Indigenous peoples hold 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity. We are the canary in the mine of humanity. Yet just as we aren’t at the world’s decision-making tables on climate crisis, we are an afterthought in the drafting of the #IRA - the first major U.S. “climate” bill. It’s unsurprising to see “solutions” based in renewables investments & block grants in exchange for leasing millions of acres of land to drilling, rolling back enviro regs & re-upping MVP pipeline.

Mother Nature doesn’t deal in US dollars. Where is her voice?

The movement I’m part of is fighting w/our literal bodies on frontlines to protect what’s left of Mother Earth.

Rolling back basic enviro review, judiciary intervention, opening 100s of millions of acres of lands & water to extraction isn’t a win. It isn’t even momentum.

https://twitter.com/leahstokes/status/1555365835346042881

It’s giving up our communities & lands to have the word climate & renewables $$ in a bill. It gives up too much, for too little. It’s sending the signal to extractive industry to keep on lobbying and spending, so “climate” bills don’t affect their bottom lines.

Cuz a bunch of kids in fringe chanting “scalp ‘em Indians, scalp ‘em” is honor, right?

And any Natives who attend @pngisd should prolly just accept their classmates dehumanizing them cuz “tradition”, right?

Shame on @DisneyParks hosting this. Nostalgic racism is RACISM. Here’s @pngisd implanting racism into children. These educators must’ve missed decades of studies re: harms of Native mascots on Native kids, of racial stereotypes on all kids, the 100s of tribes repping millions of Natives denouncing this kind of ish for literally generations.

Dragging up this old tweet because I just heard this rumor, again, this time said by Tom Goldtooth of IEN, another man whose intense scrutiny of me has ranged from falsely stating I never finished law school to me bouncing from Standing Rock with millions.

https://twitter.com/regcharging/status/988558815057596417

The reality is I left Standing Rock having defaulted on multiple student loans; I returned broken & traumatized to a DC apartment I barely hung onto. I had no electricity, no WiFi. I spent every dime I had paying for food, for gas, for living out on the prairie fighting DAPL.

15 days ago I was shot by police with rubber bullets, mace, pepper balls paid for by Enbridge. I heard shouts, cries and gasping coughing punctuated by the sound of munitions firing and a huge drill out of a sci-fi movie boring thru the river we were there to protect. #StopLine3 I heard a woman paid to organize against Line 3 screaming at us that we were violent, that we needed to stop. I heard a woman screaming who had blood pouring down her face from the rubber bullet that had hit her. I heard the sound of my own breath rattling in my respirator.

On May 31, I was arrested, maced point-blank walking on a sidewalk blocks from where George Floyd was killed. @MinneapolisPD took my belongings, “lost” my case, directed me to @HennepinSheriff who handed me to @GovTimWalz @MnDPS_DPS. They said MPD lost many, many items. This came after a 17hr stint in @HennepinSheriff in which we were never transferred to a cell, just holding tank after holding tank full of women taking turns sitting on concrete blocks.

It was 2013. I was a 1st yr lawyer in DC, a world away from Ranier, MN pop: 199. I couldn’t believe the racist BS in the streets & the racist BS on Capitol Hill: it was like Natives didn’t exist. “Redskins” played in a stadium next to a Congress where paternalism still reigns. Social media connected me to other Natives pushing for a new narrative & a movement of Native peoples who had tirelessly fought such obvious racism since the 1960s.

Yesterday, I saw the disbelieving, agitated eyes of my friends witnessing police starting to saw down a young woman suspended in the air, while an ambulance waited down the street. They knew cutting it could send her hurtling to the pavement, but did it anyway. Last winter, police warned us to stay back as we shouted at them to stop sawing down a tripod as another young woman dangled overhead, risking her life.