 |
Harlan Pruden is a First Nations Cree scholar and community organizer known for his work in the two-spirit community. [1]
|
Harlan Pruden is a First Nations Cree scholar and community organizer known for his work in the two-spirit community. [1]
Pruden was raised in northeast Alberta, Canada and is a member of the Cree Nation. He grew up on his mother's reservation, the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, but is a member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta. [2] PRUDEN moved to New York City in May 1994. In addition to serving on the board of for the American Indian Community House's board, he co-founded the NorthEast Two-Spirit Society (NE2SS) in New York City, [3] which organizes traditional cultural ceremonies for two-spirit Indigenous peoples. [4] He was also a co-chair of the National Native HIV/AIDS Coalition, one of the first national efforts within the HIV/AIDS field to include all of the Two-Spirit organizations and groups in the United States. [5]
In 2011, Pruden was instrumental in helping the Chicago-Based Legacy Project, whose outdoor LGBT history installation, The Legacy Walk, included a plaque co-written by Pruden. In April 2011, Pruden was appointed to Manhattan Community Board 12, where he served as the Chair of Parks and Cultural Affairs.
In the spring of 2013, he was appointed to be an American representative to the International Indigenous Peoples Working Group on HIV/AIDS. [2]
In August 2014, he was appointed to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS. [3] [6] Pruden is the co-chair of the global subcommittee and a member for the health disparity subcommittee. [7] He is one of the lead organizers of the National Confederacy of Two-Spirit Organizations; serves as the principal two-spirit consultant to USA's federal agency of Substance Abuse Mental Services Administration (SAMHSA) Tribal Training and Technical Assistance Center. [8] He serves as an honorary committee member of the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services at the University of Alberta, and is a native community advisory expert panel member for the University of Washington’s Indigenous Wellness Research Institute.
Pruden has also headed SpeakOUT: LGBT Voices for Recovery, a program of the LGBT Community Center in New York City. Pruden has worked on political campaigns, including Hillary Clinton’s 2000 Senate race; as well as New York State Senate and New York City Council races. He was formerly Chief of Staff for Craig M. Johnson, a former State Legislator, when Johnson was in the Nassau County Legislature.
Up until March 2014, Pruden worked for the State of New York's Empire State Development Corporation in the Division of Minority & Women's Business Development, which promotes equality of economic opportunities for MWBEs works towards the elimination of barriers to their participation in state contracts.
As of April 2015, he now lives in Vancouver, British Columbia with his spouse Stephen. [6]
The Cree are a North American Indigenous people. They live primarily in Canada, where they form one of the country's largest First Nations.
Sir Peter Karel, Baron Piot, is a Belgian-British microbiologist known for his research into Ebola and AIDS.
The Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (PACHA) advises the White House and the Secretary of Health and Human Services on the US government's response to the AIDS epidemic. The commission was formed by President Bill Clinton in 1995 and each president since has renewed the council's charter.
Phill Wilson is an American activist who founded the Black AIDS Institute in 1999, and served as its CEO, and is a prominent African-American HIV/AIDS activist.
The Audre Lorde Project is a Brooklyn, New York–based organization for LGBT people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing and radical nonviolent activism around progressive issues within New York City, especially relating to LGBT communities, AIDS and HIV activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform and organizing among youth of color. It is named for the lesbian-feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde and was founded in 1994.
Edward C. (Ted) Green is an American medical anthropologist working in public health and development. He was a senior research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health and served as senior research scientist at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies for eight years, the last three years as director of the AIDS Prevention Project. He was later affiliated with the Department of Population and Reproductive Health at Johns Hopkins University (2011–14) and the George Washington University as research professor. He was appointed to serve as a member of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS (2003–2007), and served on the Office of AIDS Research Advisory Council for the National Institutes of Health (2003–2006). Green serves on the board of AIDS.org and the Bonobo Conservation Initiative. and Medical Care Development.
