Despite the tremendous challenges the calendar year presented, our IEN team accomplished remarkable things. As IEN’s Executive Director, I am deeply grateful for your dedication as we move into Year 2026. We will continue our mission and important work, supporting each other along the way. I am profoundly grateful for the support and compassion provided by our local, national, and worldwide network of friends, constituencies, and communities, including our board, staff, contractors, and partners from the foundations and giving circles, during this incredibly difficult time.


It has been a year of immense challenge not only for our organization, but for me personally, and our family. It has been marked by the profound loss of my daughter, a cherished staff member of IEN who died by suicide in September. She was a beautiful, unselfish, and caring person who left a lasting impression on everyone she met.


In the traditional teachings of her Anishinaabe mother, it is a profound sign of respect, and a cultural and spiritual practice, that we do not speak the name of our relative or use her likeness for 13 Moons. This is to help her spirit to remain at peace and not be disturbed in the spirit world, where she is with her relatives who have gone on. Also a practice of many of our Tribal Nations of Indigenous Peoples, it honors the family’s deep sadness and allows us all, including staff and friends, the space to grieve. It allows love and memory to endure - for eternity.


Tom BK Goldtooth (Mato Awanyankapi)
 


 

Ring of Fire & Carbon Pricing EducationThe Climate Justice Program continued our focus on relaying the global impacts of the Paris Climate Treaty and Kunming Montreal Biodiversity Treaty to our tribal communities across Turtle Island. This was done through many different approaches, including enclosed meetings with tribal leadership, town hall gatherings with frontline communities, hosting no false solutions conferences, sitting on panels at universities, and climate conferences. The continued target of our lands and communities shows a need for increasing the number of people trained and skilled to advance our resistance to these colonial practices being used under the flag of carbon mitigation.
 

The Climate Justice Program has continued building leadership within our tribal communities through the Ring of Fire (RoF) cohort training. In 2025, IEN hosted two additional RoF cohorts investing in our tribal communities' leaders of today, as well as building teams across Indian-country that can continue to build and resist these false solutions together for a lifetime to come.
 

The Climate Justice Program also played a vital role in building global solidarity against these false solutions by playing active roles in the world's largest peoples movement, MAB Movement of People affected by Dams, as well as building relationships and community during the Peoples Summit in Belém, Brazil.  
 


GeoEngineeringThe Geoengineering team traveled widely to participate in several high-level climate justice forums, meeting tribal leaders and Indigenous representatives, including the HOME Alliance team in Nairobi, Kenya, for capacity building. They also joined Just Transition Alliance,  Alaska Community Action on Toxics, and the International Indigenous Forum on Plastics in efforts to give voice to the second plastics treaty negotiations meeting, INC 5.2, held in Geneva, Switzerland.
 

The team also helped organize and host an IEN Ring of Fire Cohort gathering with community leaders, tribal healers, and movement builders, held in Alaska. They then traveled to Reykjavik, Iceland, for the Arctic Circle Assembly, standing in solidarity with other Indigenous peoples of the North who speak out against extractive industry and false solutions.
 

In October, the team joined a broader delegation of IEN staff members and allied organizations in New York City, NY, for Climate Week, where business, government, and civil society groups gather to raise awareness about the need for increased efforts to accelerate meaningful actions and policies to mitigate the ever-increasingly dangerous and destructive impacts of Climate Chaos. Click here to read more : [link removed]. 
 


Policy AdvocacyIEN engaged in extensive policy work across Indian Country in 2025. On the national level, IEN fought for climate justice policy and Indigenous Peoples' rights, including promoting the Indigenous Just Transition to Tribal leaders, educating Congress members and federal agencies on important policy matters, drafting public comments, and organizational sign-on letters. On the local level, we supported grassroots campaigns against harmful extraction and successfully defeated at least one hyper-scale data center in an Indigenous community. 
 

In continuing our extended campaign against liquefied natural gas (LNG) exports, IEN joined the campaign to urge the Department of Energy (DOE) to reconsider pending LNG export permits in Calcasieu Pass 2 (CP2), Golden Pass, Gato Negro, Commonwealth LNG, Magnolia LNG, Port Arthur LNG Phase II, Lake Charles, and Saguaro LNG. We engaged key Congress members and participated in phone and email zaps targeting DOE and FERC.
 

