Water Is Life Roundtable

Honour World Water Day with Audrey Siegl, Carleen Thomas, Helen Knott & Caleb Behn

What happens if people put protection of water first and foremost as their priority? How would BC’s planned fossil fuel expansion and hydro-dam expansion impact watershed health and Indigenous rights? What does reconciliation that honours water as life look like, and what kinds of actions can everyday people take to protect water?

Bios:

Caleb Behn is Eh-Cho Dene and Dunne Za/Cree from the Treaty 8 Territory of Northeastern BC. He graduated from the University of Victoria with a Juris Doctor degree and is among the first UVic Law students granted the Concentration in Environmental Law and Sustainability. Prior to law school, he was the Oil and Gas Officer for the West Moberly First Nations and a Lands Manager for the Saulteau First Nations. Mr. Behn is the subject of a documentary film focused on the impact of hydraulic fracturing in Canada and Aotearoa, New Zealand, entitled Fractured Land.

Helen Knott is an activist and poet-writer working for Indigenous land rights in Canada. She has participated in the Treaty 8 Caravan across Canada — a cross country caravan for justice and peace that stopped in major cities to talk about stopping the Site C Dam in British Colombia — and writes about the relationship between resource extraction and violence against Indigenous women. Helen is Dane Zaa and Nehiyawak from the Prophet River First Nation in British Colombia.

sχɬemtəna:t, St’agid Jaad, Audrey Siegl is an independent activist from the traditional territory of the Musqueam. She is active on grassroots environmental and social justice political front line movements. Audrey has worked on raising awareness on housing issues in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, with Greenpeace Canada on initiatives to protect the Arctic from oil drilling, and recently participated in a direct action with actor Emma Thompson in London, England. She also worked with LUSH Canada on the Save the Grizzly Stop the Trophy Hunt Campaign.

Carleen Thomas works as a member of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation’s Treaty Lands & Resources as the Relationships & Protocol Agreements Coordinator. Having previously served as Manager of Intergovernmental Relations for the Nation’s Sacred Trust Initiative. (TWN”s fight against the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain expansion project.) For over 16 years, she has served on Chief and Council for the Tsleil-Waututh Nation (TWN). Dedicated to community development, she has also served as TWN’s Manager of Education and sat on NVSD 44 – Aboriginal Education Advisory Council, Integrated First Nations Police Unit – Joint Management Team, and the Community Engagement Hub on FN Health. She has represented TWN on the aboriginal advisory boards of North Vancouver School District #44, Capilano University, and Simon Fraser University. In all this work, she embodies the heart of reconciliation as if it were living and breathing, treating everyone with respect, grace, and diplomacy, and honouring the responsibility to protect our sacred mother earth for future generations.