Geeta Rao Gupta is a leader on gender, women's issues, and HIV/AIDS who is serving as United States Ambassador-at-Large for Global Women's Issues since May 2023. She previously served as executive director of the 3D Program for Girls and Women and senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation since 2017. She is frequently consulted on issues related to AIDS prevention and women's vulnerability to HIV and is an advocate for women's economic and social empowerment to fight disease, poverty and hunger.
Two-spirit is a contemporary pan-Indian umbrella term used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe Native people who fulfill a traditional third-gender social role in their communities.
Agnes Binagwaho is a Rwandan Politician, pediatrician, co-founder and the former vice chancellor of the University of Global Health Equity (2017-2022). In 1996, she returned to Rwanda where she provided clinical care in the public sector as well as held many positions including the position of Permanent Secretary for the Ministry of Health of Rwanda from October 2008 until May 2011 and Minister of Health from May 2011 until July 2016. She has been a professor of global health delivery practice since 2016 and a professor of pediatrics since 2017 at the University of Global Health Equity. She has served the health sector in various high-level government positions. She resides in Kigali.
Mary Jane Rotheram-Borus is a licensed clinical psychologist and professor with the University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences. Rotheram is the professor-in-residence in the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. She is the Director of the Global Center for Children and Families at UCLA and the former director of the Center for HIV Identification, Prevention, and Treatment Services.
Martin T. Schechter is a Canadian epidemiologist recognized for contributions to research about HIV prevention and treatments, addiction research, and Indigenous health research. He is a professor and was the founding director of the School of Population and Public Health in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Schechter received his Order of British Columbia in 1994 alongside BC's first Nobel Prize laureate Michael Smith and noted Indigenous artist Bill Reid. In 2022, Schechter was named as a Member of the Order of Canada.
Cecilia Chung is a civil rights leader and activist for LGBT rights, HIV/AIDS awareness, health advocacy, and social justice. She is a trans woman, and her life story was one of four main storylines in the 2017 ABC miniseries When We Rise about LGBT rights in the 1970s and 1980s.
The Tar Sands Healing Walk was a 14 km annual prayer walk in demonstration against crude oil extraction in the Athabasca tar sands. It began in 2010, starting just north of the city of Fort McMurray, Alberta at a location known as the Syncrude Loop, and traveling through the heart of the tar sands extraction zone. The walk was led by local Indigenous Elders, who prayed for the healing of the land and to bring attention to the destructive impacts of the tar sands.
Richard John Feehan is a Canadian politician who was elected in the 2015 Alberta general election to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta representing the electoral district of Edmonton-Rutherford. He was made Alberta NDP caucus chair on June 3 and elected deputy chairman of committees on June 12, 2015.
Mishi Donovan was a Chippewa Cree, Canadian actress, musician, First Nations activist and HIV/AIDS educator.
Melina Laboucan-Massimo is a climate justice and Indigenous rights advocate from the Lubicon Cree community of Little Buffalo in northern Alberta, Canada. Growing up with firsthand experience of the effects of oil and gas drilling on local communities, she began advocating for an end to resource extraction in Indigenous territories but shifted focus to supporting a renewable energy transition after a ruptured pipeline spilled approximately 4.5 million litres of oil near Little Buffalo in 2011.
Andrew John Ullmann is a German physician and politician of the Free Democratic Party (FDP) who has been serving as a member of the Bundestag from the state of Bavaria since 2017.
Pope Francis visited Canada from July 24 to 29, 2022, with stops in the provinces of Alberta and Quebec and the territory of Nunavut. The trip mainly focused on apologizing for the Catholic Church's role in the Canadian Indian residential school system and on reconciliation with the country's Indigenous peoples. It was the first papal visit to Canada since 2002, when Pope John Paul II visited Toronto for World Youth Day.
William Morin IV known as Billy Morin is a Canadian Cree First Nations leader and was the elected Chief of Enoch Cree Nation from August 2015 to June 2022. He has built partnerships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous groups toward economic and social prosperity and reconciliation.
Caprice Carthans, a trans woman of color and resident of Marquette Park (Chicago), was a co-chair of the Intergraded Community Advisory Board (CAB) at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago (AFC) and is an inductee of the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 2020.