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Dear Relatives,
On Turtle Island, June 20 brought 2024’s summer solstice, the day in the Gregorian calendar with the longest period of daylight. For Indigenous Peoples, it is a time of renewal and reflection, as well as ceremonials, dance, and prayer. It is a time of personal sacrifice for the family, clan, society, or community.
Pride Month is also celebrated in June at IEN. Powwow season has begun in earnest, as have Green Corn and other ceremonial dances, games, and feasts. Planting the many feast vegetables has begun in the north, and in the south and southwest, traditional foods like squash, corn, melons, and beans already harvested are being served up on campsite tables for friends, family, and visitors. IEN staff and board were busy on all fronts.
June was busy with meetings in faraway places like Bonn, Germany, and at home in significant places like Standing Rock, on Turtle Island, reuniting with long-time ally organizations like the International Indian Treaty Council.
IEN’s Indigenous Feminisms organizer, Claire Charlo, and IEN Divestment Campaigner Marcello Frederico, attended the Rising Majority’s Movement Congress in St. Louis, MO for activists and organizations to convene and strategize around a 10-year plan for advancing social, racial, economic, and environmental justice. From June 18-22, people from around the world came together to build relationships, learn from each other, and unite around a bold agenda for change.
A delegation of 11 IEN staff and grassroots leaders recently attended the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change 60th session of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice held in Bonn, Germany, May 27- June 8, 2024. The IEN delegation presented information during three side events, spoke at six press conferences, hosted three workshops in the Bonn Climate Camp, worked within three UN constituency groups, participated in actions, gave several interventions, and followed daily negotiation tracks. For further reading, three IEN staff delegates submitted their thoughts on the Bonn meeting. You can read and find the link below in the “Program Spotlight."
 On June 11-12, 2024, the “Shutdown DAPL” rally and series of events and meetings with agency officials in Washington, DC, was organized by IEN Digital Organizing Fellow Morgan Brings Plenty, the Standing Rock Youth Council, members of the Standing Rock and Cheyenne River Sioux Tribes, and IEN allies. They continue to direct their requests and demands for President Biden and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to close down the Dakota Access Pipeline, seal it, and most importantly, revoke the permit at Lake Oahe. The tribal communities who are impacted by this, as-yet, illegally operating pipeline, have an undeniable right to contribute to the decision-making process and outcome - but, lawmakers continue to ignore the SRST and CRST’s right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. Click here to watch: LIVE from Washington DC: Shutdown DAPL rally
Wherever we are, we are Indigenous, we are of Mother Earth, and we take very seriously our responsibilities to Protect her. By keeping alive our songs and dances, our ceremonials, feasts, and social gatherings, and our Traditional Indigenous Knowledge of how to live in respect for all Life, we can adapt to any situation.
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Pinkwashing: Climate Justice Feminists Should Care about Liberating Palestine
Our intersectional existence–which inherently encompasses our relationships to land, spirituality, and community–is sometimes in conflict with Western LGBT+ movements, which tend to center around “gay rights” that depend on an individualistic, capitalist morality. A necessary aspect of that intersectional approach to liberation is solidarity with global anti-colonial struggles. Click here to read more.
First-person perspectives from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Facilitative Working Group in Bonn, Germany
 The annual Bonn climate talks lay the groundwork for decisions to be made at the end of the year Conference of the Parties (COP). Climate finance will have to be agreed in Baku at the next COP. The finance target is known as the New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance (NCQG) The new long-term goal will aim to fund climate efforts in developing countries and replace the existing climate pledge of $100 billion a year, which is currently two years old, and this has never been met. Click here to read more and watch footage from Bonn.
IEN Teaching Garden
Kaylee Carnahan, Greenskeeper and Administrative Associate is as busy as ever in our garden at the IEN main office in Bemidji, MN. She built greenhouses, and she says the garden is abundantly productive. Vegetables and herbs will be made available to community members in need.
Looking Ahead
In July, IEN’s Keep It In The Ground Program will hold a retreat by invitation for grassroots organizers. We will continue to plan and organize for the upcoming Protecting Mother Gathering in Cherokee, North Carolina, August 1-4, 2024.
