Water Protector Legal Collective

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.

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.