Indigenous Rights Movements & the Law

On Earth Day, we speak with two of the more than two dozen Indigenous authors of a new book that looks at the history of resistance against colonialism and capitalism and lays out a vision for the future to address the climate crisis. "The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth" details the centuries of Indigenous resistance that created the movement at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access pipeline and what movements centering justice for Indigenous people must look like. The book offers a "people's program to prevent extinction," says Melanie Yazzie, assistant professor of Native American studies and American studies at the University of New Mexico and co-author of "The Red Deal." "The plan is really clear. The stakes are really clear," Yazzie says. "We draw centrally from Indigenous movements over the last couple of decades for decolonization." We also speak with Uahikea Maile, an assistant professor of Indigenous politics at the University of Toronto - St. George and one of the book's co-authors. #DemocracyNow Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: https://democracynow.org Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today: https://democracynow.org/donate FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: YouTube: http://youtube.com/democracynow Facebook: http://facebook.com/democracynow Twitter: https://twitter.com/democracynow Instagram: http://instagram.com/democracynow SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/democracynow iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/democracy-now!-audio/id73802554 Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

Red Media and Common Notions are pleased to announce the publication of The Red Deal: Indigenous Action to Save Our Earth. Authored by two dozen Indigenous revolutionaries, The Red Deal is a political program for liberation that emerges from the oldest class struggle in the Americas—the Indigenous fight for decolonization. Offering a profound vision for a decolonized society, The Red Deal is not simply a response to the Green New Deal nor a “bargain” with the elite and powerful. It is a deal with the humble people of the earth; an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for human and other-than-human life to live with dignity. It is a pact with movements for liberation, life, and land for a new world of peace and justice that must come from below and to the left. Join five of its authors for this special launch event celebrating Earth Day 2021! Hosted by Making Worlds Bookstore and Social Center Sponsored by Common Notions Press and Red Media

In the largest act of civil disobedience to date to halt the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline, more than 100 water protectors led by Indigenous women have been arrested in Minnesota. We get an on-the-ground update on the day of action and how water protectors blockaded a pipeline pump station north of the town of Park Rapids, with many locking themselves to heavy machinery as authorities tried to disperse protesters by sending in a low-flying Customs and Border Protection helicopter which produced a sandstorm. Thousands gathered for a Treaty People Gathering weekend of action to stop Line 3, which would carry more than 750,000 barrels of tar sands oil a day through Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems and endanger lakes, rivers and wild rice beds. If completed, Line 3 would be “the largest tar sands pipeline in the world,” says Winona LaDuke, an Anishinaabe activist and executive director of Honor the Earth who lives and works on the White Earth Reservation in northern Minnesota. “We have a Canadian corporation coming in here trying to make a buck at the end of the fossil fuels era and run over a bunch of Indigenous people, and we’re not having it.” #DemocracyNow Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: https://democracynow.org Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today: https://democracynow.org/donate FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: YouTube: http://youtube.com/democracynow Facebook: http://facebook.com/democracynow Twitter: https://twitter.com/democracynow Instagram: http://instagram.com/democracynow SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/democracynow iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/democracy-now!-audio/id73802554 Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

Resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline continues in northern Minnesota, where more than a dozen water protectors this week locked themselves to construction vehicles at two worksites, and to the pipeline itself. Just last month, 179 people were arrested when thousands shut down an Enbridge pumping station for two days as part of the Treaty People Gathering. If completed, Line 3 would carry more than 750,000 barrels of Canadian tar sands oil a day across Indigenous land and fragile ecosystems. The pipeline has the backing of the Biden administration, and this week Indigenous leaders and climate justice activists blockaded access to the White House, calling on Biden to stop fossil fuel projects and invest in climate justice initiatives in his infrastructure plans. Indigenous lawyer and activist Tara Houska, founder of the Giniw Collective, describes the resistance to Line 3 as an “all-out ground fight” led by young people. “This, to me, is an extension of the fight that’s happening all over Mother Earth, protecting the last beautiful places, protecting the sacred,” Houska says. #DemocracyNow Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: https://democracynow.org Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today: https://democracynow.org/donate FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: YouTube: http://youtube.com/democracynow Facebook: http://facebook.com/democracynow Twitter: https://twitter.com/democracynow Instagram: http://instagram.com/democracynow SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/democracynow iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/democracy-now!-audio/id73802554 Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem has announced she is deploying 50 members of the South Dakota National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border at the request of Texas Governor Greg Abbott. In an extraordinary twist, the deployment is being paid for by billionaire Republican megadonor Willis Johnson, who lives in Tennessee. Critics say Noem is turning the National Guard into a private mercenary force targeting migrants, but the governor’s plans for the National Guard could encompass other activities. Water protector and land back attorney Bruce Ellison has obtained documents that indicate the same force could be deployed to suppress Indigenous activists resisting pipelines — including through “lethal force,” Ellison says. We also speak to Tara Houska, Indigenous lawyer, activist and founder of the Giniw Collective, who adds the Department of Homeland Security has also been involved in suppressing resistance to construction of the Enbridge Line 3 tar sands pipeline in northern Minnesota. #DemocracyNow Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: https://democracynow.org Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today: https://democracynow.org/donate FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: YouTube: http://youtube.com/democracynow Facebook: http://facebook.com/democracynow Twitter: https://twitter.com/democracynow Instagram: http://instagram.com/democracynow SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/democracynow iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/democracy-now!-audio/id73802554 Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

