Rights of Nature Protections to Combat Climate Change - Interview with Juliette Jackson, The Undivide Project

You were a fellow for The Undivide Project. What does The Undivide Project do and what did you do as a fellow?

The Undivide Project does storytelling and education via social media, microdocs and live discussion sessions to help people learn about digital and climate justice. They also co-create solutions with communities and provide policy frameworks, white papers and toolkits for equitable, green, connected communities.

I was a Legal Fellow and assisted with legal research and analysis for the Ten-States project, funded by a Federal Emergency Management Agency Higher Education grant. The Ten-States project is examining disaster and climate risks to vulnerable communities.

 

During your fellowship you were also a law student. Why were you studying law and what do you hope to do as a lawyer?

I was not planning on being a law student again so quickly since I had recently completed my Juris Doctor (JD) at American University, Washington College of Law (WCL) in 2022.

I am an enrolled member of the Klamath Tribes, and grew up in Northern California, not far from my tribe’s ancestral homelands. Unfortunately, wildfires and droughts are becoming commonplace. Focusing my legal career on helping tribes and doing tribal environmental justice work has always been my focus. During law school I was part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Law Clerk Honor’s program and assisted with drafting a proposed national policy on Sustainability and drafted the section on Traditional Ecological Knowledge.

In May 2024, I completed my LLM in Energy & Environmental Law focused on Indigenous Rights. I chose to do my LLM because I was fortunate to receive scholarship support from GW, the California Indian Law Association, and from the Klamath Tribes, and because I have always deeply cared about tribal environmental justice issues, especially since I am a tribal member.

During my LLM I worked part-time as a Law Clerk at Patterson EarnHeart Real Bird & Wilson LLP, Native Law Group, a firm focused exclusively on Federal Indian Law and Tribal Law matters. I never thought I would work at a law firm, but this firm was the exception. I am working on a variety of environmental and energy law issues for an array of tribal clients and learning from some of the best and seasoned lawyers in this field of law. Presently I work full-time at this firm and will eventually transition to Associate Attorney (awaiting bar results).

 

Your thesis focused on how tribal communities can use laws that are already in place to restore the environment. Why did you want to focus on this topic?

Since I was specializing in energy and environmental law, my thesis needed to focus on those issues. I chose to make my paper solely about my Tribe because of our unique history, my access to interview elders and obtain the research materials, and of course, the ability to recommend a legal solution that could possibly save our sacred fish.

As shown in the PBS special called Killing the Klamath our sacred C’waam and Koptu fish are on the brink of extinction. Despite being listed as an endangered species in 1988 under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the Upper Klamath Lake is contaminated with toxic algae. The toxic algae blooms have been caused by run-off from agriculture and cattle operations and the damming of rivers. The fish are an endemic species and are only found in the Upper Klamath Lake, the largest body of freshwater west of the Rocky Mountains.

The fish are deeply connected to our creation story. Even though we have utilized every legal environmental tool available, our fish are unable to live pass the juvenile stage and reproduce. Even though dam removals on the Klamath river are beginning in 2024, the dam removals are lower dams downstream from the Upper Klamath Lake, which is unlikely to have the water quality effects needed to restore the contaminated lake.

My Tribe has spent decades engaging in water rights and animal rights litigation, and despite our efforts, progress in saving our fish has been an uphill battle. The ESA is the strongest federal statute for protecting species, and unfortunately has fell short. I had already completed a lot of legal research on the National Historic Preservation Act while working as a Justice Catalyst Legal Fellow at the Center for Biological Diversity. I was in a good position to write a thesis based on a novel topic and focus it on my Tribe. It was not until I started to get deeper into my research on my thesis that I realized that the NHPA could be utilized as a rights of nature tool to save our fish.

My master’s thesis recommends a rights of nature legal solution that could help save my Tribe’s sacred fish from extinction. The working title of my thesis is titled Stop Killing the Klamath: Rights of Nature Protections with the National Historic Preservation Act for a Tribe on the Front Lines of Climate Change and will be published in the University of New Mexico’s Tribal Law Journal, Volume 24 issue (spring 2024).

From the papers I have seen published on my tribe, it has almost entirely been written by non-tribal members. To my knowledge, I am the first tribal member to write a legal academic paper about our Tribe. It is an honor and a privilege to be able to share my Tribe’s story and I hope it helps other tribes who may be facing similar environmental harms.

Can you briefly share how the Klamath Tribes are utilizing Indigenous Knowledge to co-steward their ancestral lands with the U.S. Forest Service?

My paper mainly focuses on highlighting how obtaining a TCP designation under the NHPA could help provide more protection for our sacred fish and their habitat. However, since our tribe has a memorandum of agreement with the U.S. Forest Service, I also highlight my Tribe’s Indigenous Knowledge (also called TEK) work. Our Tribe has been using our knowledge to restore and regenerate the forest, which also helps the waterways.

We have knowledge of how to use prescribed burning and thinning methods to restore the land. Since we have an MOA with the U.S. Forest Service, we have been able to implement this knowledge. Our Tribe is using our traditional methods to prevent wildfires and regenerate native plants and species, but it also can be used as a form of drought control. I learned this from our natural resource’s specialist and former Chairman, Don Gentry.

I am grateful for Don sharing all of this information with me and for helping me get the blessing from our tribal council to share our story and knowledge with the world.

What do you hope other Native American Tribes can learn from your research?

I hope that other tribes will see that pursing protection for their sacred sites, like landscapes, waters or animals can be achieved by implementing Rights of Nature protections by passing a tribal law or ordinance and by obtaining protection under the NHPA. With the changing political climate, I think it’s good to explore various tactics for protecting the rights of nature, especially since there is no federal statute that was created to protect the rights of nature. The NHPA is the closest tool we have at this time.