Meet the Staff: Jade Roberson, Nationwide Indigenous Justice Project Manager

Jade Roberson remembers always being motivated to call out injustice — even as a child growing up in a small town in Texas.  

Roberson’s father is Navajo, born of the Mud People clan, and her mother is British English. She recently joined ACLU-WA as the Nationwide Indigenous Justice Project Manager, a role hosted by the ACLU of Washington. This means Roberson, in addition to helping build capacity for Indigenous Justice work nationally, will spend a good portion of her time forging relationships with Indigenous communities and advocating for Indigenous Justice in Washington. 

This work is close to Roberson, who was raised to be proud of her heritage on both sides of her family but bristled at the injustices experienced by Indigenous peoples, people of color and people who lived in poverty in her town. She describes being “radicalized” by the discrimination she witnessed.  

“My grandmother is visibly Native and she was harassed and told to go back to her country — you know, on her own homeland,” Roberson said.  

As an undergraduate at the University of Oklahoma, where the mascot — a “Sooner” — is a term that references the original land theft Oklahoma was founded on, Roberson joined a group of students committed to Indigenous Justice and celebrating Indigenous cultures. Their activism inspired her.  

“They were just fun and loud and active,” Roberson said. “I was really empowered by that group.” 

She majored in International studies with an emphasis in Latin America, noting the intrinsic links between Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. After college, she joined a local nonprofit as an activist working with marginalized communities.  

When the national ACLU began an Indigenous Justice campaign on the border, Roberson’s academic background and activism experience meshed well with ACLU’s goals for working with immigrants. 

“ACLU national needed someone who understood the history of migration patterns in Latin America through an Indigenous lens,” Roberson said. 

Almost immediately after starting at the ACLU, Roberson joined the Indigenous Justice Working Group and began helping to plan the organization’s first ever Indigenous Justice Convening, held in 2022.  

During her three years with the ACLU’s National Political Advocacy Department, Roberson worked on a tribal regalia campaign, advocating for state legislatures to pass bills protecting Native staff and students’ rights at public schools to wear tribal, cultural and religious items at significant ceremonies like graduations. 

The campaign’s success in Oklahoma meant that Roberson’s younger brother could wear items of cultural significance to his high school graduation — an opportunity she did not have. “Watching my brother and his girlfriend walk at graduation with beaded caps and all of their jewelry was such a proud moment for me,” Roberson said.  

Roberson, who is also working on a master’s degree in Indigenous Peoples law, is excited to increase the ACLU’s capacity for Indigenous Justice work. In many ways, she sees the organization’s mission as a natural fit with issues that arise for Native peoples, including religious protections and freedom of speech. “It makes so much sense that the ACLU would join the fight in solidarity with Indigenous peoples.”