Frack Off: Kandi Mossett | Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara Nation

• published: 16 Oct 2014
• views: 14

The School of Media Studies (http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement/school-of-media-studies) at The New School for Public Engagement (http://www.newschool.edu/public-engagement) presents a panel featuring activists Shelley A. Young, Kandi Mosset, Elle Maija Tailfeathers, and Ellen Gabriel discussing high-profile media campaigns by indigenous groups in Canada and the United States that protest the oil and fracking industries and the ongoing governmental violations of Tribal sovereignty and treaty rights. Kandi Mossett (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) Native Energy & Climate Campaign Organizer was born in North Dakota and grew up in an area known today as the Fort Berthold Reservation. She obtained her undergraduate degree from the University of North Dakota (UND) in Natural Resource and Park Management. After working in the Park Service for 3 years she went on to earn a Masters of Environmental Management within UND’s Earth Systems Science and Policy Program. She began working for the Indigenous Environmental Network as the Tribal Campus Climate Challenge (TCCC) Organizer in February 2007, engaging over 30 tribal colleges and working on projects ranging from initiating recycling programs and community tree plantings to small-scale community solar panel installations and community gardens. Her work has since expanded to the international arena, within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, in an effort to create more awareness about international decision-making and its effect at the local level. Kandi continues to work primarily at the grassroots level bridging generational gaps in tribal communities while connecting the local to the national and the national to the international in an effort to raise aware- ness about sustainability and continue the fight towards just climate and energy solutions. Her current focus is on creating awareness about the environmentally and socially devastating effects of hydraulic fracturing due to severely limited regulations and protections, particularly on Tribal lands. Sponsored by the School of Media Studies and co-organized in collaboration with Idle No More (http://www.idlenomore.ca/) and Frack Action (http://www.frackaction.org), a leading New York-based organization working for a statewide ban on fracking as a part of Climate Action Week at The New School.