Today, the United Nations lifted the embargo on companion November 29, 2024 communications to the Biden Administration's State Department and the Nooksack Tribe.
The interventions the day after Thanksgiving described the "forced evictions of seven households who self-identify as Indigenous Nooksack, without due process, and without due consideration for their right to remain,” as “violation[s] of the right to adequate housing, including with regard to affordability and security of tenure, as well as the freedom to choose one’s residence."
FOIA response information reveals that unlike the UN's Nooksack interventions with the State Department in 2022 and 2023, the Biden Administration did not forward the November 29, 2024 communication to the Interior Department or Secretary Deb Haaland for lead response. Accordingly, the Biden Administration did not respond to the UN before leaving office on January 20, 2025, knowing full well the Trump Administration would or could not respond before a January 28, 2025 UN response deadline.
Through a January 13, 2025 email from the Nooksack families' counsel to Secretary Haaland, the families "observe[d] the demise of international Indigenous human rights protection and federal Indian civil rights protection in the United States, on [her] watch, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in history."
You can read all of the UN's unprecedented human rights communications to the United States and Nooksack Tribe here.
Gabe Galanda is an Indigenous rights attorney and the managing lawyer at Galanda Broadman. He has been named to Best Lawyers in America in the fields of Native American Law and Gaming Law from 2007 to 2024, and dubbed a Super Lawyer by his peers from 2013 to 2024.
