As the climate crisis continues and public calls for action mount, the Green New Deal has been centered as a broad proposal for an array of policies that could address the man-made impacts on the climate. But a response has arisen amid concerns that the various programs embodied in different versions of the deal could leave Native climate needs and understanding of the earth out of the conversation. That response is called the Red Deal.

The version of the Green New Deal introduced in February by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), which calls for a nationwide approach to climate change to avert a potential climate disaster, drew inspiration from the Green New Deal originally popularized by the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led grassroots organization that built upon organizing knowledge of Native, black, and brown communities.

The Green New Deal calls for clean-energy jobs, infrastructure, decarbonization, and support of vulnerable “frontline” communities. Included in the list of frontline communities are Indigenous folks, the land’s first people, who only see a dedicated section to the history and destruction of community, culture, and health and on the last page of the bill.

That section reads: “… a Green New Deal will require the following goals and projects … [including] obtaining the free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples for all decisions that affect indigenous peoples and their traditional territories, honoring all treaties and agreements with indigenous peoples, and protecting and enforcing the sovereignty and land rights of indigenous peoples.”

For 25-year-old Cheyenne Antonio, that’s not good enough. That’s why she and other organizers with the grassroots Native organization called The Red Nation have proposed a Red Deal, intended not to replace, but to support the proposal from Ocasio-Cortez and others by centering Native leaders and the knowledge that comes with centuries of fighting back against a government that sought to destroy them.

Water protectors and land defenders who live on the front lines of environmental degradation and are often the first to protest its destruction are mentioned once in what is being heralded as the revolutionary policy our country needs right now. So what are they asking for with the Red Deal? Teen Vogue spoke with Antonio and Red Nation cofounder Dr. Melanie Yazzie to find out.

What Is the Red Deal?

The Red Deal was crafted by community members, Native people, young people, and poor people. It has four key tenets designed to build on and push forward the ideas in the Green New Deal: First, what creates crisis cannot solve it; second, change must come from below and move to the left; third, politicians can’t do what mass movements do; and fourth, the climate conversation must move from theory to action.

“We draw from Black abolitionist traditions to call for divestment away from the criminalizing, caging, and harming of human beings AND divestment away from the exploitative and extractive violence of fossil fuels,” the Red Nation writes of the first tenet on their website. “Proposed discretionary spending for national security in 2020 comes in at $750 billion … And only $66 billion of discretionary funds are spent on healthcare each year … This proves there is an overabundance of energy and resources that go into demonizing Indigenous water protectors and land defenders, Muslims, Black people, Mexicans, women, LGTBQIA2+, and poor people.”

In other words, it’s not enough for Red Deal proponents that the Green New Deal seeks to create jobs in renewable energy and pushes for access to clean water, food, and a livable planet.

Responding to the fact that the bill does not call to end fossil fuel consumption, Antonio said that the Green New Deal language could create potential for “normalizing fracking again [and] normalizing nuclear again, and doesn’t give an option for our people or the planet.” She explained that Red Deal proponents believe the Green New Deal should include language that explicitly bans fracking and every form of resource extraction.