The Department of Interior (DOI) is directing members of the public to the website of a radical activist group that voices support for terrorist sympathizers and condones violence against the United States and Israel.
“The global majority will rise up. Empire will pay for its crimes,” Janene Yazzie, NDN Collective’s director of policy and advocacy wrote in a Sept. 30 Instagram story in response to video footage of an Israeli airstrike in Gaza. The NDN Collective, a South Dakota-based nonprofit that frequently marches in support of Hamas and Hezbollah, is listed under the DOI’s environmental justice webpage as an “engagement resource.”
“These links provide crucial information that can help improve understanding of environmental justice issues, build capacity to effectively participate in local decision-making opportunities, and transform communities,” the DOI wrote in its endorsement of the NDN Collective and other groups listed on the environmental justice resources webpage.
Senior Republican lawmakers expressed outrage over DOI Secretary Deb Haaland’s continued indulgence of pro-Hamas radicalism in response to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s findings that the Agency is giving a platform to an activist group that engages in anti-Israel advocacy.
“The Biden-Harris administration has not done enough to support our allies and fight terrorism,” Republican Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee told the DCNF in a statement. “I have pressed Secretary Haaland to protect our federal lands and assets from terrorist sympathizers here at home, but instead her department is promoting them.”
“After witnessing the aftermath of the desecration of the American flag, hateful rhetoric emblazoned on historic monuments, assault on police officers, and more during the violent protests on DOI land near the Capitol this summer, it’s no surprise DOI is continuing to entertain pro-Hamas and anti-Israel activism,” Republican Rep. Bruce Westerman of Arkansas, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, wrote in a statement to the DCNF. “These despicable groups should be called out for the terrorists they support, not given a platform by extremists in the federal government.”
Barrasso sharply criticized Haaland over her failure to take decisive action against pro-Hamas rioters from defiling government property and assaulting U.S. Park Police (USPP) on DOI land in Washington, D.C. in an incident that occurred near the White House on June 8.
“I question whether political sympathy with the agitators influenced your department’s response to these acts of violence and vandalism,” Barrasso wrote in a June 13 letter to Haaland. “Your lack of meaningful action or public condemnation only serves to embolden these agitators. Your failure to act decisively jeopardizes the safety of federal personnel and diminishes public trust in DOI’s ability to uphold the rule of law.”
Barrasso wrote a follow-up letter to Haaland in August following the USPP’s failure to prevent the desecration of government property and the burning of American flags outside of Union Station during the address of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Congress on July 24.
Haaland has yet to denounce the actions of pro-Hamas protesters nor condemn the rising tide of antisemitism in the United States fueled in part by anti-Israel activist groups like the NDN Collective. A report by the Washington Free Beacon found that Haaland’s daughter is employed by an activist group known as the Pueblo Action Alliance that praised Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel. The Pueblo Action Alliance continues to engage in anti-Israel advocacy.
The relationship between the NDN Collective and the DOI, including Haaland, extends beyond the agency’s decision to give a platform to the activist group’s radical ideas.
Haaland spoke at an NDN Collective watch party held on her behalf the day the Senate confirmed her to lead the DOI on Feb. 23, 2021.
According to open-source information obtained by the DCNF, members of the NDN Collective have held meetings with DOI officials at the agency’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. on at least three occasions since Haaland’s appointment to lead the DOI. The DOI did not respond to the DCNF’s inquiry about whether Haaland joined these meetings.
In the months preceding and following the DOI’s meetings with the NDN Collective, the activist group continued to push anti-Israel advocacy.
On March 31, 2022, the NDN Collective published a manifesto on Palestine that denied Israel and the United States’ right to exist and urged “resistance against colonialism and zionism.”
Several months later, members of the NDN Collective met with DOI officials in addition to White House staff and Capitol Hill offices during a visit to Washington, D.C. in July 2022. “We are here to hold these systems accountable and to bring voice to our struggle, to share what we are fighting to protect, as well as the future we are working towards,” Nick Tilsen, CEO of the NDN Collective, wrote in a press release commemorating the visit.
Tilsen is currently facing felony charges over allegedly assaulting a police officer during an altercation in June 2022. The NDN Collective also advocates for defunding the police and the U.S. military.
The NDN Collective returned to the nation’s capital in November 2023 to meet with DOI officials, including director of the USPP, Charles “Chuck” Sams. During that visit, members of NDN Collective stood outside Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan holding “Natives for Palestine” signs and met with Democratic Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri. House Republicans have strongly condemned Rep. Tlaib and Rep. Bush for promoting antisemitism and condoning the actions of pro-Hamas sympathizers.
On Oct. 19, 2023, the NDN Collective released a statement claiming “settler colonialism is at the root of the violence in Gaza” following Hamas’ brutal invasion of Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
On Dec. 25, 2023, the NDN Collective called on Israel to free all Hamas terrorists in Israeli prisons. The activist group has remained largely silent on the subject of innocent Israeli and American hostages taken captive by Hamas into Gaza during the Oct. 7 attacks.
The NDN Collective also deployed “tactical media units” to at least five pro-Hamas student encampments, including those at Columbia University and Harvard University, in April and May of this year.
“The graphic videos of police and zionist violence upon the warriors at the encampments are difficult to watch but serve as a spotlight to illuminate the carnage happening right now across the country,” the NDN Collective, wrote in a May 7 blog post. “Zionism, settler-colonialism, and the US are losing the narrative battle.”
This September, an NDN Collective delegation returned to Washington, D.C. to meet with DOI officials, the White House, other federal agencies and more than a dozen Democratic lawmakers’ offices.
“Unraveling the complex colonial web that surrounds all of us requires multi pronged resistance efforts,” Eva Cardenas, NDN Collective’s director of organizing, wrote in a press release marking the visit. “We will continue to resist by any means necessary.”
The following week, the NDN Collective participated in a pro-Hezbollah march in New York City on Sept. 24 where participants chanted “From Gaza to Beirut, All our martyrs we salute.”
The DOI and the NDN Collective did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment on this story.
The NDN Collective came under congressional scrutiny in July from Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, who discovered that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) selected the radical activist group to help disburse $100 million taxpayer dollars to “community-based organizations” as part of the Inflation Reduction Act’s $3 billion Environmental and Climate Justice Block Grants provision.
“In our oversight of the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, we’ve found over and over again that the law is quietly bankrolling extremist groups like the NDN Collective that openly advocate for anti-American, anti-police, and anti-Semitic causes, which have nothing to do with protecting the environment,” Capito said in a press release accompanying a committee oversight report on the NDN Collective’s anti-Israel activism.
The EPA did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment whether the Agency has obligated these two awards.
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