Spring time in Florida is not a matter of peeping violets or bursting buds merely. It is a riot of color, in nature–glistening green leaves, pink, blue, purple, yellow blossoms that fairly stagger the visitor from the north.

-Zora Neale Hurston

As a child growing up in Miami, Florida, I remember how familiar the persistent humidity, buzzing mosquitos, palm fronds, relentless floral blooms, and noncommittal-rain showers felt. The flora and fauna would transport me to my family's small ancestral island in the Caribbean, Puerto Rico. Miami's tropical topography always felt like home: mangroves, families of banana trees, blue skies adorned with construction cranes and crimson cardinals, all drenched in the distinct aroma of fried plantains and mango composting on the moist soil.

It wasn't until I visited the Everglades National Park for the first time at age eight as part of an elementary school field trip that I truly began to question the land upon which Miami's city of concrete paradise was built on. Since then, my enthrallment with the wetlands that flirt from grey-blue to green has only deepened. The marshes that are home to alligators, birds, and endangered panthers, are the sacred lands of the Seminole and Miccosukee people. It was also a safe haven for Black Maroon communities, those who were finding new life both in fugitivity and in the new found kinship with their Indigenous relatives.

Black and Indigenous peoples in these wetlands formed a chosen family and fought colonizers together in the Florida Seminole Wars from 1816 to 1858. During these decades the U.S. government attempted to annihilate Indigenous people, by killing and displacing them from the Everglades, the solidarity between Black and Indigenous warriors was undefeated. This lineage attests to the ways Indigenous keepers of this land have fought for centuries against fascist efforts of extraction, land grabs, and dispossession. 

From Miami's city center, an hour's drive west gives way to miles of strip malls and warehouses, and then stretches of nurseries selling rows of palm trees and other adornment houseplants. Eventually, the buildings shrink and the sky expands into a shimmering sea of grass, dotted by the occasional cypress trees. Even with the endless development and its associated climate gentrification, which has become so quintessential to Miami, the wilderness unapologetically finds ways to assert itself with beauty. In the western outskirts of so-called Miami, there is a portal out of the concrete jungle: the Everglades and Big Cypress. 

Have you ever been swooned by a swaying river of grass?

Today, the Everglades and surrounding marshlands are now being drilled for oil by corporations. Most of us don't think of Big Oil when we think of Florida. This makes sense, as Florida accounts for less than 1 percent of national oil drilling, but as the fascist desires for more dirty energy resources increase, corporate interests will sink their teeth deeper into the flesh of the Sunshine State. This threat makes Indigenous organizing and Land Back efforts more urgent than ever. 

When asked about his thoughts on oil drilling on his community's ancestral land, Curtis Osceola, Tribal leader among the Miccosukee people, said, "For us, that's our home and the blood of our ancestors is in the trees, in the water, and in the land. And so for us to see an oil jack go into the ground is very disturbing. Private enterprise really sees it black and white, it doesn't really care about the culture. It doesn't care that this is significant and that there is an entire denomination of people who are really adamant about their culture and have survived colonial incursion and removal and genocide attempts. This is what we call an existential issue. But for a company, it's dollars and cents."


If you've ever been to the Everglades, you know there is no place quite like it. Pine trees, sparse canopy, mangrove forests, elegant white herons taking flight, and cypress swamps all enveloped under a tenacious sun. At its heart, a mesmerizing, slow river of grass who holds mystery and refuge. A horizon of glistening ripples that counters all colonial narratives that deem the Everglades "a worthless swamp," as said by early settlers. It is the waterway that gives fresh water to millions of Floridians each day. The Everglades is considered one of the most biodiverse places in the entire world. It is so unique that it is the only place in the world where alligators and crocodiles naturally coexist. It is a land of defiance and possibility against the odds. 

As Florida maneuvers legal loop holes and digs its heels deeper into right-wing corporate rule, Big Oil has attempted to find a lasting, comfortable home in the state, specifically targeting Big Cypress National Preserve, the land of the Miccosukee and Seminole people. As Florida currently accounts for less than one percent of the nation's oil production, its oil-related business deals and policy decisions tend to fly under the radar. The secret nature of these dealings is particularly alarming as the state's political culture becomes increasingly right-wing. 

When the US government created Big Cypress National Preserve, located about 45 miles west of Miami, the mineral rights of the sacred land remained in the hands of a private entity: the Collier family. Barron Collier, the largest private landowner in the state of Florida at the time, invested millions of dollars into the drainage and destruction of the Everglades to construct the Tamiami Trail scenic highway. His descendants carry on the colonial legacy. 

