Dear RCC Supporter,

Right now, conservative states and fossil fuel lawyers intend to dismantle Indigenous rights and sovereignty by overturning the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) through the ultra-conservative Supreme Court.

If they succeed, tribal sovereignty will be weakened. And so will tribal protections of natural resources that keep fossil fuel corporations at bay.

The ICWA was enacted in response to a long and tragic history of separating Native American children from their families. The petitioners in the case seek to overturn the ICWA, which legal and Native experts say would erode tribal sovereignty and compromise tribal protections in other fields, such as natural resource protection.

Tell President Biden to issue an Executive Order to protect the ICWA, the sovereignty of native lands, and the protection of their natural resources.

Organizations that are funded by, or closely tied to, the fossil fuel industry have entered the fray in the Brackeen case on the side of the petitioners. Most notably, the law firm Gibson Dunn  is representing the Brackeens pro bono. Gibson Dunn is a firm that has fought tribal nations in both casino cases and cases that further the interests of their Big Oil company clients. The firm has represented Walmart, Amazon, Chevron, and Shell and is a former employer of the far-right Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton. Further, Gibson Dunn represents Energy Transfer, the pipeline company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) that Indigenous people have protested against at Standing Rock. It is estimated that Indigenous resistance against DAPL cost the pipeline company upwards of $7.5 billion.

Just seven months after the Indigenous camps in North Dakota were forcibly shut down, Gibson Dunn joined the Brackeen case pro bono.

In a recent Bloomberg Law column, Native American historian Nick Estes put the long-range goals of fossil fuel interests bluntly, “the collective rights of a nation and its sovereignty must be weakened or destroyed to gain access to its lands and resources.”

Tell President Biden to issue an Executive Order to protect the ICWA, the sovereignty of native lands, and the protection of their natural resources from Big Oil.