Notice of Request for Information Related to the Department of Energy's Environmental Justice Strategic Plan
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IITC’s 50th Anniversary Treaty Conference returns to the place it all began
IEN Carbon Pricing Educator Thomas Joseph Tsewenaldin (Hupa, Karuk, Paiute-Shoshone), Information Technology Fellow Durin Mundahl (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe-Oglala Lakota), Digital Organizing Fellow Morgan Brings Plenty (Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe), and IEN Board of Directors’ President Chair Faith Gemmil (Neets’aii Gwich’in & Pit River and Wintu) and Advisor, Manny Pino (Acoma Pueblo) were honored to attend the International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) 50th anniversary Treaty Conference at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation, Oceti Sakowin Treaty Territory, Wakpala South Dakota where it all began.
The IITC’s inaugural gathering was held at Standing Rock in June 1974, with 5,000 attendees from throughout the Americas. It was established to serve as an international voice for Indigenous Peoples at the United Nations. This year, over 300 participants attended, with representation across North, Central, South America, the Caribbean, and the Pacific.
IEN’s IT Fellow, Durin Mundahl, shares a recap of this year’s IITC’s Treaty Conference, highlighting some of the important discussions that took place including climate change, Traditional Knowledge, food sovereignty, Indigenous languages, FPIC, false solutions and much more. IITC 50th Anniversary: A Global Gathering of Indigenous Peoples - Click here to read more!
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Our relatives and allies are still fighting the ongoing and expanding trail of destruction from the Mountain Valley Pipeline:
A proposed gas buildout in North and South Carolina puts our communities and land at risk!
"We want our families to have the freedom to drink clean water, breathe safe air and live in healthy communities, but plans for a major buildout of methane gas infrastructure is putting that at risk. Corporations like Duke Energy, Dominion Energy, Mountain Valley Pipeline and Williams Companies want to build massive and expensive methane gas pipelines and gas-fired power plants for profit at the expense of our land and environment. It’s time for us to come together to work for a future where we have a say in how we power our homes and businesses and can move toward a clean and affordable energy system." Click here to read more.
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From Turtle Island and Beyond
Shasta Indian Nation to get homeland back in largest land return in California history
Gov. Gavin Newsom has set in motion the largest land return in California history, declaring his support for the return of ancestral lands to the Shasta Indian Nation that were seized a century ago and submerged. Click here to read more.
Water inequality on the Colorado River
A new accounting reveals deep disparities in Western water consumption. For the last couple of decades, water managers in southern Nevada have promoted a plethora of conservation measures, from fixing leaks in the vast system of pipes snaking beneath Las Vegas to encouraging reduced-flow faucets to banning ornamental turf. Golf courses are irrigated with treated wastewater, and water-gulping swamp coolers are discouraged. All this has helped Nevada stay within tight limits on how much it can draw from the Colorado River, bringing per capita consumption down to just over 100 gallons per day — about one-fourth of what it was in 1991. Click here to read more.
Watch Episode One: ‘King Coal,’ Award-Winning Documentary Set To Kick Off 37th Season Of ‘POV’
A lyrical tapestry of a place and people, King Coal meditates on the complex history and future of the coal industry, the communities it has shaped, and the myths it has created. The film reshapes the boundaries of documentary filmmaking and transcends time and place, untangling the pain from the beauty, and illuminating the innately human capacity for imagination and change. Click here to watch Episode One.
Confronting the Lithium Rush: Salinas Grandes in Danger in Salta and Jujuy, Argentina
We understood that to mine lithium it is necessary to pump millions of liters of water that make up the subsoil of the salt mine. That water has been there for millions of years and is one more link in the composition of our fragile ecosystem, no one assures us that if they remove that water, our way of life will not be affected. All the advances we see are trial and error. In Catamarca, the Livent Mining Company that has been exploiting lithium since 1997 has been denounced for drying up a river, and for that reason, the Supreme Court of that province prohibited the granting of new permits in the Salar del Hombre Muerto until a study of the accumulated environmental impact of all the projects and works that have been carried out there is done. We do not want to be the guinea pig of the energy transition. If they take away our water, our way of life will end and with it, our culture. Click to read more.
How 3M Executives Convinced a Scientist the Forever Chemicals She Found in Human Blood Were Safe
Decades ago, Kris Hansen showed 3M that its PFAS chemicals were in people’s bodies. Her bosses halted her work. As the EPA now forces the removal of the chemicals from drinking water, she wrestles with the secrets that 3M kept from her and the world. Click here to read more.
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IEN Staff & Management
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