The Spartan Speakers Series welcomed Tara Houska, a climate justice and Indigenous advocate and citizen of Couchiching First Nation, to share her experience in defending tribal land and promoting Indigenous activism.
The hybrid event rallied about 200 members on Zoom and another handful of in-person audience members who gathered in the Student Union Ballroom Wednesday.
Houska, who is also a tribal attorney, discussed her work from politics to her transition into the climate-activism space as it affects the country’s Indigenous populations.
“Indigenous communities are impacted first and worse by the climate crisis, because we are in relationship to the land so closely,” Houska said. “There [are] spaces where the oceans [are] eating the shoreline . . . homelands are going underwater.”
Houska said she started her career as an attorney where her days consisted of practicing law and taking time to protest the Keystone XL pipeline during her lunch breaks.
She said she later became the Native American Affairs for Senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign adviser, while simultaneously working for Honor the Earth, a nonprofit raising awareness and economic support for iIndigenous environmental causes.
Houska said she spent the same year fighting against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which claims it is the safest and most environmentally sensitive way to transport crude oil from domestic wells to U.S. consumers.
“[I] made the decision to kind of move in a different direction and not be confined to the D.C. law office anymore,” Houska said. “Then [I saw] this Facebook Live ask[ing] people to help in North Dakota . . . I was like, ‘Okay, I'm gonna go to this place.’ ”
In 2018, Houska founded the Giniw Collective, which is an “Indigenous-women, two-spirit led frontline resistance to protect Mother Earth,” according to the organization’s Facebook webpage.
The collective rounded a group of people who fought against the Line 3 pipeline, which is a “proposed pipeline expansion to bring nearly a million barrels of tar sands per day from Alberta, Canada to Superior, Wisconsin,” according to the Stop Line 3 initiative website.
Carmina Bosmenier, liberal studies teacher-prep senior and descendant of the Yaqui peoples, an Indigenous group from Southern Sonora, Mexico, who migrated to modern day Southern Arizona, according to a May 14, National Park Service article, attended the event to connect with other Indigenous members.
“As an Indigenous and Mexican person, I wanted to come and be around other people that have similar passions,” Bosmenier said. “I'm trying to connect [with] the neighborhoods so that's [the] reason why I came today.”
Bosmenier, a Southern California native, said she wanted to learn about the pipeline and geopolitical border issues that Indigneous people face with Canada and Mexico.
“There's a different struggle for Indigenous people at [these] borders,” Bosmenier said. “There's always people [protesting] . . . but it's hard because it's political.”
At the end of the event, Bosmenier shared her story with Houska and discussed their shared interest in Indigenous-border disputes with other nations.
Lauren De Gruccio, music education junior, said she came to listen to Houska discuss her leadership skills and participated in the Q&A event.
“[This] was a daily reminder of certain things like keeping yourself in check and acknowledging the land around you as well,” De Gruccio said.
Houska is also the co-founder of Not Your Mascots, an organization dedicated to “informing individuals and mobilizing groups to combat the public misappropriation of Native American imagery,” according to its Facebook webpage.
“The United States has a long way to go [in] even acknowledging some of [our] history and the present,” Houska said.
