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Looking Back at 2022
Looking Forward to 2023
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We hope this message finds you, your loved ones, and communities in good health and spirits! As this year comes to a close, the Indigenous Environmental Network would like to express gratitude to our supporters and extended community for all the love, support, and donations that have empowered us to carry out our mission to protect Mother Earth from contamination and exploitation. From liking or sharing social media posts, to calling your congress representative to stop a permitting reform bill, to attending our webinars or actions on the ground, and your generous donations throughout the year, we are deeply grateful for your support and shared commitment in protecting Mother Earth.
As we collectively prepare for a new year ahead, the Indigenous Environmental Network is excited to share with you some of the successes we have experienced in 2022. This year was a big year for our organization– our team expanded and we welcomed eight new staff and two new board members! IEN also played a substantial role in successfully defeating a bad permitting reform bill, ‘Manchin’s Dirty Deal’ three times in both the House and the Senate. We continued to build and engage with our base, constituencies, and networks of Indigenous and frontline communities across all of our programming, and developed and implemented educational curriculum and workshops to strengthen Indigenous sovereignty across Turtle Island.
While we have much to be proud of in 2022, we also mourn the loss of a beloved member of our team, Joye Braun (Wambli Wiyan Ka’win). Joye was a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribal Nation and a dedicated water protector. Joye was the National Pipeline organizer for IEN and our organization’s representative for the People Vs Fossil Fuels Coalition, and was a proud servant for her people as a grassroots advocate for climate justice. She was a nonviolent direct action organizer and policy advocate who trained hundreds of people over the years. She was known as a firestorm when compelled to champion calls to action, and was fiercely loyal to family, friends, and her community-at-large. As a founder of the Oceti Sakowin Camp at Standing Rock, her lodge was the first to go up and one of the last to come down. Joye was one of the leaders who maintained the grounding tenets of peace and prayer in the months that followed the establishment of this historic and pivotal moment in Indigenous history.
We recognize that we are living in critical times, and that the greenwashing of fossil fuels and extractive economies persists. We know that protecting Mother Earth is ongoing and inter-generational, and those we are up against are always adapting their strategies, and so in 2023 IEN will be continuing our organizational development and launching a strategic planning process! Our team will continue to engage with the base to strengthen our future work, by connecting with Indigenous and frontline communities and working alongside them to develop and implement strategies that fight for economic, gender, climate, energy, and environmental justice.
We are not alone in this fight– and it is through your support that helps strengthen our efforts. Join us in the movement to protect Mother Earth and consider making a tax-deductible donation today!
From our IEN family to yours, we wish you another year filled with peace, love, joy, and abundance!
In solidarity,
The Indigenous Environmental Network
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In 2022, the Climate Justice Program started the year by launching a long-term education project on false solutions where we met with, learned from, and facilitated workshops with numerous Indigenous and frontline communities on the west coast of Turtle Island.
We continued our efforts to educate on and advocate against false solutions, and testified twice before congress and gave key interventions on the harms of false solutions and how climate change is affecting Indigenous communities. Our Climate Justice team also held an action in front of a fundraiser for the Arctic Ice Project, in Menlo Park, California, delivering a letter asking them to shut down their extractive project, and expressed their concerns over potential health impacts and the lack of meaningful consultation with Indigenous Peoples.
 IEN expanded outreach with actions and participation in gatherings to protect the Arctic by attending the Arctic Circle Assembly in Iceland joining a delegation of Alaska Natives to amplify Indigenous Peoples’ cosmovisions, the harm of climate geoengineering and the importance of ethical research practices.
Adding to our multilayered education, policy, and research efforts staff and leadership participated in the UNFCCC Intersessional in Bonn, Germany; UNFCCC COP 27, Sharm-el-Sheik, Egypt; the UNCBD COP 15, Montreal, Canada; and several other smaller gathering and strategy meetings with allies and coalitions on topics from geoengineering, climate justice organizing strategy, carbon offsets, carbon capture and storage, hydrogen, and organizing related to climate change policy.
IEN continued to be the fiscal sponsor and a key organization of Hoodwinked in the Hothouse projects. The Hoodwinked Collaborative continues to expand its reach with webinars, fundraising drives, a forthcoming Arabic translation, and widespread distribution efforts with over 20,000 copies distributed in five languages, read online, listened to the audio book, and downloaded in English, Spanish, Portuguese, French), countless times from the website.
