Battle of Old Fort Wayne

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a writer, filmmaker, and activist who is an enrolled member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'secen of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) Nation in the Canadian province of British Columbia.^[1] He is a public thinker and advocate on issues of climate justice and Indigenous rights in North America.^[2]

Early life and education

Born in Minnesota, NoiseCat was raised by his mother in Oakland, California.^[3] NoiseCat attended Columbia University and graduated in 2015 with a degree in history.^[4] After being awarded a Clarendon Scholarship, he studied history at the University of Oxford and earned a graduate degree in global and imperial history.^[5]

Career

NoiseCat began his career as a political strategist and policy analyst. While working as vice president of policy and strategy at Data for Progress, NoiseCat was a prominent voice in the campaign to have Deb Haaland, an enrolled citizen of the Laguna Pueblo tribe and one of the first Native American women elected to the United States Congress, nominated and later confirmed as the 54th United States Secretary of the Interior.^[6][7] He also served as a key policy thinker behind the Green New Deal movements in both the United States and Canada, with a particular emphasis on centering Indigenous communities in environmental justice work.^[8]

Beyond the policy world, NoiseCat has participated in cultural organizing work. He developed the 2019 Alcatraz Canoe Journey alongside a group of veteran Native American activists, including LaNada War Jack and Eloy Martinez.^[9] During the canoe journey, 18 canoes representing dozens of nations and tribes encircled Alcatraz Island in the San Francisco Bay to honor the history of Native activists occupying the island between November 1969 and June 1971 and to remember the many Native people who were incarcerated on the island as prisoners of war.^[10][11][12] The paddlers planned their journey to roughly coincide with both the 50th anniversary of the island's occupation as well as Indigenous People's Day. Afterward, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art held a series of talks on Native histories of Alcatraz Island.^[13]

In addition to his policy and organizing work, NoiseCat has worked as a journalist and a cultural commentator on Indigenous and climate issues. He has published articles, essays, and reviews in The New York Times,^[14] The Washington Post,^[7] The Atlantic,^[15] The Paris Review,^[16] Politico,^[17] The Guardian,^[18] and Canadian Geographic.^[19] In 2021, Time magazine included him in their Time 100 list of next generation leaders.^[20] The magazine commissioned environmental activist Bill McKibben to write the brief description that accompanied NoiseCat's inclusion in the list. NoiseCat was awarded an American Mosaic Journalism Prize in 2022.^[21]

NoiseCat is signed with publisher Alfred A. Knopf to release a forthcoming book, We Survived the Night, focused on Indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada.^[22] He is also co-director on a forthcoming documentary, Sugarcane, which investigates unmarked graves at Indian residential schools. Sugarcane was selected for an Enterprise Documentary Grant in 2022 by the International Documentary Association.^[23]

References