Tara Houska Zhaabowekwe (

Couchiching First Nation The Couchiching First Nation ( oj, Gojijiing Anishinaabeg) 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. Hi ...

) is a tribal attorney, land defender and

climate justice Climate justice is a concept that addresses the just division, fair sharing, and equitable distribution of the burdens of climate change and its mitigation and responsibilities to deal with climate change. "Justice", "fairness", and "equity" ar ...

activist.

Activism

Not Your Mascots

She 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 the Washington football team to change their name.

Pipeline protests

Houska founded and runs the Giniw Collective. She and others from the collective fought for seven years against construction of the

Line 3 pipeline The Line 3 pipeline is an oil pipeline owned by the Canadian multinational Enbridge. Operating since 1968, it runs from Hardisty, Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin, United States. Concerns about the safety of the pipeline led Enbridge ...

, an oil pipeline running from Alberta, Canada to Wisconsin, USA. Three of those years she spent living in a tent on the pipeline's route, including during harsh winters. The tribal nations in the area maintain the treaty rights to hunt, fish, and gather on land along the pipeline, which crosses many bodies of water. The area is also where tribal nations grow wild rice, which has cultural and historic importance to the nations. The Giniw Collective often uses their bodies to stop or slow the construction process as a form of protest, including crawling inside the pipeline itself, 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 permit for the project. ''Minnesota Now'' called her "one of the leaders in the movement to stop the construction of new pipelines." Houska also fought against the

Dakota Access Pipeline The Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) or Bakken pipeline is a underground pipeline in the United States that has the ability to transport up to 750,000 barrels of light sweet crude oil per day. It begins in the shale oil fields of the Bakken Forma ...

in 2016 and lived in the Standing Rock encampment for six months.

Other work

She is also involved in other climate and social justice efforts, having written essays in

All We Can Save ''All We Can Save'' is a 2020 collection of essays and poetry edited by Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Dr. Katharine Wilkinson and published by One World. The collection sets out to highlight a wide range of women's voices in the environmental ...

, ''Vogue'',

the New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, and

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by the M ...

. She is also a contributing writer for the ''

Indian Country Media Network ''ICT News'' (formerly known as ''Indian Country Today'') is a daily digital news platform that covers the Indigenous world, including American Indians, Alaska Natives and First Nations. It was founded in 1981 as a weekly print newspaper, ''The ...

''. She was the campaign director for

Honor the Earth Honor the Earth is a non-profit organization founded to raise awareness and financial support for Indigenous environmental justice. The organization was founded by Indigo Girls Amy Ray and Emily Saliers after meeting Winona LaDuke, and after consu ...

from 2016-2019. Houska is a former adviser to Senator

Bernie Sanders Bernard Sanders (born September8, 1941) is an American politician who has served as the junior United States senator from Vermont since 2007. He was the U.S. representative for the state's at-large congressional district from 1991 to 2007 ...

as his campaign Native American advisor. During his 2016 presidential campaign, she was the lead author for his Native policy platform. Melinda Gates awarded Houska the Good Housekeeping 2017 Awesome Women award. In 2021, Houska spoke at the 33rd European Green Party Council on

climate change In common usage, climate change describes global warming—the ongoing increase in global average temperature—and its effects on Earth's climate system. Climate change in a broader sense also includes previous long-term changes to E ...

and

biodiversity Biodiversity or biological diversity is the variety and variability of life on Earth. Biodiversity is a measure of variation at the genetic (''genetic variability''), species (''species diversity''), and ecosystem (''ecosystem diversity'') l ...

Personal life

Houska was born in

International Falls, Minnesota International Falls (sometimes referred to as I-Falls) is a city in and the county seat of Koochiching County, Minnesota. The population was 5,802 at the time of the 2020 census. International Falls is located on the Rainy River directly acro ...

References

Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Native American activists Land defender Native American lawyers Activists from Minnesota 21st-century Native American women 21st-century Native Americans {{NorthAm-native-stub