The climate movement gave this Texas tribe millions and a global platform. No one checked its story. — SkimNews
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- Juan Mancias, chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, traveled to France in May 2017 alongside activist Bekah Hinojosa to pressure BNP Paribas and Société Générale over their financing of the $18 billion Rio Grande terminal and Rio Bravo Pipeline, appearing in nearly a dozen outlets including Le Monde and Radio France and meeting with President Emmanuel Macron's diplomatic advisors.
- The Paris campaign, riding momentum from the Standing Rock protests, helped push both French banks to withdraw from US oil and gas financing, transforming Mancias and the tribe into international environmental media figures.
- An extensive review of historical and genealogical records found that key documents underpinning Mancias' claims to Carrizo/Comecrudo descent contain significant historical inconsistencies and cannot be verified or authenticated, resting instead on family lore.
- Since 2017, Mancias has raised more than $5 million from major philanthropic foundations and partnered with Earthjustice and the World Monuments Fund, engaging with UN agencies on oil and gas terminals, Trump's border wall, and Elon Musk's SpaceX.
- The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas lacks federal and state recognition, allowing it to operate as a tribal nation publicly while avoiding the verification burdens sovereign nations face, forming what the article calls a 'shadow recognition system.'
- Kyle Whyte, a Citizen Potawatomi Nation member and climate justice scholar at the University of Michigan, said the elevation of unverified groups 'is completely undermining the potential that tribal nations and [Indigenous peoples] have to be major players in climate change.'
- The article situates Mancias within a broader 'pretendian' pattern, citing the 2023 CBC investigation that found Buffy Sainte-Marie falsified tribal identity claims and a 2017 case in which three fake Cherokee tribes received $300 million in federal minority-business contracts.
Why it matters: Major environmental organizations and UN agencies have partnered with and funneled more than $5 million to a group whose own tribal lineage cannot be documented, building what the piece calls a 'shadow recognition system' that Citizen Potawatomi scholar Kyle Whyte warns is 'completely undermining' the ability of legitimate Indigenous nations to lead climate action.
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