Tara Houska | |
|---|---|
| Zhaabowekwe | |
 Tara Houska in 2017 | |
| Born | |
| Organization(s) | Not Your Mascot Giniw Collective |
| Known for | Environmental activism, indigenous activism |
Tara Houska Zhaabowekwe (Couchiching First Nation) is a tribal attorney, land defender and climate justice activist.
Houska co-founded Not Your Mascots, an organization and social media campaign that educates the public about stereotyping and representation of Native Americans, including work on getting Washington, D.C.'s football team to change its name. [1] [2]
Houska founded and runs the Giniw Collective. [3] [4] She and others from the collective fought for seven years against construction of the Line 3 pipeline, an oil pipeline running from Alberta to Wisconsin. Three of those years she spent living in a tent on the pipeline's route, including during harsh winters. The area's tribal nations maintain the treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather on land along the pipeline, which crosses many bodies of water. Tribal nations also grow wild rice there, which has cultural and historic importance. The Giniw Collective often uses their bodies to stop or slow construction as a form of protest, including crawling inside the pipeline, squatting in trees, and tying themselves to machines. Houska has also engaged politicians directly, including meetings with the Biden administration to push for the federal government to intervene and suspend the project's permit. [3] Minnesota Now called her "one of the leaders in the movement to stop the construction of new pipelines". [4]
Houska also fought against the Dakota Access Pipeline in 2016 and lived in the Standing Rock encampment for six months. [5]
Houska is involved in other climate and social justice efforts, having published essays in All We Can Save, Vogue, the New York Times, and CNN. She is also a contributing writer for the Indian Country Media Network . [5] [6] She was the campaign director for Honor the Earth from 2016 to 2019. [7]
Houska is a former adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders as his campaign Native American advisor. [3] During his 2016 presidential campaign, she was the lead author of his Native policy platform. [5]
In 2021, Houska spoke at the 33rd European Green Party Council on climate change and biodiversity. [8] [9]
Houska received the 2023 Rose-Walters Prize for Global Environmental Activism at Dickinson College. [10] The prize rewarded her work as a tribal attorney, land defender, and founder of the Giniw Collective. [10]
Houska also received the 2021 American Climate Leadership Award and the 2019 Rachel's Network Catalyst Award. [11]
Melinda Gates awarded Houska the Good Housekeeping 2017 Awesome Women award. [5]
Houska was born in International Falls, Minnesota. [12] She grew up in Ranier, Minnesota, where Rainy Lake connects to Rainy River. [13] Ranier is across the border of Ontario's legal reserve for the Couchiching First Nation community. [13] Houska graduated from Falls High School, and earned a law degree from the University of Minnesota while learning the Anishinaabe language. [13] She then moved to Washington, D.C., where she worked for a private firm representing tribes around the country. [13]
In Washington, Houska met Winona LaDuke, and she later worked as a lawyer for LaDuke's environmental advocacy organization Honor the Earth. [13] Since 2019 she has worked for the Giniw Collective and Stop Line 3 protests. [13]
Winona LaDuke is an American economist, environmentalist, writer and industrial hemp grower, known for her work on tribal land claims and preservation, as well as sustainable development.
The Red Lake Indian Reservation covers 1,260.3 sq mi in parts of nine counties in Minnesota, United States. It is made up of numerous holdings but the largest section is an area about Red Lake, in north-central Minnesota, the largest lake in the state. This section lies primarily in the counties of Beltrami and Clearwater. Land in seven other counties is also part of the reservation. The reservation population was 5,506 in the 2020 census.
Wild rice, also called manoomin, mnomen, Psíŋ, Canada rice, Indian rice, or water oats, is any of four species of grasses that form the genus Zizania, and the grain that can be harvested from them. The grain was historically and is still gathered and eaten in North America and, to a lesser extent, China, where the plant's stem is used as a vegetable.
The Anishinaabe are a group of culturally related Indigenous peoples present in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States. They include the Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Mississaugas, Nipissing and Algonquin peoples. The Anishinaabe speak Anishinaabemowin, or Anishinaabe languages that belong to the Algonquian language family.
The Bad River LaPointe Band of the Lake Superior Tribe of Chippewa Indians or Bad River Tribe for short are a federally recognized tribe of Ojibwe people. The tribe had 6,945 members as of 2010. The Bad River Reservation is located on the south shore of Lake Superior and has a land area of about 193.11 square miles (500.15 km2) in northern Wisconsin, straddling Ashland and Iron counties. Odanah, the administrative and cultural center, is located five miles (8.0 km) east of the town of Ashland on U.S. Highway 2. The reservation population was 1,545 in 2020. Most of the reservation is managed as undeveloped forest and wetland, providing a habitat for wild rice and other natural resources.
