Grass-roots organizing as a path to power

Three weeks before Joe Biden announced that he would nominate New Mexico’s Democrat representative Deb Haaland for the Secretary of the Interior, Tsq’escen writer and activist Julian Brave NoiseCat wrote a widely-shared story on what it would mean for Haaland to assume the office. The prospect of the Laguna Pueblo leader heading up the department that deals with Native American communities was invigorating. NoiseCat said that “[i]n the wake of Standing Rock, a new generation of Indigenous millennials and Gen Z-ers dream of a future when the United States gives land back to Native nations. In theory, the next secretary of Interior could take steps to realize that goal.”

Indigenous-led grassroots organizing and activism in both Canada and the U.S. have spawned some of the last decade’s most significant social justice movements. What does Haaland’s nomination say about that work, and how might it change those movements going forward?

Join NoiseCat and Canada’s National Observer founder and editor-in-chief Linda Solomon Wood on March 25 for a public Conversations event.

Presented by the Canadian Centre for Journalism, sponsored by Canada’s National Observer.