the Rapid Creek watershed in South Dakota. Today, it’s time to act once again. The U.S. Forest Service is taking public comments on a proposed mineral withdrawal, and there’s a real and imperative opportunity for us to save one of the most beautiful and special places in Lakota Country.
Please click here to tell the U.S. Forest Service you support the Pactola area mineral withdrawal! We encourage you to say you also support expanding the area covered by the withdrawal to include all federal lands in the Black Hills. Tell the Forest Service that these sacred lands, which nourish so many Native and non-Native communities downstream with clean water, should be preserved and pristine forever.
The Pactola Reservoir provides fresh water and a beautiful place for South Dakotans to experience natural wonders. Please act now to ensure this area of the sacred He Sapa isn’t polluted by mining.
The deadline for all public feedback is June 20, so this is as urgent as it gets! As you know, we usually like to provide you with easy-to-send, pre-filled form emails. However, because the Forest Service has its own form and values individually crafted messages, please use your own words on this one. Here are some effective talking points when sending your message:
Most importantly, say you want the Forest Service to say YES to the Pactola Reservoir-Rapid Creek Watershed Withdrawal.
Ask the Forest Service to do an Environmental Assessment (EA).
Ask for a Finding of No Significant Impact (FONSI) when the EA has been completed. This may seem counterintuitive, but there will, in fact, be no significant impact to the land once the miners are forced to withdraw!
Choose and give at least one primary reason for your support of the mineral withdrawal. Focus on water quality and cultural values, such as keeping the water free of toxic pollutants, respecting the sacred lands of the Lakota People, and preserving the site for recreation.
Here are two other important notes to keep in mind. First, we are NOT asking for a full Environmental Impact Statement (EIS). Instead we want an EA, which is a much faster process. If, when we messaged you before about Jenny Gulch, you already submitted a comment and asked for an EIS, you can and should make another comment and ask for an EA and FONSI now. Earlier comments written about Jenny Gulch don’t count in the new mineral withdrawal process.
Numbers, however, do count. If you’d like to expand your commentary with additional detail, you can visit the Black Hills Clean Water Alliance (BHCWA) website to learn more. In solidarity with our friends at the BHCWA and every person in South Dakota who values clean water, sacred lands, and beautiful expressions of the natural world, I humbly ask that you act right now to protect the Rapid Creek watershed.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your attention and action! Chase Iron Eyes Co-Director and Lead Counsel The Lakota People’s Law Project
It’s important that enterprising reporters cover Native issues in the right way. Today, I’m happy to highlight a solid example of such reporting. When protest is a crime, part one: the Standing Rock effect is the first of a multi-part podcast from the talented team at Outside/In, a division of New Hampshire Public Radio. It examines the criminalization of protest in America through the lens of Indigenous resistance. Both my father, Lakota Law co-director Chase Iron Eyes, and I sat down with reporter and producer Justine Paradis to lend our perspectives. I encourage you to listen to what we had to say.
Click to listen to our appearance on the Outside/In podcast from New Hampshire Public Radio. Photo of Oceti Sakowin Camp by Irina Groushevaia on Flickr.
In 2016 and 2017, when we formed the resistance camps at Standing Rock to stop the Dakota Access pipeline (DAPL), it quickly became apparent that our movement was going to have an unusual kind of impact. Other tribes showed up in force. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez traveled to our homelands and decided while there to run for office. U.S. veterans arrived on the scene in support of our cause, rattling the established order. In all, tens of thousands of people helped us make worldwide news, and we succeeded in raising public consciousness to the point that President Obama actually shut DAPL’s construction down.
You probably know what happened next. Newly elected, Donald Trump quickly overturned Obama’s decision and fast-tracked the pipeline. And then, the conservative backlash really kicked in. Over the next several years, states began creating policies meant to chill citizens’ right to free expression under the guise of infrastructure protection. The federal government even tried to make it legal for law enforcement to kill protestors. Thankfully, after people like you sent thousands of messages to legislators, that particular bill didn’t make it out of the Senate.
Nevertheless, things remain tenuous today, and that’s why we must keep shining our lights on nefarious efforts to silence our voices and roll back our rights. Using clips and a series of interviews that include personal stories — like my own about watching my mother get arrested — Justine and her team deftly do just that. They examine the NoDAPL movement, various forms of direct action, and the history of Indigenous resistance. Please give the podcast a listen, and share it with your network. Then keep your eye out for the second episode, slated to drop later this week!
Wopila tanka — thank you for being a part of our resistance. Tokata Iron Eyes Organizer The Lakota People’s Law Project
Lakota People’s Law Project 547 South 7th Street #149 Bismarck, ND 58504-5859
The Lakota People’s Law Project is part of the Romero Institute, a nonprofit 501(c)(3) law and policy center. All donations are tax-deductible.
Water is Life 