In Tesuque Pueblo, the village in northern New Mexico where I grew up, the river was central to everything. We played and gathered by its banks, and we relied on it as one of the only water systems in the area, making offerings and integrating the river into our ceremonies. When I was a kid, the river was healthy and running, but as time went on, it began to dry up. Our community had to find ways to adapt. Today it seldom runs with water, and in this part of the high desert, many people are suffering from the same heat that dried the river.

The numbers are stark. Native Americans and Alaska Natives die from heat-related illnesses at rates far higher than white Americans. Mortality from heat is rising each year, with a 117 percent increase in heat-related deaths in the U.S. between 1999 and 2023, and a significant upsurge since 2016. Native communities are affected most severely. According to the CDC, American Indian/Alaska Natives had the highest rate of heat-related deaths in the country between 2004 and 2018. An insidious dynamic of inequality is at play here: while Native and Indigenous Peoples contribute little to climate change, and thus to extreme weather, we are among those who are impacted first and worst in the country.

In Arizona, New Mexico, and parts of Oklahoma, Native residents are often among the most affected during prolonged heatwaves. In Alaska, rising temperatures are accelerating permafrost melt, degrading traditional lifeways and food systems that are critical to Native survival. And this modern inequity exists because of how Native people have been systematically disenfranchised and made invisible.

These are some of the harsh realities I’ve faced serving in various roles as part of organizations aiming to advance climate justice, especially in ways that center Indigenous Peoples. Over the last 15 years I’ve used my own experience as someone on these frontlines to build trust and solidarity in communities most impacted by climate change, and to provide much-needed resources, via policies, campaigns, and mutual aid, to these same people. Native people have a long history of adapting to, or mitigating, climate change—efforts that take a holistic systems approach to climate solutions are building on the frameworks of regenerative Indigenous economies.

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The Navajo Nation, one of the tribes that I belong to—spanning Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah—has faced years of drought, extreme winds, broken water infrastructure, and record-breaking summer temperatures. In Louisiana, home to the Houma, rising sea levels due to warmer temperatures are forcing entire communities to relocate, while extreme heat disrupts the natural cycles that support Indigenous food systems nationwide. The result is a deepening crisis—not only of health, but of displacement, disconnection, and cultural erosion.

I’ve experienced it firsthand. In Tesuque Pueblo, I have seen our ceremonies impacted and even shifted due to the drying river and rising heat. For millennia, we relied on this water, but the changes within my lifetime have forced us to change course. This adaptation is not only cultural, but affects how we live, as our environment and the infrastructure that’s long kept us healthy and safe is threatened.

Indigenous peoples have had to meet this life-threatening moment, and in doing so, we are not merely victims of climate change. Across Indian Country and Alaska, Tribes and Native-led organizations are leading innovative responses to the impacts of heat, grounding their work in traditional ecological knowledge, kinship with land, and cultural survival. Tribes and Native communities are working not only to address the ways heat affects their people but also the ecosystems that make Native identity whole. It is a story of resilience, of systems built beyond empire, and of people confronting the climate crisis not just with science and technology—but with identity, sovereignty, and sacred relationships.

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To understand the disparity in heat-related deaths, one has to look back. As with many things in this country, understanding begins with the land—and the centuries-long violence and disruption to Indigenous sovereignty, through colonization, land dispossession, and ongoing climate injustice. Today, as extreme heat becomes the deadliest climate hazard in the United States, Native communities are experiencing a compounded crisis: environmental collapse and public health emergencies amplified by political and historical erasure.

The forcible removal of Tribes from their homelands by the federal government over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulted in their relocation to reservations, which were often in arid or marginal lands with poor soil, limited water, and extreme temperatures. The accompanying assimilationist and termination policies not only aimed to curtail rights and resources, they deliberately severed Native peoples from their traditional ecosystems, which had supported them for thousands of years.