In response to the completion of the contested Line 3 pipeline, which is now reportedly operational, thousands of Indigenous leaders and climate justice advocates are kicking off the “People vs. Fossil Fuels’’ mobilization, an Indigenous-led five-day action of civil disobedience at the White House to demand President Biden declare a climate emergency, divest from fossil fuels and launch a “just renewable energy revolution.” “This pipeline doesn’t respect treaty rights,” says Winona LaDuke, longtime Indigenous activist and founder of Honor the Earth, a platform to raise awareness of and money for Indigenous struggles for environmental justice. “They’re just trying to continue their egregious behavior. It’s so tragic that, on the one hand, the Biden administration is like, ’We’re going to have Indigenous Peoples’ Day, but we’re still going to smash you in northern Minnesota and smash the rest of the country.’” LaDuke faces criminal charges linked to her protest of pipelines in three different counties. #DemocracyNow Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on nearly 1,400 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream 8-9AM ET: https://democracynow.org Please consider supporting independent media by making a donation to Democracy Now! today: https://democracynow.org/donate FOLLOW DEMOCRACY NOW! ONLINE: YouTube: http://youtube.com/democracynow Facebook: http://facebook.com/democracynow Twitter: https://twitter.com/democracynow Instagram: http://instagram.com/democracynow SoundCloud: http://soundcloud.com/democracynow iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/podcast/democracy-now!-audio/id73802554 Daily Email Digest: https://democracynow.org/subscribe

"Amid the Standing Rock movement to protect the land and the water that millions depend on for life, the Oceti Sakowin (the Dakota, Nakota, and Lakota people) reunited. Through poetry and prose, essays, photography, interviews, and polemical interventions, the contributors reflect on Indigenous history and politics and on the movement's significance. Their work challenges our understanding of colonial history not simply as "lessons learned" but as essential guideposts for activism"--

In this influential and enduring collection of essays, Christopher D. Stone argues that natural objects, such as trees, should be bestowed with legal rights through the appointment of special guardians who are designated to protect the "voiceless" elements in nature. Through the essays in this volume, Stone advances his thesis that the courts should acknowledge and protect the legal rights of threatened forests and endangered species by granting standing to objects and species themselves, as opposed to the humans that are adversely affected by pollution, deforestation, and other harmful actions. The 35th anniversary edition features updated chapters and new essays, including Stone's most compelling writings on topics such as legal rights for natural objects, climate change, agriculture in the 21st century, protecting the oceans, and the influence of ethics on courts and Congress in shaping U.S. environmental policy. A new Introduction and Epilogue, "Trees at Thirty-Five," narrate the reception of Stone's central thesis in various countries and appraise the present state of the environmental movement.

Winner of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award 2017 Mohawk midwife Katsi Cook lives in Akwesasne, an indigenous community in upstate New York that is downwind and downstream from three Superfund sites. For years she witnessed elevated rates of miscarriages, birth defects, and cancer in her town, ultimately drawing connections between environmental contamination and these maladies. When she brought her findings to environmental health researchers, Cook sparked the United States' first large-scale community-based participatory research project. In The River Is in Us, author Elizabeth Hoover takes us deep into this remarkable community that has partnered with scientists and developed grassroots programs to fight the contamination of its lands and reclaim its health and culture. Through in-depth research into archives, newspapers, and public meetings, as well as numerous interviews with community members and scientists, Hoover shows the exact efforts taken by Akwesasne's massive research project and the grassroots efforts to preserve the Native culture and lands. She also documents how contaminants have altered tribal life, including changes to the Mohawk fishing culture and the rise of diabetes in Akwesasne. Featuring community members such as farmers, health-care providers, area leaders, and environmental specialists, while rigorously evaluating the efficacy of tribal efforts to preserve its culture and protect its health, The River Is in Us offers important lessons for improving environmental health research and health care, plus detailed insights into the struggles and methods of indigenous groups. This moving, uplifting book is an essential read for anyone interested in Native Americans, social justice, and the pollutants contaminating our food, water, and bodies.

