Heather Milton-Lightening

JUDGE

International Rights of Nature Tribunal

ENG:

has over twenty years of organizing experience from local issues to international campaigns. Heather was a founding member of Native Youth Movement-that empowered youth politically and socially to make change in their communities; based in Winnipeg, MB in 1995. She helped found Winnipeg’s first Native youth organization called Aboriginal Youth with Initiative, Inc. in 1998 through her position as Associate Director. Heather then went on to found and build a national Native youth network that supported Native youth organizing across the US and Canada with the Indigenous Environmental Network. She was a former member of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Youth Advisory and has extensive experience in lobbying internationally through the United Nations and other International arenas on Indigenous Peoples issues. Heather’s work since then has been to build capacity and find resources that help local Indigenous communities. From funding board participation on the Funding Exchange Saguaro Fund, Honor the Earth and currently at the Cloudberry Collective; to founding the Indigenous People’s Power Project (IP3) to train Indigenous peoples on non-violent direct action tools. Heather’s work includes movement building through her former position as National Native Organizer for both US Social Forums in Atlanta and Detroit. She is a former organizing member of the Second People of Colour Environmental Justice Leadership Summit. She was formally the Director & Co-Director of the Canadian Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign, working to support frontline impacted Indigenous communities. She was a founding member of Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) who is the only Indigenous climate organization in Canada. Heather is currently consulting with many different organizations doing training, facilitating and support work for Indigenous communities while working on finishing a Masters Degree at York University in Toronto, on Indigenous Just Transition.