Water Protector Legal Collective

Public lands aren’t just “open space.”

They protect the forests that filter our drinking water, the rivers that sustain wildlife, the habitats that support biodiversity, and the sacred landscapes Indigenous Nations have stewarded for generations.

Today, many of those protections are being dismantled.

The proposed repeal of the Roadless Rule would remove safeguards from nearly 58.5 million acres of National Forest System lands, opening previously protected forests to new roads, logging, and expanded industrial development.

At the same time, Bears Ears National Monument has been reduced by roughly 90%, shrinking one of the country’s most significant Indigenous cultural landscapes from 1.35 million acres to just 121,096 acres while eliminating its groundbreaking Tribal co-management structure.

These aren’t isolated decisions. Together, they reflect a broader shift in federal land management—away from conservation and toward resource extraction.

The consequences extend far beyond public lands. They affect clean drinking water, wildlife habitat, climate resilience, sacred places, and the rights of Tribal Nations.

Public lands are held in trust for present and future generations—not treated as resources to be extracted until nothing remains.

Stay informed. Learn what’s changing and why it matters.

On this day in 1978, walkers reached Washington, D.C., after more than 3,000 miles and five months in defense of treaty rights, Tribal sovereignty, and Indigenous self-determination in what became known as The Longest Walk.

The walkers accomplished their goal of raising awareness and stopping eleven federal bills that threatened to weaken Tribal sovereignty by undermining treaty rights, opening reservation lands to resource extraction, and eroding the government-to-government relationship between Tribal Nations and the United States.

The Longest Walk is not just history. It reminds us that every generation faces new attempts to weaken Tribal sovereignty, exploit Indigenous lands, and erode treaty obligations. The resistance of 1978 offers both a lesson and an invitation: protect what previous generations fought to defend.

Remembering The Longest Walk isn’t about looking backward—it’s about understanding the present. As debates over Tribal sovereignty, resource extraction, sacred places, and treaty obligations continue today, the walk reminds us that Indigenous resistance has always been rooted in ceremony, community, and an unwavering commitment to future generations.

Today, we honor the walkers—many of whom are still with us—whose courage, sacrifice, and vision helped shape the path forward. May we carry their footsteps forward by continuing the work they began: defending Tribal sovereignty, protecting sacred places, and honoring the promises enshrined in treaties.

On June 25, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Monsanto Co. v. Durnell, a ruling that could reshape how people seek accountability for harms linked to pesticide exposure.

In a 7–2 decision, the Court held that EPA approval of Roundup’s label can shield manufacturers from certain state-law failure-to-warn claims. The case comes after more than 170,000 lawsuits alleging glyphosate-based products caused cancer and could make it significantly more difficult for future plaintiffs to pursue similar claims in state courts.

The implications extend beyond one lawsuit.

Glyphosate is the most widely used herbicide in the world. The EPA’s own biological evaluation found it is likely to adversely affect 93% of federally listed threatened and endangered species. Scientists, advocates, and affected communities have also raised longstanding concerns about contamination of waterways, impacts on pollinators, biodiversity loss, soil health, and the long-term ecological consequences of widespread herbicide use.

For Indigenous communities, these conversations are inseparable from broader questions of environmental justice. Industrial chemicals, extractive industries, and weakened avenues for accountability often disproportionately affect the lands and waters Indigenous Peoples have long fought to protect.

As legal protections evolve, decisions like this one shape more than the outcome of individual lawsuits. They influence how communities seek accountability, how environmental harms are addressed, and who bears the burden when those harms occur.

Today, we honor Inti Raymi, the Festival of the Sun.

Celebrated each year on June 24, Inti Raymi traces its origins to the Inca Empire and marks the winter solstice in the Southern Hemisphere. For generations, it has been a time of gratitude, renewal, and reflection, honoring Inti and the forces that sustain life.

Following the Spanish conquest, colonial authorities attempted to suppress the ceremony as part of a broader effort to dismantle Indigenous spiritual and cultural traditions throughout the Andes. Yet Inti Raymi endured. Through cultural memory, community practice, and Indigenous resistance, its spirit survived across centuries.

Today, Inti Raymi remains living history. Across the Andes region, Indigenous communities continue to celebrate this time of renewal, new beginnings, gratitude, and connection to land, culture, and ancestry. While the well-known celebration in Cusco draws thousands each year, the significance of Inti Raymi extends far beyond a single city. It lives on in communities throughout the Andes that continue carrying these traditions forward from one generation to the next.

The survival of Inti Raymi is a testament to the resilience of Indigenous Peoples and the enduring strength of cultural traditions that refuse to disappear.


 


The deep ocean is one of the last places on Earth not yet fully industrialized.

That may soon change.

Governments and corporations are moving quickly to open the ocean floor to commercial mineral extraction, despite significant scientific uncertainty about the ecosystems that would be affected and growing concerns from Indigenous Peoples, Pacific communities, scientists, and civil society organizations around the world.

Today, Water Protector Legal Collective and RISE Earth Initiative are proud to release Deep Sea Mining: Industrializing Earth’s Last Sacred Space.

This report examines the environmental, political, economic, and cultural dimensions of deep-sea mining—from biodiversity loss and irreversible ecosystem damage to militarization, critical mineral supply chains, Indigenous rights, and global ocean governance.

The decisions being made today will shape the future of the ocean for generations.

Before industrial extraction begins, communities deserve transparency, accountability, and a full understanding of what is at stake.