Finally, the CJ Program welcomed three interns to its new research internship initiative resulting in a three-part Climate Justice Program Series and critical analysis briefs on Climate Finance, Climate-Smart Agriculture, and Nature-Based Solutions.
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The policy team at IEN played a crucial role in advocating to Congress during the 2022 climate negotiations. In the second half of the year, congressional efforts were focused on opposing a bad permitting reform bill sponsored by Senator Joe Manchin–the Energy Independence and Security Act, which became known in the environmental justice community as “Manchin’s Dirty Deal.” The dirty deal would have devastated bedrock environmental protections under the National Environmental Policy Act and Clean Water Act, fast-tracked fossil fuels projects, in addition to reinstating the judicially-revoked permit for the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP).
As a member of a collective movement–with coalitions and allies such as The People vs. Fossil Fuels, Climate Justice Alliance, and the Green New Deal Network– IEN played a substantial role in successfully defeating the dirty deal three times in both the House and the Senate. IEN’s efforts included attending over 100 meetings with Congress members and staff on zoom and in-person, hosting an online rally, assisting with a Stop the MVP rally and lobby day in D.C., co-hosting a coordinated action in front of the Senate leading to the arrest of 11 directors of national and regional environmental justice organizations, and social media activity.
Additional policy work in 2022 included and will continue in 2023 with analysis and advocacy around the Inflation Reduction Act, Justice 40 implementation, and participation as a coordinating team member in the first Green New Deal Network Convention held in Chicago.
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People vs Fossil Fuels Coalition
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IEN is a steering committee member of the People vs Fossil Fuels coalition, a national coalition of over 1,000 groups committed to pressuring the president to declare a climate emergency, and to stop the expansion of fossil fuel projects. Our involvement and participation in this campaign focused on ensuring Indigenous communities were engaged in the strategy and actions of the coalition. We focused on making sure that the topics of Free, Prior and Informed Consent and Indigenous sovereignty were top priorities for the coalition legislative and executive action advocacy efforts.
Paired with our policy efforts, our engagement in the People vs Fossil Fuels coalition, we were successful in defeating numerous attempts to pass “Manchin’s Dirty Deal.” This effort involved IEN staff participating on numerous advocacy calls with congressional members and White House administration offices. Moreover, IEN also participated in the Gulf South Climate Justice And Joy Celebration in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where we engaged and supported local grassroots organizations who were using the event to build their base in the fight against fossil fuel expansion in the gulf coast region.
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IEN participated in the International Indigenous Feminist Organizing School during both sessions and we worked collaboratively with other Indigenous women around the world to bring ceremony and prayer to the school with the Mistica Committee. In addition to several presentations to the school, we started developing an Indigenous Feminisms curriculum. Our team convened to plan an in-person plenary session in Bemidji, Minnesota, to launch our curriculum in 2023.
In November, IEN hosted a small group to collaborate on the curriculum (image above) and we invited local community members and women that joined us virtually in the International Indigenous Feminist Organizing School, and together, we formed a vision for an Indigenous feminisms conference. Alongside community members, we convened to deepen our analysis on the connection of extractive industries and the MMIW crisis as well as the connection between the Indian Child Welfare Act and intersectional reproductive justice and how that is intertwined with extractive industries. An emphasis was placed on ceremony, practicing communication with sacred listening while uplifting our Indigenous women and femmes.
On December 17, 2022, Claire Charlo, Indigenous Feminisms Organizer led a MMIWG2S+ Walk in Missoula, Montana, to express our solidarity on the serial murders in Winnipeg, Canada. The walk had three Salish sisters singing songs in Salish, a prayer was said and a poem was read at the Missoula Courthouse. Read more on the Indigenous Environmental Network’s Statement on the Serial Murders in Winnipeg, Canada.
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Rights of Nature, Rights of Mother Earth, and Inherent Relationships and Jurisprudence
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Building upon our long involvement with the Rights of Nature/Rights of Mother Earth Movement, IEN has developed a Project with the Earth Law Center to advance Indigenous legal frameworks based upon Indigenous governance systems that are prioritized equally alongside Rights of Nature legal concepts. This led to a 12,000 mile/19,000 km circuit tour where we connected with our base, and engaged with 24 communities in the United States and Canada to determine if there might be interest in the Project and to develop the concept of an Inherent Relationship and Jurisprudence further.
