LIVE STREAMING THURSDAY: What Revolution? Systemic Racism, Sexism, and Genocide from America's Beginning

A live event this Thursday, May 7th, at 4pm Eastern

This is Truth and Reckoning, a newsletter from the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund (CELDF). We are organizers, lawyers, and revolutionaries who educate and agitate to confront systemic injustice and restore humanity’s relationship with the Earth.

For more than 30 years, we’ve helped communities resist corporate power, reject regulatory false promises, and assert their right to self-governance grounded in ecological balance. Subscribe to learn about rights of nature, environmental movement strategy, and stay updated on our work.

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CELDF invites you to join us for a conversation with Keala Kelly (Kānaka Maoli) and Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes) as part of our “America 250” series.

As the Federal government celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we are exploring true history. Did you know that the Declaration of Independence asserted that the king “has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions”? Or that the Union’s first president, George Washington, was given the name ‘Town Destroyer’ by members of the Iroquois confederacy?

About Our Speakers

Keala Kelly is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, writer and activist living on Hawai‘i Island. Her works address the critical links between cultural, environmental and spiritual survival in the movement for Hawaiian self-determination, and for territorial and political autonomy. Keala is the author of “Our Rights to Self-Determination: A Hawaiian Manifesto” (2022). Her documentary, “Noho Hewa: The Wrongful Occupation of Hawai’i,” has received international film festival awards, and is widely taught in courses focusing on Indigenous Peoples, colonization, Hawaiian sovereignty, and militarism.

Dina Gilio-Whitaker is Assistant Director of the California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center at California State University San Marcos. She teaches on environmentalism & American Indians, traditional ecological knowledge, religion & philosophy, Native women’s activism, & decolonization. Dina is co-author with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz of “All the Real Indians Died Off: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans” (2016), “As Long as Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock” (2019), & “Who Gets to be Indian? Ethnic Fraud and Other Difficult Conversations about Native American Identity” (2025).

How to Watch

The stream will be available here on Substack, as well as on YouTube, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We hope you will join us on May 7th at 4pm EST!