Today, many Tribal homes like my own family’s lack access to reliable cooling systems or air conditioning upon which many other residents of New Mexico rely. Constructed decades ago, houses were often built quickly and with designs, from the Department of Urban Housing and Development (HUD), meant for low income communities far from the high desert. For some households, especially in rural and off-grid communities, even running water or electricity can be inconsistent; in Navajo Nation, roughly 13,000 households lack reliable electricity, while 30 percent of households on the Nation lack running water, and many live in housing that was never designed for the triple-digit heat that is becoming more frequent. Further, public cooling centers are rare or inaccessible, and during heatwaves, the lack of cooling options dramatically increases the risk of heat-related illness or death.

Deepening this systemic inequality are serious underlying health disparities. Chronic conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, asthma, and other respiratory illnesses are more prevalent in many Native communities due to state-sponsored campaigns to destroy Native food systems and decades of environmental degradation, poverty, and inadequate access to healthcare. These health issues heighten individuals’ vulnerability to heat stress, dehydration, and other life-threatening effects during extreme temperature events.

Cultural practices and traditional livelihoods that rely on spending time outside also expose Native people to more extreme conditions. Many Tribes maintain strong relationships with the land through farming, gathering, fishing, and ceremonial practices, most of which takes place outdoors. While these activities are essential to cultural survival, they also increase heat exposure during the hottest months of the year.

Finally, persistent socioeconomic inequities generally deepen the risks and effects of the climate crisis. Generational poverty, limited access to high-quality medical services, and underfunded Tribal infrastructure leave communities with few resources to prepare for or recover from the impacts of extreme heat. Many families must make impossible choices—between paying for electricity to run air conditioners or buying food, and staying indoors or participating in time-honored cultural events. Outdoor workers are forced to stay home and small-scale agriculture suffer due to heat stress and water shortages during peak temperatures. All of this exacerbates existing economic hardship, stretching social safety nets that are already devastatingly thin.

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Bearing the consequences of society’s ills, Indigenous communities often feel an urgent need to act. I have seen this dynamic not only in my own community, where we’ve worked for decades to stop oil and mining industries from destroying mountains and other sacred places and from poisoning landscapes and aquifers. I’ve also seen the phenomenon alive in Alaska, where timber industries devastate the lungs of our planet, old growth forests, and in the Amazon, where oil and cattle industries forcibly remove Indigenous communities and violate their rights in the process, simply to expand profits.

These violent and invasive forces disrupt the daily rhythms of Tribal life, as I’ve mentioned, affecting and sometimes halting ceremonies, gatherings, and outdoor subsistence activities. Cultural and spiritual practices that are tied to specific seasons or ecosystems are becoming more and more impacted and in some cases, cancelled or made shorter for safety and necessity. This only contributes to a sense of cultural loss, grief, and disconnection, especially among youth who may be just beginning to learn how to participate in traditional ways. As temperatures rise, these ceremonies will become less and less possible even as they become ever more essential: protecting people with prayer and preserving languages and other cultural practices whose loss would be immeasurable.

With hotter, drier conditions, the risk of wildfire increases dramatically. For communities living near forests or dry grasslands, these fires can destroy homes, displace families, and wipe out plants, animals, and landscapes that are central to cultural life. The trauma of displacement only adds to the physical and emotional burden of heat, as this cyclical nature of destruction replaces the natural lifecycles and seasons that once gave sustenance to Tribal life.

Perhaps the most profound effects of extreme heat on Native communities is the disruption of traditional food systems—many of which are deeply tied to local ecosystems and ceremonial life. In the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, salmon are more than a food source—they are relatives, spirit beings, and ecological keystones. But extreme heat is driving river and stream temperatures beyond survivable limits for many salmon species. Warmer waters reduce oxygen levels, complicate migration, and disrupt spawning cycles. In some years, fish kills due to overheated rivers have decimated local runs, or the pathway a species takes along a body of water in order to reproduce. As a result, Indigenous communities that have relied on salmon for millennia—such as the Nez Perce, the Yurok, and the Tlingit—are witnessing a collapse of both a food source and a cultural foundation.

Meanwhile, in the Great Lakes region, wild rice (or manoomin) is facing a similar crisis. Manoomin depends on cool, shallow, clean waters to thrive, but rising temperatures and erratic precipitation have altered water levels and increased the frequency of algae blooms and invasive species. For the Anishinaabe and other Great Lakes Tribes, wild rice is sacred, featured in migration stories, ceremonies, and seasonal teachings. Its loss threatens not just nutrition and food security, but songs, languages, stories, and values that are passed down through cultural traditions associated with harvest.

