Respecting Aboriginal Values & Environmental Needs

Respecting Aboriginal Values and Environmental Needs (RAVEN) is a charitable organization that works with First Nations across Canada to raise funds to assist Indigenous Peoples in enforcing their rights and title in court to protect their territories.

Respecting Aboriginal Values & Environmental Needs

Abbreviation	RAVEN
Formation	2009
Registration no.	85484 0147, US EIN EIN 98-0628334
Legal status	active charity
Location	Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Region served	Canada
Services	legal representation, grants
Official language	English
Acting Executive Director	Andrea Palframan
Board President	Jeffrey Nicholls
Website	raventrust.com

Organization

RAVEN is a Canadian charity and US 501(c)(3) organization that supports Indigenous Peoples in enforcing their land and environmental rights through legal action. The organization partners with First Nations to bring lawsuits seeking redress for violations of Indigenous title and rights. RAVEN also engages in public education and fundraising activities to support Indigenous-led litigation in Canada.

Since 2009, RAVEN campaigning and fundraising activities have led to legal victories that have protected lands, sacred sites, upheld modern Treaty rights, stopped pipelines, and defended the land from open-pit mining. After fifteen years, RAVEN-supported cases have been cited over 370 times in other court cases, contributing to systemic change that addresses the climate crisis by honouring the right to free, prior, and informed consent by all Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Together, we root into the power of movement building to actualize a future that upholds Indigenous laws and ways of being.

RAVEN is a movement that increases access to justice so that Indigenous Peoples can afford to assert their rights and reclaim environmental stewardship through litigation against colonial governments and extractive corporations.

Actions

RAVEN raises legal funds to assist Indigenous Peoples in Canada who enforce their rights and title through the courts to protect their traditional territories. Since 2014, the legal actions funded resulted in the quashing of the approval of the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline; protection of 83% of the Peel Watershed in the Yukon; halting of mining developments at Teztan Biny (Fish Lake), and T’ak Tl’ah Bin (Morrison Lake); and the cancellation of the Petronas Pacific Northwest LNG project at the mouth of the Skeena River.

Projects the organization has helped to support include:

• Challenges against oil and gas companies: Beaver Lake Cree Nation taking on Alberta and Canada; the Wet’suwet’en legal challenge to stop the Coastal GasLink pipeline through their territory (Central Coast, BC); Heiltsuk Nation’s civil action against US-based Kirby Corporation, British Columbia and Canada over a catastrophic diesel spill in the Great Bear Sea (north-central BC Coast);
• For rivers and rights in Treaty territory: Site C dam campaign with West Moberly First Nations (Treaty 8, BC);
• Mining justice: Gitxaala Nation’s challenge to the BC Mineral Tenure Act to protect Banks Island (North Coast, BC); Neskantaga Nation’s legal challenge to inadequate environmental review in the Ring of Fire mining region (Ontario); Tsilhqot’in Nation’s civil action against Taseko Mines Ltd and BC.

The organization uses crowdfunding to raise money.

RAVEN created "Home on Native Land", a virtual class on environmental justice issues, Canadian history, and Indigenous law. Employing humor as a tool, the ten-video course features comedian Ryan McMahon (Couchiching Anishinaabe).

See also

• Environmental issues in Canada

Further reading

• Hoogeveen, Dawn; Borrows, John; Ritts, Max; Smitten, Sue, eds. (2025). The RAVEN Essays: Indigenous Environmental Justice, Education, and Self-Determination. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9781487562403.

External links

• Official website
• Home on Native Land, 10-module course about Indigenous law, Canadian history, and environmental justice developed by RAVEN