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We Work to Make
A Difference Locally & Internationally

Our staff and board are making big differences in the world. Our collective work and experience includes work on the following issues:

  • Supporting the rights of Indigenous peoples and nations to fulfill sacred obligations to steward the lands we belong to.

  • Supporting Indigenous migrants forcibly removed from their territories an ancestral homelands while fighting for the right to stay home.

  • Fighting to protect the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) and to expand its protections. 

  • Legal services and social support for separated families such as Maya families separated in southern territories by U.S. immigration officials.

  • Rematriation, recovery, reconnecting, renewal, & revival through #LandBack, Indigenous medicines, Indigenous governance, Indigenous kinship, and approaches that honor our sacred relationships with each other and the land. 

  • Protecting the rights of Indigenous women and children and all Missing and Murdered Relatives (MMIR) especially vulnerable LGBTQTS relatives across colonial borders throughout Turtle Island. 

  • Environmental justice in Indian Country and throughout Turtle Island.

  • We are water protectors and land defenders and support Indigenous efforts to steward and protect land and water.

  • Promoting sovereignty and self-determination.

  • Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) work.

  • Protecting Indigenous intellectual and cultural "property."

  • Supporting the development of Indigenous nation-to-nation relationships across borders and between U.S. tribal nations and Indigenous migrants.

  • Policy and advocacy work locally, nationally, and internationally.

  • Promoting Indigenous perspectives and interests by interfacing with sovereign tribal nations, Indigenous political and ancestral authorities, international agencies & organizations, federal agencies, state agencies, and local representatives.

  • Indigenous language protection and development.

  • Indigenous collective consultation.

  • Fighting Indigenous erasure.

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Murdered and Missing Indigenosu Women and Relatives (MMIW/R)
We address human trafficking in Indian Country and across borders; border towns of reservations and U.S. borders where Indigenous migranst are subjected to human trafficking
Attorney Honor Keeler, Cherokee Nation, working to bring back our ancestors and sacred objects stolen from tribes under NAGPRA.
Returning Maya children to their families, communities, and nations after U.S. immigration foficials separate them form their families and state courts tried to adopt the children out to non-Indigenous families.
Henry Sales, Mam Maya community leader in Oallnad, CA
Carolina Martin Ramos speaks on forced removal, forced migration, & displacement of Indigenous peoples at Nationa Lawyer's Guild (NLG) Event
Executive Director, attorney Carolina Martin Ramos leading conversations with Indigenous Migrants in the U.S.
Defend the Sacred! Land, water, culture, language, children, elders, & all our relations...
Board member, attorney, and artist working to protect Native American rights, land, & water.
Colorful Scarves
Indigenous migrants & Indigenous erasure in the immigrants' rights movement

Indigenous Rights Across Borders

Indigenous peoples and nations face many of the same threats across colonial borders. Indigenous peoples in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, and Guatemala face the highest numbers of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Relatives due to radicalized and patriarchal colonial violence and systemic femicide and feminicide. Across borders, transnational corporations contaminate our waters and lands with mining and forcibly remove us from our territories to benefit extractive industries. States and corporations threaten our lives and subject us to severe systemic discrimination, persecution, torture, and genocide.

 

Those of us who volunteered at Standing Rock in the Oceti Sakowin #NoDAPL camp and actions know about the Lakota prophecy of Zuzéca Sapa, the Black Snake, that extends across the land where it endangers all life beginning with our sacred water resulting in nothing but death and destruction. Zuzéca Sapa is the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) invading through Lakota territory but the "black snake" or the threat of contamination by oil and gas corporation pipelines also crosses borders and the head and tail of Zuzéca Sapa slithers through Indigenous territories in Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, and even further south. The only way to protect against the death and destruction the "Black Snake" brings is by organizing efforts across borders and through international alliances led by Indigenous nations and peoples. 

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Likewise, any efforts to address environmental injustice, gender violence, forced displacement, the theft of Indigenous children, and genocidal policies and structures intrinsic to settler colonialism require collective efforts of Indigenous relatives across colonial borders. Since time immemorial, Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island and Abya Yala have held relationships with each other from north to south and east to west. Colonial governments and occupations have attempted to erase this knowledge but we remember and work to rematriate, resist, recover, and reconnect so that we can fulfill our obligations to care for each other and the lands we are born of.

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