WArlette Alcock is a Métis-Canadian folk musician, songwriter and social activist. Arlette is best known for performing her outspoken songs which detail the past and current challenges facing Metis and Aboriginal Canadians. Since 1997 she has released two full-length albums of original music under the mononym Arlette. Both albums have received extensive Aboriginal Radio airplay in Canada and the United States. Arlette has been nominated for a variety of Aboriginal music awards in North America and won the Songwriter of the Year award at the Native-E Music Awards in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2008.
WAnnie Mae Aquash was a First Nations activist and Mi'kmaq tribal member from Nova Scotia, Canada. Aquash moved to Boston in the 1960s and joined other First Nations and Indigenous Americans focused on education and resistance, and police brutality against urban Indigenous peoples. She was part of the American Indian Movement, participated in several occupations, and participated in the 1973 Wounded Knee incident at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, United States.
WMichèle Taïna Audette is a Canadian politician and Native Canadian activist. She has served as president of Femmes autochtones du Québec and the Native Women's Association of Canada. She served from 2004 through 2008 as Associate Deputy Minister at the Ministry of Relations with Citizens and Immigration of the Quebec government, where she was in charge of the Secretariat for Women. In 2017, she was appointed as one of the five commissioners of the government's national inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
WPerry Bellegarde is a Canadian First Nations advocate and politician who served as National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations from December 10, 2014 to July 8, 2021. In Saskatchewan, he had previously served as chief of the Little Black Bear First Nation, chief of the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations, and as the Saskatchewan regional chief of the Assembly of First Nations.
WJohn Boncore, also known as John Pasquale Boncore, Dacajeweiah, John Boncore Hill, John B. Hill, and John Hill, was a political activist and actor who first garnered media attention for his role in the 1971 Attica Prison revolt in upstate New York.
WMichael (Mike) Cachagee is a prominent Indigenous rights activist, speaker, and community leader. He is part of Chapleau Cree First Nation and was one of the founding members of the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association. He is a well known residential school survivor and has been an advocate for residential school rights, healing, and reconciliation.
WBruce Allan Clark is a Canadian native rights lawyer, writer and activist. He rose to attention as part of the Gustafsen Lake Standoff and its aftermath.
WClimate change and indigenous peoples describes how climate change disproportionately impacts indigenous peoples around the world when compared to non-indigenous peoples. These impacts are particularly felt in relation to health, environments, and communities. Some indigenous scholars of climate change argue that these disproportionately felt impacts are linked to ongoing forms of colonialism. Indigenous peoples found throughout the world have strategies and traditional knowledge to adapt to climate change. These knowledge systems can be beneficial for their own community's adaptation to climate change as expressions of self-determination as well as to non-indigenous communities.
WGertrude Ettershank Guerin or Klaw-law-we-leth (1917-1998) was chief of the Musqueam Indian Band in British Columbia, Canada.
WShirley Fletcher Horn is the first chancellor of Algoma University. Born in Chapleau, Ontario Horn attended the St. John's Indian Residential School and the Shingwauk Indian Residential School. She is well known for her advocacy work relating to the legacy of residential schools in Canada. She is a member of Missanabie Cree First Nation and she served as Missanabie's Chief for six years.
WJaimie Isaac is a Winnipeg-based Anishinaabe artist and curator.
WFrederick Ogilvie Loft was a Mohawk nation activist who founded the League of Indians of Canada. He has been counted among "the great Indian activists of the first half of the twentieth century."
WMarie Smallface Marule was a Canadian academic administrator, activist, and educator. She served as executive director of the National Indian Brotherhood (NIB), chief administrator of the World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP), and secretary of the Indian Association of Alberta. Marule was president of Red Crow Community College for two decades, and led the creation of several indigenous studies programs. She was previously an assistant professor of Native American studies at the University of Lethbridge.
WHarriet Nahanee also known as Tseybayotl was an indigenous rights activist, residential school alumna, and environmental activist. She was born in British Columbia, Canada. She comes from the Pacheedaht who are part of the Nuu-chah-nulth, Indigenous peoples from the Vancouver Island. As a child, Nahanee attended both Ahousaht Residential School and Alberni Residential School, and would later testify about the horrible treatment she received there. She married into the Squamish (Sḵwxwú7mesh).
WHarlan Pruden is a First Nations Cree scholar and activist.
WWilliam Ronald Reid Jr. (Haida) was a Canadian artist whose works include jewelry, sculpture, screen-printing, and paintings. Producing over one thousand original works during his fifty-year career, Reid is regarded as one of the most significant Northwest Coast artists of the late twentieth century.
WDiom Roméo Saganash is a Canadian Cree lawyer and politician who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for the Quebec riding of Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou from 2011 to 2019. As a member of the New Democratic Party he was first elected to the House of Commons in the 2011 federal election, succeeding Yvon Lévesque of the Bloc Québécois. He was reelected in the 2015 federal election. He did not run for reelection in 2019.
WBuffy Sainte-Marie, is an Indigenous Canadian-American singer-songwriter, musician, Oscar-winning composer, visual artist, educator, pacifist, and social activist. Throughout her career in all of these areas, her work has focused on issues facing Indigenous peoples of the Americas. Her singing and writing repertoire also includes subjects of love, war, religion, and mysticism. She has won recognition, awards and honours for her music as well as her work in education and social activism. Among her most popular songs are "Universal Soldier", "Cod'ine", "Until It's Time for You to Go", "Now That the Buffalo's Gone", and her covers of Mickey Newbury's "Mister Can't You See" and Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game". Her music has been recorded by Elvis Presley, Neil Diamond, Donovan, Joe Cocker, Jennifer Warnes, Barbra Streisand, Shirley Bassey, Roberta Flack, Janis Joplin, and Glen Campbell.
WSylvia McAdam Saysewahum is a member of the Cree Nation. She is an advocate for First Nation and environmental rights in Canada. She is a founding member of Idle No More, a lawyer, a professor, and an author. In all of these cases, her work is focused on spreading awareness and education about First Nation and Environmental rights.
WPaula Sherman is an Algonquin writer, activist and educator. She is of Omàmìwinini (Algonquin) heritage and a Family Head on Ka-Pishkawandemin, the traditional governing council for the Ardoch Algonquin First Nation. She is also a professor of Indigenous Studies at Trent University, in Peterborough, Ontario. Her recent book entitled Dishonour of the Crown: The Ontario Resource Regime in the Valley of the Kiji Sibi chronicles the Ardoch community's struggle to prevent uranium prospecting on their traditional lands and is published by Arbeiter Ring Publishing, Winnipeg, MB. She is also a contributor to Lighting the Eighth Fire: The Liberation, Resurgence and Protection of Indigenous Nations, a collection of essays writing by emerging Indigenous activists and academics edited by Mississauga academic Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
WPeter Simpson (1871?–1947) was a Canadian-born Tsimshian activist for Alaska Native rights, and co-owner of the first Indian-owned business in Alaska.
WPaulette Steeves is the Canada Research Chair in Healing and Reconciliation at Algoma University.
WMary Two-Axe Earley was a Mohawk and Oneida women's rights activist from the reserve of Kahnawake in Quebec, Canada. After losing her legal Indian status due to marrying a non-status man, Two-Axe Earley advocated for changes to the Indian Act, which had promoted gender discrimination and stripped First Nations women of the right to participate in the political and cultural life of their home reserves.