When the Red Nation released their call for a Red Deal, it generated coverage in places from Teen Vogue to Jacobin to the New Republic, was endorsed by the DSA, and has galvanized organizing and action. Now, in response to popular demand, the Red Nation expands their original statement filling in the histories and ideas that formed it and forwarding an even more powerful case for the actions it demands.  One-part visionary platform, one-part practical toolkit, the Red Deal is a platform that encompasses everyone, including non-Indigenous comrades and relatives who live on Indigenous land. We--Indigenous, Black and people of color, women and trans folks, migrants, and working people--did not create this disaster, but we have inherited it. We have barely a decade to turn back the tide of climate disaster. It is time to reclaim the life and destiny that has been stolen from us and rise up together to confront this challenge and build a world where all life can thrive. Only mass movements can do what the moment demands. Politicians may or may not follow--it is up to them--but we will design, build, and lead this movement with or without them. The Red Deal is a call for action beyond the scope of the US colonial state. It's a program for Indigenous liberation, life, and land--an affirmation that colonialism and capitalism must be overturned for this planet to be habitable for human and other-than-human relatives to live dignified lives. The Red Deal is not a response to the Green New Deal, or a "bargain" with the elite and powerful. It's a deal with the humble people of the earth; a pact that we shall strive for peace and justice and a declaration that movements for justice must come from below and to the left. 

"In 2016, a small protest encampment at the Standing Rock reservation in North Dakota, initially established to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline, grew to be the largest Indigenous protest movement in the twenty-first century, attracting tens of thousands of Indigenous and non-Native allies from around the world. Its slogan "Mni Wiconi"--Water is Life--was about more than just a pipeline. Water Protectors knew this battle for Native sovereignty had already been fought many times before, and that, even after the encampment was gone, their anti-colonial struggle would continue. In Our History is the Future, Nick Estes traces traditions of Indigenous resistance leading to the #NoDAPL movement from the days of the Missouri River trading forts through the Indian Wars, the Pick-Sloan dams, the American Indian Movement, and the campaign for Indigenous rights at the United Nations. While a historian by trade, Estes also draws on observations from the encampments and from growing up as a citizen of the Oceti Sakowin (the Nation of the Seven Council Fires), making Our History is the Future at once a work of history, a personal story, and a manifesto"--

The fight over the tar sands in North America is among the epic environmental and social justice battles of our time, and one of the first that has managed to marry quite explicitly concern for frontline communities and immediate local hazards with fear for the future of the entire planet. Tar sands "development" comes with an enormous environmental and human cost. But tar sands opponents-fighting a powerful international industry-are likened to terrorists; government environmental scientists are muzzled; and public hearings are concealed and rushed. Yet, despite the formidable political and economic power behind the tar sands, many opponents are actively building international networks of resistance, challenging pipeline plans while resisting threats to Indigenous sovereignty and democratic participation. Including leading voices involved in the struggle against the tar sands, A Line in the Tar Sands offers a critical analysis of the impact of the tar sands and the challenges opponents face in their efforts to organize effective resistance. Contributors include Angela Carter, Bill McKibben, Brian Tokar, Christine Leclerc, Clayton Thomas-Muller, Crystal Lameman, Dave Vasey, Emily Coats, Eriel Deranger, Greg Albo, Jeremy Brecher, Jess Worth, Jesse Cardinal, Joshua Kahn Russell, Lilian Yap, Linda Capato, Macdonald Stainsby, Martin Lukacs, Matt Leonard, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Naomi Klein, Rae Breaux, Randolph Haluza-DeLay, Rex Weyler, Ryan Katz-Rosene, Sakihitowin Awasis, Sonia Grant, Stephen D'Arcy, Toban Black, Tony Weis, Tyler McCreary, Winona LaDuke, and Yves Engler.

In Landscapes of Power Dana E. Powell examines the rise and fall of the controversial Desert Rock Power Plant initiative in New Mexico to trace the political conflicts surrounding native sovereignty and contemporary energy development on Navajo (Diné) Nation land. Powell's historical and ethnographic account shows how the coal-fired power plant project's defeat provided the basis for redefining the legacies of colonialism, mineral extraction, and environmentalism. Examining the labor of activists, artists, politicians, elders, technicians, and others, Powell emphasizes the generative potential of Navajo resistance to articulate a vision of autonomy in the face of twenty-first-century colonial conditions. Ultimately, Powell situates local Navajo struggles over energy technology and infrastructure within broader sociocultural life, debates over global climate change, and tribal, federal, and global politics of extraction.

