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| Photo by Global Landscapes Forum on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA |
Name: Autumn Peltier
Award Title: For Giving Water a Voice that is Strong, Clear, and Truthful
Ms. Peltier is amazing! From at least the age of 8 (and likely earlier) she understood that water, which she sees as sacred, needed a voice. It needed someone to protect it and speak for it, and she did not hesitate. She SPOKE!
To Prime Minister Trudeau, she said, “I’m not happy with the decisions you’ve made for my people.”
To the UN she said, “I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, we can’t eat money, or drink oil.”
She has not only called for political leaders to address the issue of unsafe drinking water or reserves (an issue, by the by, that Jagmeet Singh has been killing it on in the election campaign), but to change the way they make decisions about the environment, gathering youth and elders to speak to the issues.
She knows she will be an elder one day, and then an ancestor, and is doing everything she can to make sure that her descendents have clean water and clean land. She exudes strength and is an inspiration to us all: speak up!
Sources: CBC, Globe and Mail
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