The White Earth Indian Reservation is home to the White Earth Band, located in northwestern Minnesota. It is the largest Indian reservation in the state by land area. The reservation includes all of Mahnomen County, plus parts of Becker and Clearwater counties in the northwest part of the state along the Wild Rice and White Earth rivers. The reservation's land area is 1,093 square miles (2,830 km2). The population was 9,726 as of the 2020 census, including off-reservation trust land. The White Earth Indian Reservation is one of six bands that make up the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, their governing body for major administrative needs. It is about 225 miles (362 km) from Minneapolis–Saint Paul and roughly 65 miles (105 km) from Fargo–Moorhead.
Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa is an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) band located near Cloquet, Minnesota. Their land base is the Fond du Lac Indian Reservation, located mainly in Carlton and Saint Louis Counties, Minnesota, 20 miles west of Duluth.
The Standing Rock Reservation lies across the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakota Oyate and the Ihunktuwona and Pabaksa bands of the Dakota Oyate," as well as the Hunkpatina Dakota. The Ihanktonwana Dakota are the Upper Yanktonai, part of the collective of Wiciyena. The sixth-largest Native American reservation in land area in the US, Standing Rock includes all of Sioux County, North Dakota, and all of Corson County, South Dakota, plus slivers of northern Dewey and Ziebach counties in South Dakota, along their northern county lines at Highway 20.
ICT is a daily digital news platform that covers the Indigenous world, including American Indians, Alaska Natives and First Nations.
Since the 1960s, the issue of Native American and First Nations names and images being used by sports teams as mascots has been the subject of increasing public controversy in the United States and Canada. This has been a period of rising Indigenous civil rights movements, and Native Americans and their supporters object to the use of images and names in a manner and context they consider derogatory. They have conducted numerous protests and tried to educate the public on this issue.
Anishinaabe tribal political organizations are political consortiums of Anishinaabe nations that advocate for the political interests of their constituencies. Anishinaabe people of Canada are considered as First Nations, and of the United States as Native Americans.
The Couchiching First Nation is a Saulteaux First Nation band government in the Canadian province of Ontario, who live on the Couchiching 16A and Agency 1 reserves in the Rainy River District near Fort Frances.
Adrian Parr Zaretsky is an Australian-born philosopher and cultural critic. She specializes in environmental philosophy and activism. In addition, she published on the sustainability movement, climate change politics, activist culture, and creative practice.
The Dakota Access Pipeline Protests, also known by the hashtag #NoDAPL, were a series of grassroots Native American protests against the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline in the northern United States that began in April 2016. Protests ended on February 23, 2017 when National Guard and law enforcement officers evicted the last remaining protesters.
Water protectors are activists, organizers, and cultural workers focused on the defense of the world's water and water systems. The water protector name, analysis and style of activism arose from Indigenous communities in North America during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests at the Standing Rock Reservation, which began with an encampment on LaDonna Brave Bull Allard's land in April, 2016.
The Line 3 pipeline is an oil pipeline owned by the Canadian multinational Enbridge. Operating since 1968, it runs 1,031 miles (1,659 km) from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin, United States.
Dodging Bullets—Stories from Survivors of Historical Trauma is a documentary film on historical trauma in Indian country, co-directed by Kathy Broere (Blackfeet), Sarah Edstrom, Jonathan Thunder, and Bob Trench, and produced by Larry Long with soundtrack by Keith Secola. The film focuses on historical events and how they inter-generationally affect the Indigenous population in North America today. It premiered at the Minneapolis–Saint Paul International Film Festival where it was awarded "Best of Fest" and was awarded The Samuel Sprynczynatyk Storyteller Award: Best Documentary Feature at the North Dakota Human Rights Film Festival. Filmed across the lands of the Plains Indians, which is now known as Wisconsin, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska, Colorado, and Montana, the film recalls first-hand storytelling that reflects how past generations were deeply impacted by mass trauma and how that trauma influences Indigenous peoples of the Americas today. The film ends on a positive path to healing through ceremony and cultural identity.
Jasilyn Charger is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, from Eagle Butte, South Dakota, USA. Charger is a land activist, water protector, community organizer, and advocate for Native American and LGBTQ rights, and a youth founder of the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. They have also protested against the Keystone Pipeline, and were arrested for their non-violent civil disobedience in November 2020.
The Stop Line 3 protests are an ongoing series of demonstrations in the U.S. state of Minnesota against the expansion of Enbridge's Line 3 oil pipeline along a new route. The new route was completed in September 2021, and was operational on 1 October 2021. Indigenous people have led the resistance to the construction of the pipeline, which began following the project's approval in November 2020. Opponents of the pipeline expansion, called water protectors, have established ceremonial lodges and resistance camps along the route of the pipeline. Enbridge has funded an escrow account that law enforcement agencies may draw on for pipeline-related police work. Organizers have arranged marches and occupations of Enbridge construction sites. Following the blockade of an Enbridge pump station on June 7, 2021, nearly 250 people were arrested. Invoking treaty rights, organizers established an encampment at the headwaters of the Mississippi River at a site where Enbridge intends to bury the pipeline.
Belle Young Gochenauer Deacon was an American basketmaker and language and folklore expert. As an Alaska Native elder, she held and shared knowledge of the language and traditions of the Athabascan people. She received the National Heritage Fellowship in 1992.