With U'wa lawyer Aura Tegria and former Earthjustice managing attorney Martin Wagner, Berkeley, CA, 2016

In December 2024, Pueblo U'wa won their longstanding case against the Colombian government for violation of their human and indigenous rights over decades in the face of fossil fuel extraction and other unwelcome, unjust, and violent incursions into the sanctity of U'wa territory. On December 20, 2024, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights issued its historic and unprecedented ruling that recognizes Pueblo U'wa's rights to participate in cultural life, a healthy environment, access to information, a dignified life, and collective property. The ruling set a precedent for the protection of Indigenous peoples in Colombia and across Latin America. 

My journey has been one of walking alongside Pueblo U'wa, together with many, many others, in different ways since the 1999 murders near U'wa territory of my then-partner Terence Unity Freitas and his mentor-colleagues Ingrid Washinawatok (Menominee) and Lahe'ena'e Gay (Hawaiian). This is the same court case that Terence (again, with many, many others) began working on the year before the murders. It has been a long, long road. I wrote about my own navigation of this journey in Truth Demands: A Memoir of Murder, Oil Wars, and the Rise of Climate Justice