February: IEN joined the broad coalition of the climate justice community fighting against the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) proposed interim rule rescinding and removing the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) Implementing Regulations. We attended the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) Executive Winter Session in Washington, D.C., and collaborated with NCAI on Hill visits, educating Congress members on the importance of funding Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPO’s), free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), and demanding protection of NEPA and that Tribes be included in any further decision-making. Click here to learn more : [link removed].
 


Human Rights & Climate ChangeIEN delegations attended the Pre-sessional Traditional Knowledge Platform Facilitative Working Group (FWG) Meeting at the Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues (24th Session, UNHQ), as well as the Bonn, Germany UNFCCC intersessional, and the 2025 Conference of the Parties COP in Brazil. IEN delegates to the FWG included traditional knowledge holders and observers, with the primary objective of finalizing the FWG’s 5-year work plan.
 

The North American Caucus chose Alberto Saldamando to represent it on the FWG. At all of these meetings, the issues were 1) the conflation of the inherent rights of Indigenous Peoples and the rights of local communities. Included in those discussions was an ethical protocol with which to address those rights; 2) A funding mechanism for direct funding to Indigenous Peoples as well as Small Island States and Least Developed Nations, without conditionalities, to allow the prioritizing by them of their own adaptation without external interference; and 3) The restoration and titling of Indigenous Lands from colonists and predatory, imperialist and racist corporations.
 

IEN staff worked diligently to ensure that the North American and the Global Caucus, as well as key allies, maintained IEN’s position of an immediate cessation at the source of fossil fuel pollution, as the whole of humanity is now a species threatened by global warming.
 


Keep It In The GroundThe Keep It In The Ground team proudly co-sponsored the Southeastern Indigenous Coalition Environmental Conference, hosted by the 7 Directions of Service. This historic two-day gathering took place in beautiful Occaneechi Saponi territory, NC, and held space for Indigenous leaders, organizers, environmental advocates, policymakers, and allies to come together to envision a more just and resilient future of grassroots leadership. Five members of the IEN team and two board members in Bellingham, WA, at the Northwest Indian College for the Vine DeLoria Jr. Symposium that celebrated two decades of his commitment to Indigenous rights, culture, and education. 
 

The KIITG team hosted a series of webinars during 2025. These presentations discussed the flurry of Presidential Executive Orders, how, even though they aren’t lawfully binding, they can still be used as tools to predict what federal departments will be doing next. We heard from national leaders like the 19th Director of the National Park Service, Chuck Sams, and Carletta Tilousi, a member of the anti-uranium committee from Havasupai, as they talked about the way the EOs roll out in Indian Country, and how to fight them. Click here to read more : [link removed].
 


Indigenous Sovereignty Inherent Relationships Jurisprudence and Rights of Nature/Rights of Mother Earth: There were several activities in this area.  In March, IEN was present at a Water Symposium hosted by the Anishinabek Nation on Manitoulin Island.  The Indigenous Sovereignty Advocate and Water Ethics coordinator were invited speakers, and important connections were made.  There was a Rights of Nature Tribunal in Toronto, of which the Indigenous Sovereignty Advocate was present, and the Executive Director was a judge.  This was followed by a symposium on Great Lakes issues pertaining to the Global Alliance on the Rights of Nature, hosted by IEN, in alliance with The Rise and Repair Coalition, in the legislative initiative of manoomin (wild rice) to thrive and exist.  The ISA is an integral part of that coalition with legal scholar advice and support, and he is also on the North America Hub and the Academic Hub Steering Committee of GARN.
 

One of the key takeaways from Toronto was that IRJ will continue to be used as a strategy within the Legal Hub, which was recently reconstituted, and also as a standalone in its own right to protect those seeking protections that are not covered by the Rights of Nature/Rights of Mother Earth.  Later in the spring, the ISA traveled to the Eel River and presented at the river on IRJ to a group seeking to protect the river and also oppose the Great Redwood Trail being built on a discontinued rail line that had been built over cemeteries and village sites.  Further work happened in the Fall, as well as an effort to enter Phase 2 of implementing IRJ with two meetings on the Diné Nation with groups involved with Dine Fundamental Law.  There was also an all-day work session on starting Phase 2 held at Tonatierra in Phoenix, Arizona.  Lastly, the ISA as involved with the Manoomin Symposium held on White Earth Nation, and was at NCAI and at the Northwest Indian College Vine Deloria symposium talking on these issues on a panel with other IEN staff.
 

