Chase Iron Eyes
Posted July 3, 2025
It’s been a tough few months for those of us who care about our fellow human beings. From the president’s questioning of Native birthright citizenship to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and occupation of Los Angeles, from incarcerating people in foreign death camp prisons to ignoring court orders to bring them home, this increasingly fascistic executive branch seems hellbent on ignoring our rights and dismantling our democracy.
Not to be outdone, the other two branches of government are assisting the Trump administration with its agenda to take America backward. Today (July 1), Vice President JD Vance broke a tie vote in the U.S. Senate, leading to passage of the so-called “Big Beautiful Bill.” And last week, before concluding its 2024-2025 term, the supermajority conservative Supreme Court issued a series of decisions hacking away at the rule of law and eliminating governmental checks and balances. Probably its most dangerous ruling is the 6-3 decision in CASA v. Trump — the birthright citizenship case.
Though the high court didn’t decide on the constitutionality of the administration’s blatantly problematic arguments seeking to dismantle birthright citizenship, this ruling remains extremely dangerous. By kneecapping lower courts’ ability to stop bad or illegal policy through the issuance of injunctions, it concentrates power in two of the worst possible places: the executive branch and the Supreme Court itself.
These were our homelands first, and we’re not going anywhere.
I also see a more sinister actor moving pieces into place — and that is the corporate fascist bloc. That includes tech billionaire Peter Thiel, who has funded Vance’s political rise, and the private military contractors who targeted my family and me at Standing Rock. They love consolidating wealth and power into the hands of the few, and they have no issue with the operations of ICE and its unlawful deportations, which are a wholesale violation of human and constitutional rights. Our collective enemies are the corporate fascists, and they’re shooting their shot.
So what do we do now? We organize and we keep fighting, of course. We rise up! We use class action lawsuits — now the primary legal modality left to us in this — to challenge executive overreach. We continue to take to the streets and let the government and world know that we, the people, do not consent to the greedy power grabs, the whitewashing of our history and culture, the attacks on our Earth and relatives, and the inequitable distribution of resources.
The federal government has not been friendly to us over the centuries, but we are still here. More than that, these were our homelands first, and we’re not going anywhere. So, despite the darkness on the horizon, I invite you to keep riding with us. While there’s no doubt that ours is an uphill battle, I’m here to tell you — as a Native person with a firm grasp on the real history of this nation — that we can and we will overcome.
Wopila tanka — thank you for your solidarity. Let’s stay strong!
Chase Iron Eyes is the Executive Director for the Lakota People’s Law Project Sacred Defense Fund.
