Member Spotlight: Water Protector Legal Collective
Water Protector Legal Collective (WPLC) has been a Protect the Protest Coalition member since 2021. Executive Director & Senior Attorney Natali Segovia and Communications & Development Coordinator Nizhoni Begay spoke with Caitlin Howard from Breach Collective about their organization and why they are in the fight to #stopSLAPPs.
Tell us about the mission of Water Protector Legal Collective. What do you do and why?
Natali: The Water Protector Legal Collective grew out of the legal tent at Standing Rock to meet a grassroots need that was emerging. Thousands of self-named Water Protectors flocked to Standing Rock to protect the water, treaty rights, Indigenous Rights, and the Earth from desecration via the Dakota Access Pipeline. In response to these protests, over 800 criminal cases were filed by the state of North Dakota, and several federal cases as well.
WPLC grew out of the frontline mass defense representation of those cases. Once those cases wrapped up in 2019, the organization looked inwards and we asked ourselves, do we wrap up as an organization or do we continue this work on other front lines?
The resounding response was that we continue this work on other front lines, so we expanded our mission. Our current mission is that we provide legal support and advocacy for Indigenous Peoples and Original Nations, the Earth, and climate justice movements.
Nizhoni: We're uniquely positioned as Indigenous Peoples working for the movement, but also of the movement. Most of us, if not all, on our board and staff have a lifelong experience as Indigenous Peoples in movement spaces. I'm always in community with people who have very similar experiences to me, even if we grew up in different areas of the country.
Natali and our attorneys at WPLC are fostering a new age of movement lawyers who are Indigenous. According to the American Bar Association, less than one half a percent (0.4%) of Bar Association members are Indigenous. So we're combating not only invisibility in these movement spaces, but also invisibility in the legal field itself. We are rejecting the idea that you go to law school and join a big law firm. We are working for our people like we always have.
How does your work overlap with the fight to stop Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation?
Natali: I see SLAPP suits as a type of lawfare tactic. It's a misuse of the law to try to silence, intimidate, and chill dissent, and it prevents us from doing the work that we need to do. SLAPPs are part of the corporate playbook – the tactics that oil companies and extractive industries use against frontline communities, environmental justice communities, organizations, activists, and of course, Indigenous Peoples. This is something that has really affected our communities and the people that are in struggle with us as Indigenous Peoples. We engage in SLAPP defense of our relatives.
The process of being SLAPPed is really terrifying and marks a lot of people in their lives. Imagine you are a scholar at a university or a professor or a journalist and you receive a SLAPP and suddenly all of your attention has to go towards defending against the SLAPP or defending against the SLAPP subpoena. Water Protectors around the country and around the world are still fighting against similar legal tactics that are being used against them, and against us.
Why are you a part of the Protect the Protest coalition?
Natali: To stop lawfare tactics like SLAPPs we must defend dissent, but also find ways to keep our organizations, communities, and environmental justice frontlines, safe and work proactively, not on the back foot in a reactionary space all the time. PtP is not just a resource for those who are experiencing SLAPPs, but a space to be able to share those experiences and build strength and resilience. Part of it is to strategize and figure out how to adequately respond to SLAPPs, but another part of it is to draw back the curtain from the corporate playbook and the legal tactics that are used by corporations over and over again.
One of the difficult things about being on the back foot within many movements is that the opportunities to come together, share information, strategize, and actually think proactively are few and far between. The PtP coalition helps us think more creatively about identifying and sharing the emerging patterns of legal tactics that are being used against our relatives all across the United States and worldwide.
Nizhoni: Sometimes in some of these spaces – legal spaces, environmental justice spaces, climate justice spaces – we're often the only Indigenous Peoples in the room. Our voices are really important when it comes to movement, inter-coalition, and intersectional work. I'm happy with how PtP has prioritized that and accepted us and valued our input, because that's not normal. It should be what is expected, but it's not the reality.
What work undertaken by the Protect the Protest coalition has been most meaningful to you – personally or as a representative of your organization?
Natali: WPLC as an organization received an organizational subpoena in 2021 as part of the Energy Transfer vs. Greenpeace SLAPP. WPLC and PtP worked together at that time. It took significant time and resources, and that defense was really important for us, as well as the defense of others across the nation that received similar subpoenas in the case. We mobilized along with PtP to get adequate representation for anyone that needed it.
There's a real need for a group like the PtP coalition that’s focusing on these kinds of corporate lawfare strategies and tactics. It's different than, say, the ACLU or Center for Constitutional Rights, that do incredible work, but are really focused on the constitutional part of the work. The PtP coalition I see as defending dissent, but also a holding line for the movement, which is very much how we – WPLC – sees ourselves: for the front lines and of the front lines.
Nizhoni: For me, it’s PtP’s support around Steven Donzinger because that is rooted in the pollution and desecration of Lago Agrio, which is where the Chevron oil dumping happened in Ecuador. This is being played out in hundreds of communities all over the world, and for someone like Steven – whom I've met through Natali and whom we represent at WPLC – to have cared about those people, and taken up the fight for them is a big deal. I enter every single space talking about Steven in a good way because of that, and I appreciate all that goes into that work. It's not just about his sacrifices, it's about all of these people who still haven't received a single dime in that settlement and have not received justice. It reminds me of my own family who have experienced that, but also everyone around the world who doesn’t necessarily have representation or someone to stand up to a huge corporation like Chevron.
What gives you hope in the fight to stop SLAPPs?
Natali: I think the tide is beginning to turn. Although SLAPPs remain for the foreseeable future, I think that corporations’ ability to continue doing what they're doing is beginning to wane – people are calling their bluff.
This is a lesson to corporate polluters. For centuries – because this is deeply rooted in colonialism and capitalism – they have been so used to exploiting the Earth and communities without anyone really fighting back. But that time is over. The Earth has reached a tipping point; the Earth is no longer going to keep on giving. We need to begin to take care of the Earth as our only home and our only mother.
I think that the general community at large is waking up to the fact that Indigenous Peoples and the land, like the Earth itself and the water, should no longer be seen as environmental sacrifice zones. The idea that rose up as Standing Rock that Water is Life – if you take a drive through the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation or Oceti Sakowin, you see water all around you and you recognize instantly how water truly is central to life in so many ways.
What gives me hope in the fight against SLAPPs goes beyond just the SLAPPS themselves. It’s the growing understanding that as Indigenous Peoples and frontline environmental justice communities, we are beginning to stand up against those corporate polluters that have for so long ignored the fact that we are here and have seen Indigenous Peoples as environmental sacrifice zones. No more.
Nizhoni: I have a lot of hope in our people. We've survived genocide, displacement, boarding school. I'm the granddaughter of three boarding school survivors. This is just another thing for us to get through and I know that we will. Hope has been a central part to our struggle and our resilience, ultimately. I'm very proud of how far we've come. I know that we're going to make it through.
To learn more about Water Protector Legal Collective’s work, visit: www.waterprotectorlegal.org, subscribe to their email list, follow them on Facebook, YouTube, X, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