These collapses are more than ecological—they are existential. As salmon disappear from rivers and wild rice vanishes from lakes, Native nations lose access to food sovereignty, spiritual practice, and cultural continuity. Harvest gatherings are canceled. Young people grow up without the experience of fishing or rice knocking. Gaps in intergenerational knowledge transmission begin to grow. This can amount to a slow and devastating erasure of identity itself. Climate change, in countless ways, violates our right to self-determination. Hence why so much of my work, especially when it comes to philanthropy or grant-making endeavors to support programs that enable Native communities to preserve their language and cultural practices.

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In the face of these challenges, Native resilience strategies for climate justice go far beyond Western models of adaptation. Tribal governments, Native organizations, and Indigenous knowledge-keepers are organizing climate resilience strategies that go well beyond Western models of adaptation.

In California, the Karuk and Yurok Tribes are revitalizing traditional fire stewardship through cultural burning. These carefully managed burns, or controlled fires, help prevent catastrophic wildfires, cool forest ecosystems, and support the growth of culturally important plants. In the Southwest, the Tohono O’odham are reviving dryland farming techniques that use shade, stone terraces, and desert-adapted seeds to grow food in extreme temperatures—methods that are both ecologically sustainable and deeply rooted in ancestral practice.

In Alaska, Native communities like the village of Newtok have been advocating and preparing for relocation due to rising seas and melting permafrost. Their plans prioritize the continuation of hunting, fishing, and berry gathering in new locations, ensuring that cultural lifeways remain intact. And in Tribal communities and urban centers, Native-led mutual aid networks are delivering cooling kits, offering elder wellness checks, and sharing culturally relevant and in-language heat safety education.

In 2022, when I served as the Climate Justice Director at NDN Collective, I helped develop and run a national education campaign to inform Native peoples about the unique risk and vulnerability our communities face from extreme heat, and how we can prepare and protect ourselves. We ran webinars with health experts, created social media content, and built toolkits. In our advocacy, my team, along with thousands of organizers from across the country, advocated for the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act, which had a policy package designed to repair the injustice of how this country was built. It aimed to rebuild infrastructure in the U.S. in ways that acknowledged and centered racial, economic, and health equity and justice, as well as climate adaptation and resilience. One program that directly impacted the everyday heating and cooling needs of households worked to incentivize homeowners and renters to purchase and install heat pumps, which can be a climate-friendly way to cool homes and buildings. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is dismantling most of the programs and policies within this bill.

That federal and state climate programs often overlook or underfund Native-led solutions predates the current administration. The U.S. government has a long history of treating Tribes as supplicants or stakeholders rather than sovereign governments, and what has been a damaging dynamic has only become worse in recent years. In this political moment, federal grants that have existed for decades as well as newer grants designed to build resilience are disappearing. Consultation processes that may have been superficial or performative are now nonexistent.

Meanwhile, nationwide philanthropy allocates only a very small portion of its funding to Native American communities. While Native Americans make up approximately three percent of the U.S. population, they receive only about 0.4 percent of philanthropic dollars. This means that while Indigenous peoples—not only in the U.S., but globally—hold some of the most efficient and safe, not to mention time-tested, strategies for mitigating and adapting to climate change, we are among the least resourced.

In Native futurism, the answers to climate chaos lie not in extraction or control, but in solutions based in relationship—returning land, restoring ecosystems, and reviving practices that have sustained life for millennia. True climate justice means investing in Tribal infrastructure, health systems, ecosystem restoration, regenerative agriculture, and cultural preservation. It means honoring treaty rights, transferring land into Indigenous-led management and stewardship, and supporting Native-led solutions with the long-term funding and flexibility they need to thrive.

It’s not about braving the heat alone, or coming up with ever more efficient technical methods to control the conditions around us. It’s about weaving together old knowledge and new strategies to protect what is most sacred—our communities, our land, and our responsibilities to this planet we call home. By organizing for climate justice, Native communities challenge the rest of the world to rethink the true meaning of resilience. ♦