section_path: Legal career/International and indigenous rights
section_name: International and indigenous rights
paragraph_text: International and indigenous rights
  
  Starting in 1985, Kennedy helped develop the international program for environmental, energy, and human rights of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), traveling to Canada and Latin America to assist indigenous tribes in protecting their homelands and opposing large-scale energy and extractive projects in remote wilderness areas.
  
  In 1990, Kennedy assisted indigenous Pehuenches in Chile in a partially successful campaign to stop the construction of a series of dams on Chile's iconic Biobío River. That campaign derailed all but one of the proposed dams. Beginning in 1992, he assisted the Cree Indians of northern Quebec in their campaign against Hydro-Québec to halt construction of some 600 proposed dams on eleven rivers in James Bay.
  
  In 1993, Kennedy and NRDC, working with the indigenous rights organization Cultural Survival, clashed with other American environmental groups in a dispute about the rights of Indians to govern their own lands in the Oriente region of Ecuador. Kennedy represented the CONFENIAE, a confederation of Indian peoples, in negotiation with the American oil company Conoco to limit oil development in Ecuadorian Amazon and, at the same time, obtain benefits from resource extraction for Amazonian tribes. Kennedy was a vocal critic of Texaco for its previous record for polluting the Ecuadoran Amazon.
  
  From 1993 to 1999, Kennedy worked with five Vancouver Island Indian tribes in their campaign to end industrial logging by MacMillan Bloedel in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia. In 1996, he met with Cuban president Fidel Castro to persuade him to halt his plans to construct a nuclear power plant at Juraguá. During the meeting, Castro reminisced about Kennedy's father and uncle, speculating that U.S. relations with Cuba would have been far better had President Kennedy not been assassinated.
  
  Between 1996 and 2000, Kennedy and the NRDC helped Mexican commercial fishermen halt Mitsubishi 's proposal to build a salt facility in the Laguna San Ignacio, an area in Baja where gray whales breed and nurse their calves. Kennedy wrote in opposition to the project, and took the campaign to Japan, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. In 2000, he assisted local environmental activists to stop Chaffin Light, a real estate developer, and U.S. engineering giant Bechtel from building a large hotel and resort development that, Kennedy argued, threatened coral reefs and public beaches used by local Bahamians, at Clifton Bay, New Providence Island.
  
  Kennedy was one of the early editors of Indian Country Today, North America's largest Native American newspaper. He helped lead the opposition to the damming of the Futaleufú River in the Southern Zone of Chile. In 2016, due to the pressure precipitated by the Futaleufú Riverkeepers campaign against the dams, the Spanish power company Endesa, which owned the right to dam the river, reversed its decision and relinquished all claims to the Futaleufú.
  
  Starting in 1985, Kennedy helped develop the international program for environmental, energy, and human rights of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), traveling to Canada and Latin America to assist indigenous tribes in protecting their homelands and opposing large-scale energy and extractive projects in remote wilderness areas.
  
  In 1990, Kennedy assisted indigenous Pehuenches in Chile in a partially successful campaign to stop the construction of a series of dams on Chile's iconic Biobío River. That campaign derailed all but one of the proposed dams. Beginning in 1992, he assisted the Cree Indians of northern Quebec in their campaign against Hydro-Québec to halt construction of some 600 proposed dams on eleven rivers in James Bay.
  
  In 1993, Kennedy and NRDC, working with the indigenous rights organization Cultural Survival, clashed with other American environmental groups in a dispute about the rights of Indians to govern their own lands in the Oriente region of Ecuador. Kennedy represented the CONFENIAE, a confederation of Indian peoples, in negotiation with the American oil company Conoco to limit oil development in Ecuadorian Amazon and, at the same time, obtain benefits from resource extraction for Amazonian tribes. Kennedy was a vocal critic of Texaco for its previous record for polluting the Ecuadoran Amazon.
  
  From 1993 to 1999, Kennedy worked with five Vancouver Island Indian tribes in their campaign to end industrial logging by MacMillan Bloedel in Clayoquot Sound, British Columbia. In 1996, he met with Cuban president Fidel Castro to persuade him to halt his plans to construct a nuclear power plant at Juraguá. During the meeting, Castro reminisced about Kennedy's father and uncle, speculating that U.S. relations with Cuba would have been far better had President Kennedy not been assassinated.
  
  Between 1996 and 2000, Kennedy and the NRDC helped Mexican commercial fishermen halt Mitsubishi 's proposal to build a salt facility in the Laguna San Ignacio, an area in Baja where gray whales breed and nurse their calves. Kennedy wrote in opposition to the project, and took the campaign to Japan, meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. In 2000, he assisted local environmental activists to stop Chaffin Light, a real estate developer, and U.S. engineering giant Bechtel from building a large hotel and resort development that, Kennedy argued, threatened coral reefs and public beaches used by local Bahamians, at Clifton Bay, New Providence Island.
  
  Kennedy was one of the early editors of Indian Country Today, North America's largest Native American newspaper. He helped lead the opposition to the damming of the Futaleufú River in the Southern Zone of Chile. In 2016, due to the pressure precipitated by the Futaleufú Riverkeepers campaign against the dams, the Spanish power company Endesa, which owned the right to dam the river, reversed its decision and relinquished all claims to the Futaleufú.