Patricia,
The federal government is increasingly violating its legal responsibility to respect Tribal sovereignty over our ancestral lands.
For example, the U.S. Forest Service just transferred ownership of the sacred Oak Flat to a copper mining company. Congress is considering opening up the sacred Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument to resource extraction. The U.S. Forest Service also issued a permit to a mining company to drill at Pe’Sla, a sacred place within the Black Hills that has been used for ceremonial gatherings of the Lakota, Dakota, and other nations for thousands of years.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) is pushing to revoke protections and expand oil and gas leases near and within the sacred Chaco Culture National Historical Park.
And the Department of the Interior is revoking protections for more than 2 million acres of public lands in Alaska -- enabling dangerous mining and drilling against local Tribe’s demands.
We’ve worked with Tribes and Native communities to protect and re-Indigenize these same places, and we can’t let the U.S. government undo our progress.
With your support, the Native Organizers Alliance will continue to defend our sacred places and Tribal sovereignty, increase our shared ability to withstand attacks, and strengthen movements for self-determination and environmental justice.
Please chip in today to power our urgent work defending our lands, Tribal sovereignty, and sacred places from increased attacks.
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Our Indigenous values teach us that all who live on Mother Earth have a shared responsibility to protect Her, as well as all our living relatives who depend on Her.
But the Environmental Protection Agency is also rolling back essential climate, air quality, and water protections -- which threatens Tribes’ ability to stop polluting projects, and undermines our right to steward lands and waters as our ancestors have.
Additionally, the U.S. House of Representatives recently passed the SPEED Act, which would silence Tribal Nations and community voices about harmful projects near them. We have to make sure it doesn’t pass the Senate and become law.
And the presidential administration has already implemented drastic changes to shrink or erase consultation requirements, shorten permitting processes, weaken environmental reviews, and fast-track fossil fuel and mining projects.
At Native Organizers Alliance, we’re advocating for environmental protections and building the power needed to hold the U.S. government accountable for honoring our rights and human rights for all — including the right to self-determination over our communities and our ancestral homelands, here and around the world.
We’re also growing the movement for sovereignty and environmental justice, facilitating hundreds of leaders each year and partnering with 60 Tribes and Native communities across Turtle Island.
And we’re working with an awareness of the heightened threats to democratic institutions and policies, using a multi-generational lens to guide the strategies to expand our rights, including moving closer toward the international human rights standard of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent.
Can you make a donation today so we can keep advocating and building Native power to protect public lands, sacred places, and human rights?
Hawwih (thank you in Caddo) for your crucial support.
Together, we will keep speaking up for Native rights and all our relatives, including our immigrant relatives, who are suffering. We will continue to push to ensure Tribal sovereignty, protect Mother Earth, and take on the climate crisis.
We’ll organize for a just transition from reliance on fossil fuels to an economy based on renewable energy and a democratic system that puts Mother Earth and all living beings first.
Judith LeBlanc (Caddo)
Executive Director
BUILD NATIVE POWER
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