Crystal Echo Hawk, Judith Le Blanc, Carla Fredericks
Its #matriarchmonday and we are honoring the amazing work of our grassroots organizers and leaders who showed up and showed out for their communities this election season. These womxn lead the organizations that organized around the Natives Vote 2020 campaign.
Crystal Echo Hawk
We celebrate Crystal Echo Hawk (Pawnee) who is founder and CEO of IllumiNative, an innovative organizational network that fosters meaningful participation from a diverse and committed collective of Native storytellers, artists, youth, organizers, tribal and grassroots leaders as well as non-Native partners in entertainment, media and social justice. Throughout Crystal’s career, she has been a respected, passionate and successful advocate for the rights of Native Americans with a special emphasis on Native children and educating philanthropy and different sectors of the American public to help transform public perceptions of tribes and Native peoples.
Judith Le Blanc
We also shout out Judith Le Blanc (Caddo): Judith is the director of the Native Organizers Alliance (NOA), a national Native training and organizing network. In the last 10 years, NOA has built relationships with tribes, traditional societies and grassroots community groups in Native communities and on reservations through Native community organizing training, strategic campaign planning and support.
Carla Fredericks
And we send praise to Carla Fredericks (Citizen of the Mandan Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation of North Dakota) who is Director of the American Indian Law Clinic at the University of Colorado Law School and Director of the First Peoples Worldwide. First Peoples Worldwide addresses the unique social and environmental impacts of development in Indigenous communities, while preparing current and future leaders to meet the pressing social responsibility challenges facing today's businesses.
We also hold space for the other movements and organizers within several BIPOC communities. Without this collective power, we would not have been able to change the direction of our leadership and we all need one another to continue to hold this new administration accountable to our communities.