The goals were to develop a Working Group of Indigenous legal thinkers and and Indigenous Knowledge holders to further develop the concept and to seek ten (10) Indigenous nations, confederations, and organizations to work on implementing the concept. This would involve incorporating this into constitutions and other codes to enhance the protection of lands and waters, by strengthening pre-existing and recognized customary law and treaty rights. Another major milestone was achieved in this area of work when the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature (GARN) adopted a declaration while meeting in Siena, Italy, that recognized that the Rights of Nature movement must support Indigenous Sovereignty to be effective.
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Save Our Roots - Stopping GE Trees on Mother Earth's Forests...
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The Save our Roots education outreach is a multilayered campaign that intersects almost all our frontline advocacy; preventing a dangerous experiment of a genetically engineered American chestnut tree's deregulation for widespread and uncontrolled spread across the U.S. and eventually the world to our opposition that will hopefully prevent the Forest Stewardship Council from allowing member corporations to plant and experiment with GE trees while retaining their certification as a source for sustainably harvested lumber and other wood products.
IEN is a founding and sustaining member of the steering committee of the International Stop GE Trees Campaign. The Campaign members were able to stop the release of a GE eucalyptus that would be freeze tolerant, grow faster, and burn hotter and be grown in industrial monoculture tree plantations in the U.S. South destined to be burned in decommissioned coal power plants and newly constructed facilities. The work has been facilitated by the Global Justice Ecology Project and supported by IEN, Biofuel Watch, Rainforest Action Network, Rural Coalition, GE Free New Zealand, EcoNexus, Canadian Biotechnology Network, and Learn more here.
The coming year will include more efforts to educate tribal natural resource agents, communities near forests under threat of dangerous harvesting activities under the guise of health forests, providing science-based opposition to the potentially catastrophic plans to replace fossil fuels with plant-based feedstocks for everything from single- and limited-use plastic, liquid biofuels, toxic chemical agents, and false solutions in the areas of carbon market schemes, combating pests and pathogens in wild forests, climate adaptation, and climate-smart agriculture.
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IEN’s Indigenous Water Ethics Initiative establishes a Traditional Indigenous Knowledge (TIK) framework for the protection of water and its access as a fundamental human right. Emphasis has been on advocating for Water Ethics in regional, tribal, and national water policies and the need to uphold ethical protocols for the application of Traditional Indigenous Knowledge in emerging water policies.
Our efforts in 2022 brought together Traditional Indigenous Knowledge keepers, community members and tribal governments to discuss the needs to develop sustainable water management practices and to address conflicts with accessing clean water as this precious element becomes scarcer and more polluted. IEN also established a pool of resources where we began to gather documentation and archived records of Indigenous water declarations, statements and when possible, tribal resolutions and historical documents related to water rights of tribes.
Moreover, IEN participated in the World Water Forum in Dakar, Senegal Africa in March. We participated and presented on several UNESCO panels, and on a civil society forum event. We continued networking and research throughout the year and in June IEN hosted a symposium, the Indigenous Water Ethics: Sacred Waters are our Culture, People and Place. There, we engaged with tribal leaders of five Arizona tribes where we discussed and learned about their water rights and the current water shortage due to the mega drought occurring in the region.
Lastly, we have established a working relationship with the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) based in the Netherlands and Brazil. IEN will participate in an event on March 21, 2023, UN World Water Day in New York City.
In January, 2023, IEN will coordinate an ICOMOS meeting with the Hopi Nation, and we will continue our strategy meetings with allies and network in 2023.
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Indigenous Just Transition
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This year we prepared for the launch of the Indigenous Just Transition (IJT) program, which is being developed to provide service, capacity building and resources to Indigenous communities to support their vision of what an Indigenous Just Transition means for them. Planning and navigating the new program’s development process focused on three core priorities this year; assembling the IJT team, planning the IJT program framework and the development of a popular education curriculum based on the Indigenous Principles of Just Transition.
The first step in assembling the team was to create an Advisory Board which consists of a small group of Indigenous experts who lend their skills, guidance and knowledge to the IJT program. In December, we gathered the IJT team in Phoenix, Arizona, with additional IEN Board and staff for a strategic planning meeting where we laid out goals and objectives for the coming year.
Currently the curriculum development is in full swing and it is planned for completion in Spring of 2023. We expect the Indigenous Just Transition program to be ready to launch shortly thereafter. We are very excited and looking forward to working with communities across Turtle Island in the coming year to challenge and change the system and build sustainable and healthy localized, living economies together.
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