"With connections to traditional homelands being at the heart of Native identity, environmental justice is of heightened importance to Indigenous communities. Not only do irresponsible and exploitative environmental policies harm the physical and financial health of Indigenous communities, they also cause spiritual harm by destroying the land and wildlife that are held in a place of exceptional reverence for Indigenous peoples. Combining elements of legal issues, human rights issues, and sovereignty issues, Indigenous Environmental Justice creates a clear example of community resilience in the face of corporate greed"--

"From Flint, MI to Standing Rock, ND, minorities have found themselves losing the battle for clean resources and a healthy environment. This book provides a modern history of such environmental injustices in the U.S. and Canada"--

"Fracking, the practice of shattering underground rock to release oil and natural gas, is a major driver of climate change. The 300,000 fracking facilities in the US also directly harm the health and livelihoods of people in front-line communities, who are disproportionately poor and people of color. Impacted citizens have for years protested that their rights have been ignored. On May 14, 2018, a respected international human-rights court, the Rome-based Permanent Peoples' Tribunal, began a week-long hearing on the impacts of fracking and climate change on human and Earth rights. In its advisory opinion, the Tribunal ruled that fracking systematically violates substantive and procedural human rights; that governments are complicit in the rights violations; and that to protect human rights and the climate, the practice of fracking should be banned. The case makes history. It revokes the social license of extreme-extraction industries by connecting environmental destruction to human-rights violations. It affirms that climate change, and the extraction techniques that fuel it, directly violate deeply and broadly accepted moral norms encoded in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Bearing Witness maps a promising new direction in the ongoing struggle to protect the planet from climate chaos. It tells the story of this landmark case through carefully curated court materials, including eye-witness testimony, legal testimony, and the Tribunal's advisory opinion. Essays by leading climate writers such as Winona LaDuke, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Bill McKibben, and Sandra Steingraber and legal experts such as John Knox and Mary Wood give context to the controversy. Framing essays by the editors, experts on climate ethics and human rights, demonstrate that a human-rights focus is a powerful, transformative new tool to address the climate crisis"--

"When Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists work together, what are the ends that they seek, and how do they negotiate their relationships while pursuing social change? Alliances brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders, activists, and scholars in order to examine their experiences of alliance-building for Indigenous rights and self-determination and for social and environmental justice;The contributors, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, come from diverse backgrounds as community activists and academics. They write from the front lines of struggle, from spaces of reflection rooted in past experiences, and from scholarly perspectives that use emerging theories to understand contemporary instances of alliance. Some contributors reflect on methods of mental decolonization while others use Indigenous concepts of respectful relationships in order to analyze present-day interactions. Most importantly, Alliances delves into the complex political and personal relationships inherent in both Indigenous and non-Indigenous struggles for social justice to provide insights into the tensions and possibilities of Indigenous-non-Indigenous alliance and coalition-building in the early twenty-first century."--Publisher's description

The Red Nation (TRN) invites allied movements, comrades, and relatives to implement the Red Deal, a movement-oriented document for climate justice and grassroots reform and revolution. This is not a region- or nation-specific platform, but one that encompasses the entirety of Indigenous America, including our non-Indigenous comrades and relatives who live here. This is a platform so that our planet may live.

One way to become in right relationship with the planet and our environment is to listen to the voices of indigenous communities.

Native Americans in North America, who enjoy territorial sovereignty on their lands, are at the frontlines of environmental protection. Their efforts safeguard their rights, culture and livelihoods, as well as

Above –– Infrastructure Otherwise Report 001, Mapping a Many Headed Hydra: The Struggle Over the Dakota Access Pipeline (2017). Text by Katie Mazer,...

For most of its history, the United States worked to acquire indigenous lands through treaties, agreements, and sometimes through forceful relocation from tribal homelands. Tribes were left with what at the time were thought to be the least-desirable lands. But the Supreme Court has often ruled that federal Indian reservations include valuable implied rights.

Indian nations today are faced with a critical dichotomy in their treatment by the federal government. For the most part, Congress has embarked on a path of promoting and encouraging economic development and self sufficiency, while the Supreme Court has taken virtually every opportunity in recent years to undercut the legal and practical basis of reservation self-government. Nowhere is this dichotomy more starkly illustrated than in the environmental arena.

Download Citation | The frontline of refusal: indigenous women warriors of standing rock | Indigenous women stand in solidarity on the frontline of refusal, protecting their ancestral homelands and their ways of life across North America... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate

A look at the use of drones to document the protests by Native American tribes and other advocates against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock reservation.

Starting in April 2016, thousands of people, led by Standing Rock Sioux Tribal members, gathered at camps to stop the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline

Over the past three decades, the environmental movement has promoted a view of American Indians as the "original conservationists"—that is, "people so intimately bound to the land that they have left no mark upon it."

While Trump is quick to defend his Confederate forefathers, he has been equally swift to desecrate places held sacred by Native Americans

The controversial projects may affect animals, climate, and people. Here’s how.

We must remember we are part of a larger story. We are still here. We are still fighting for our lives on our own land.