Today, there are two oil fields within Big Cypress: Racoon Point and Bear Island. In 2017, the Texas-based Burnett Oil Company, began seismic surveying in Big Cypress. The survey opened up 110 square miles to identify oil in the preserve. Environmental activists found that this seismic testing caused significant damage to the Florida panther habitat and wetlands. In 2022, Burnett Oil pulled its drilling permit application but vowed to attempt again in the future. 

*Note: at time of writing, Big Cypress National Preserve had become the site of "Alligator Alcatraz," an inhumane immigration detention center built in just nine days in June 2025. In August 2025, the center was ordered to close in a federal legal victory. Since then, hundreds of detained immigrants are still missing. 

To understand more intimately the ways in which Indigenous people are resisting against Big Oil, I spoke to two-spirit artist and poet from the Otter Clan of the Miccosukee Tribe, Houston Cypress. Cypress is also the co-founder of the Love the Everglades Movement.

NF: There's a really important historical legacy of Indigenous resistance in Big Cypress, can you talk a little bit about that to ground our conversation? 

HC: I'd like to highlight our lineage of mutual aid and chosen family. During the Seminole Wars back in the 19th century, one long war of annihilation and genocide the U.S. was trying to impose on us, our ancestors embraced formerly enslaved folks and banded together against U.S. colonizers, and we hid out in these same cypress trees. They are sacred to us because they protected us. We are here today because of those trees. 

NF: What is the role of artists and cultural workers in countering the propaganda of extractive corporations? 

Cypress: I recount a conversation with my friend, also a two-spirit Indigenous artist, M. Carmen Lane, where we reflect on the fact that art creates the conditions for transformation. We bring groups of people together through our art. Our work is group-based, participatory, and crafted by multiple authors. Even our collaborative processes counter the fascist, totalitarian character these corporations impose on our way of thinking and being. Even the language we use indicates an inherent separation—"the land" vs "our family, our relatives." Those are more apt words for what we call "the land." 

NF: The relationship between Indigenous people and Big Cypress is deeper than proximity, but rather anchored in kinship and familial lineage. How do you relate to the cypress trees and marshlands?

HC: Our Indigenous cosmologies teach us that our primordial relationship is one that is part of nature, even the origin of our family names honor this—the Otters, the Panthers, the Wind or families that are no longer with us such as the Alligator or Wolf families. We are taught to use our abilities to keep a protocol of balance. The trees are our family, the waters are our ancestors, and the alligators are our great uncles. These are the actual terms we use in our language. 

NF: Oil drilling companies are in Big Cypress and attempting to expand. I'm curious to hear the ways you and your community have witnessed this damage and harm first hand. 

HC: The scars on the land. There are "exploratory wells," where settlers would dig up to search for oil deposits, from back in the 1930s and 1940s. The scars of those "explorations" still remain on the land. As a child, I would cruise around in an airboat with my grandparents, and we would encounter these random pools of water with no plants growing. 

I'd like to highlight the fact that not only does the water of the Everglades serve as a main freshwater source, it also flows through the Florida plumbing system, it flows through electrical generators, and is used to cool down machinery. To protect it, is an absolute necessity for all people in Florida.

NF: What do Indigenous cosmologies teach about how to respond to crises?

HC: My community, the Miccosukee people, have a tradition of responding to crises and challenging moments of going back to ceremony. Ceremony and ritual are the hopeful and joyful practices that keep us grounded through the darkest times. That's what my ancestors did as they were facing war from the U.S. government during the 1800's. Plant medicine and invocation of song, and the community of life and species (plants and animals). 

NF: Unfortunately, this fight is not unique to Big Cypress. What is the collaboration practice between Miccosukee people and other Indigenous communities across the South and Turtle Island?

HC: It's the same multinational corporations, so all of our tribes are being exploited by the same companies and by the same system of capitalism. One of our many practices is actually showing up for each other, so we went to Standing Rock. Of course we came with love, support, and prayers, but we also collaborated on ideas and resistance tactics. We work together, share ideas, and we fight together. 

The climate crisis, caused by colonialism, imperialism and corporate greed, will not spare any of us, and certainly not Florida. But the Everglades and its long time stewards hold wisdom and offerings of medicine against the plague of capitalism. Indigenous people will continue to resist until Indigenous sovereignty and land back is realized. It's not a hope; it's a promise.