 Termination Agenda: The ISA went to the UN Permanent Forum with others from IEN, and gave an intervention on how the UNFCCC, by conflating Indigenous Peoples with local communities, thereby facilitating the extinguishment of inherent, distinct, and collective rights, which is what the present-day Termination Agenda is about.  Work is underway to find ways of using IRJ as a way of countering this Termination Agenda. Click here to learn more : [link removed].
 


 

Gitigaan - Teaching GardenWinter in Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) territory is a season of storytelling, reflection, and trapping waabooz (snowshoe hare). In February 2025, we welcomed local knowledge holders Josh Red-Day and Jeff Harper to the garden to share stories and the impacts of climate change on culturally important relatives such as the snowshoe hare. His visit grounded us in the deep connections between climate, culture, and responsibility to our more-than-human kin.
 

That same winter, Kaylee and Leanna Goose attended the Great Lakes Indigenous Farmers Conference, where they presented on grassroots bio-remediation and protecting manoomin for the next seven generations as we expand and share our local work into a broader regional conversation. Click here to read on : [link removed].
 


Indigenous Just TransitionDuring 2024, the Indigenous Just Transition work entailed attending national and international meetings from the National Congress of American Indians, Climate Week, and regional symposiums in the Pacific Northwest. From sub-committee meetings, to educational outreach on Capitol Hill, to various Congress and Senate Representatives' offices, to strengthen the Federal Government's responsibility to honor its government-to-government responsibilities written and codified in treaties. Mary Crowe, along with Lisa Montelong,o traveled to various locations to share the Indigenous Principles of Just Transition, which included attending and tabling at the Neil Young Love Earth concert and Love Earth Festival in Richmond, Virginia. Capping off the year was engaging at the United Nations’ Conference of the Parties in Belem, Brazil, in November. Click here to learn more about IJT work : [link removed] in our Newswire Archives : [link removed]. Click here to view pictures from 2025 : [link removed].
 


Communications and MediaAs Communications and media professionals behind the outward-facing activism of any social justice nonprofit, most of us on the IEN Communications and Media team continue our decades of experience and remain active within our regions as community organizers and activists. In fact, before activist organizations were able to financially support their own internal Communications teams, public relations, advocacy writing, and media skills were an essential and necessary tool within every organizer’s toolbox. 
 

2025 saw the IEN Comms team busy working, not only across the many Indigenous communities within the IEN network, documenting and producing a diversity of media making it possible for a global audience to have a better understanding of what we face as Indigenous peoples, but also within IEN to equip and train staff members to tell their own stories about the multitude of issues faced within their homelands. 
 

Much of what we do all year is documented and distributed in our monthly newswire, as our staff and community grassroots leadership engage with us. Our mailing list includes supporters, funders, and the organizations we work with throughout the year. Our goal is to document and share as many of these activities as possible. We highlight and organize the research, reports, and documentation that we use for our education outreach, both digitally and at community and global events. Our team’s social media work is organized and posted by our digital artwork and video editing team, as well as content from partners and allies. Click here to learn more about Comms in 2025 : [link removed].
 


Indigenous FeminismsThe IEN Indigenous Feminisms program had a highly productive year focused on international engagement, writing and creating curriculum, movement-building, and Indigenous women’s leadership in climate and environmental justice spaces.

2025 began with Feminisms Educator Claire Charlo attending the 4th International Indigenous Women’s Symposium on Environmental Violence in Guatemala City, Guatemala, where the global convening strengthened connections among Indigenous women addressing environmental violence and climate justice.
 

In April 2025, during the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) in New York City, N.Y., the team collaborated with Cultural Survival to co-host a panel discussion and a small Indigenous craft fair. The team also participated in the Global Indigenous Women’s Caucus and the Global Indigenous Caucus, prior to UNPFII. While there, they conducted interviews with Indigenous women and Two-Spirit people focused on climate justice, culminating in a panel centering Global North and Global South Indigenous women and youth voices. Click here to continue reading : [link removed].



You are an important part of our work and protecting the sacredness of Mother Earth and our relatives. We are very grateful for all you do every day to reach out and share our story - and stories to share with family and friends. If you haven't yet, you can "Forward to a Friend : [link removed]" and let them know to look for the "Subscribe : [link removed]" link in the footer.
 

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IEN Staff & Management



The Indigenous Environmental Network - PO Box 485 - Bemidji - MN - 56619

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