Read the report at the link in our bio.

Memorial Day asks us to remember sacrifice. It can also ask us to reckon with contradiction.

Today, we honor the lives, service, and sacrifices of Indigenous veterans and all those who have served, even as we also recognize and decry the impacts of militarism on Indigenous communities, lands, and waters.

Indigenous Peoples have a long history of military service rooted in traditions of protection, responsibility, and care for community. Indigenous Peoples continue serving in the U.S. Armed Forces at the highest per capita rate of any demographic group in the United States.

A few realities exist side by side:

• Indigenous Peoples serve at five times the national average, the highest per capita military service record among all ethnic groups in the United States.

• Since 9/11, nearly 19% of Native Americans have served in the armed forces, compared to an average of 14% across other demographics.

• Indigenous veterans continue returning home to lands and waters impacted by extraction, militarization, pollution, and unfulfilled Treaty obligations.

Indigenous communities continue carrying disproportionate burdens tied to militarization while also serving within military institutions at extraordinary rates. Indigenous lands continue bearing the impacts of weapons testing, contamination, military expansion, and extractive development.

These truths exist together.

Indigenous veterans have long spoken about the contradictions of defending a country while continuing to fight for Treaty rights, sovereignty, land, and water at home.

This Memorial Day, we honor Indigenous veterans and those who never returned home.

We remember sacrifice.

We remember responsibility.

And we continue the work of protecting land, water, and future generations.

On May 21, 2026, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed a new Record of Decision approving an easement for the Dakota Access Pipeline beneath Lake Oahe.

The decision formally closes the latest federal Environmental Impact Statement process ordered after Standing Rock Sioux Tribe successfully challenged DAPL’s prior approval in court.
The decision does not erase what communities have raised for nearly a decade.

DAPL crossed Standing Rock Sioux Treaty territory without free, prior, and informed consent and without meaningful Tribal consultation. Concerns surrounding water risks, Treaty rights, sacred places, and the expansion of extractive infrastructure imposed without consent remain.

Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has made clear that this fight is not over.

Water Protector Legal Collective continues this work as co-counsel alongside Jeff Parsons and Peter Capossela in support of Standing Rock Sioux Tribe as the Tribe continues defending its Treaty homelands, waters, and sacred places.

Nearly ten years after Standing Rock, Mni Wiconi lives forward.
Water is Life.


 


A new global analysis from the Business & Human Rights Centre documents nearly 800 attacks against human rights defenders in 2025 alone.

These include killings, threats, intimidation, criminalization, surveillance, and SLAPP suits targeting people who raise concerns about corporate abuse, extraction, labor exploitation, and environmental destruction. Nearly one third of those attacked were Indigenous defenders.

Across the world, communities protecting land, water, forests, labor rights, and sacred places are confronting escalating repression alongside expanding corporate and extractive power.

This violence reflects a broader global pattern in which defenders are treated as obstacles to profit rather than people defending collective survival, human rights, and future generations.

The report describes this moment as a global crossroads: who is protected, who is silenced, and whose interests are prioritized will shape the future of climate justice, democratic participation, and human rights worldwide.

In the face of corporate abuse of power, frontline communities and human rights defenders continue resisting extraction, criminalization, and impunity. WPLC contributed a short reflection on ten years of resistance at Standing Rock and the ongoing struggle against DAPL, published alongside reflections marking nearly a decade since the assassination of Berta Cáceres and the continuing fight for justice.

 
 


MMIW

Today, May 5, marks the National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. MMIWG2S is a crisis that Indigenous communities have been naming for generations.

Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit relatives face some of the highest rates of violence in the world:
💔 More than 4 in 5 American Indian and Alaska Native women have experienced violence in their lifetime.
💔 The Urban Indian Health Institute reports that 94% have experienced r**e or coercion. Many face lasting impacts, including high rates of su***de attempts and substance use following violence.
💔 Murder remains one of the leading causes of death for Indigenous women, with rates more than 10 times the national average in some regions.

And still, the full scale of this crisis is obscured.

💔 Of 5,712 reported cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women in 2016, only 116 were logged in Department of Justice databases.
💔 In 2021, more than 5,200 Indigenous women and girls were reported missing. Federal data remains incomplete, inconsistent, and undercounted.

This violence is systemic, tied to extractive industries, militarization, jurisdictional gaps, and systemic failures that allow harm to continue without accountability. As pipeline expansion and resource extraction increase, so do the conditions that heighten vulnerability and risk for Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit relatives.

What is counted is already devastating. What is not counted or erased, deepens the crisis.

 


Santa Marta marked a shift.

Over 50 countries gathered alongside Indigenous Peoples, movements, and civil society in a space outside formal UN processes, focused not on debating the crisis, but on how to move beyond fossil fuels. Without procedural constraints, the conversation moved closer to reality, where transition is no longer abstract, but political, territorial, and already unfolding.

The Water Protector Legal Collective participated in the Santa Marta Conference alongside Indigenous leaders, governments, and global movements working to define a just transition grounded in rights, accountability, and the protection of land and water.

What emerged was not consensus, but direction. Indigenous Peoples entered with coordination and clarity, advancing a global declaration that sets out concrete standards for what a just transition must require. These are not distant principles. They are conditions that will shape how policies, investments, and decisions take form across regions.

Santa Marta did not resolve the tensions at the center of the transition. It made them visible.

The path forward is being defined now.