In 2017, Juan Mancias, the chairman of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, traveled to France to help pressure two of the country’s largest banks into divesting from oil and gas projects in South Texas. He cast the fight as a new chapter in a centuries-long struggle to protect the tribe’s sacred lands. The campaign succeeded, and helped make Mancias an international climate figure. Over the next several years, he would use that status to bring more than $5 million in philanthropic funding to the unrecognized tribe. An investigation by Grist found that the historical and genealogical evidence underpinning Mancias’ claim that he is the hereditary chief of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe cannot be verified. The foundational document he cites cannot be located or authenticated, and Mancias failed to provide it after multiple requests. Genealogical records trace his documented Indigenous ancestry to Mexico in the late 1700s on his maternal line, not the paternal line his claim rests on. Read Next The climate movement gave this Texas tribe millions and a global platform. No one checked its story. Tristan Ahtone Mancias’ case reveals an unofficial ‘shadow’ recognition system, one in which environmental nonprofits, journalists, and international human rights bodies support unrecognized, and unverified, individuals and groups in the fight against climate change. Although the short-term gains are real — Mancias and his allies have stymied LNG expansion in South Texas — experts said they often come at the expense of legitimate Indigenous Peoples, tribes, and organizations. Here are five takeaways from our investigation: Marty Two Bulls Jr. / Grist The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas has raised more than $5 million for climate- and environmental-related efforts since 2019 despite holding neither federal nor state recognition. After incorporating as a nonprofit in 1999, the tribe operated on a shoestring for two decades and reported less than $50,000 in annual revenue for several years beginning in 2012. That changed soon after the protests at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation, when Mancias’ campaign in France made him an international climate figure. Philanthropists gave him money, environmental nonprofits provided legal assistance, and journalists chronicled his work. Mancias’ primary evidence supporting his claims of Indigeneity — an 1871 railroad report describing an 1801 massacre — cannot be located or authenticated, and historians doubt its plausibility. Mancias has cited the document for two decades, including in federal court, as proof of his lineage and the tribe’s connection to South Texas, but he would not produce a physical copy. Extensive searches of repositories within the Texas State Library and Archives Commission found no evidence it exists, and Grist identified multiple anachronisms in its timeline and provenance with historians describing its existence as ‘improbable.’ Between 2022 and 2024, the tribe used philanthropic grants to buy four properties totaling nearly 23 acres along a proposed pipeline route in Cameron County, Texas. The purchases allowed the tribe to purchase land it describes as ancestral territory — a claim that cannot be verified — and sidestep the arduous federal process recognized tribal nations must navigate to reacquire land. That contrast is stark. Federal policies like the Dawes Act and the Morrill Act seized and redistributed millions of acres of expropriated tribal land to settlers and state institutions — dispossessions that have been exhaustively documented and largely unremedied. But records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that recognized nations seeking to recover even a fraction of an acre can wait decades to acquire land, while the Carrizo/Comecrudo, with philanthropic backing, bought land in a matter of months. Unlike land reacquired by recognized tribes, parcels in Cameron County remain subject to property taxes and carry only limited protection from development. The Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe and its closest ally, the Society of Native Nations, which represents unrecognized groups in Texas, hold accredited observer status at the United Nations. Twenty-four Indigenous-focused organizations are accredited observers to the U.N. Environment Assembly, or UNEA, the world’s highest decision-making body on environmental matters. Four are based in the United States, including the Carrizo/Comecrudo and the Society of Native Nations. SNN also holds accreditation at UNESCO, where it is one of three U.S. nongovernmental organizations focused on Indigenous issues. It secured that status by highlighting its partnership with the Carrizo/Comecrudo. Because the U.N. bars Indigenous Peoples and governments from participating as sovereign entities in its highest bodies, NGO accreditation is a convenient workaround that carries real privileges. These organizations can submit language to draft resolutions, access documents unavailable to the public, and engage directly with government delegations, including U.S. authorities that Orona told Grist have at times included officials from the Justice Department and Health and Human Services. Such access typically is reserved for the elected officials of federally recognized tribal nations. At the U.N., the person who would consider challenges to the legitimacy of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe or the Society of Native Nations leads the society itself. Frankie Orona co-chairs the Indigenous Peoples Major Group at the U.N. Environment Programme, or UNEP, whose internal guidance calls for referring complaints about participants to its co-chairs. Orona is executive director of the Society of Native Nations, which he built out of an American Indian Movement chapter that Mancias recruited him into. UNEP told Grist it does not have a procedure for addressing such a conflict of interest, though it said concerns could go to the other co-chair or directly to its Civil Society Unit. This story was originally published by Grist with the headline 5 takeaways from our investigation into the ‘ghost’ tribe that got millions in climate funding on Aug 13, 2026.