Melina Laboucan-Massimo

Climate Justice, Renewable Energy & Indigenous Rights Advocate

Melina Laboucan-Massimo

Climate Justice, Renewable Energy & Indigenous Rights Advocate

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Biography

Melina Laboucan-Massimo is Lubicon Cree. She was born in her community of Little Buffalo, Northern Alberta. Melina has worked on social, environmental and climate justice issues for the past 20 years. Melina is the founder of Sacred Earth, co-founder of Indigenous Climate Action, and the inaugural Indigenous research fellow at the David Suzuki Foundation where her research focused on Climate Change, Indigenous Knowledge and Renewable Energy. She is the host of a TV series called Power to the People which profiles sustainable climate solutions from renewable energy, food security to eco-housing in Indigenous communities across Canada which is currently airing on in Canada on The Weather Network, the Knowledge Network, the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, SBS Australia and FNX in the United States.

Melina holds a Master’s degree in Indigenous Governance with a focus energy transition at the University of Victoria. Melina has written for a variety of publications and produced numerous short films on climate change, environmental justice, just transition, water issues, energy sovereignty, MMIWG2S and Indigenous cultural revitalization. Melina’s most recent publication of her research and work is The Just Transition Guide - Indigenous-led Pathways Toward Equitable Climate Solutions and Resiliency in the Climate Crisis.

Melina has studied, campaigned and worked in Brazil, Australia, Mexico, Canada and across Europe focusing on environmental justice, resource extraction, climate change impacts, media literacy and Indigenous rights & responsibilities. Melina has been involved in Indigenous media making since 2004.

In 2021, Melina was named one of the 26 Climate Champions in Canada by the Canada Climate Law Initiative. She received the Canadian Eco-Hero Award in 2019 by Planet in Focus. She has also been profiled and recognized for her work throughout the years in Elle Magazine, CNN, Global Citizen, Chatelaine, Flare, CBC, Earth.org, 350.org and Refinery29.

Melina has campaigned to build sustainable futures alongside icons like Jane Fonda, Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Klein, David Suzuki, and Bill McKibben. She has been invited to speak before hundreds of audiences over the years including in the US Congress, the Harvard Law Forum, British Parliament, CTV’s The Social, National Geographic, Sustainable Production Forum and numerous universities and international organizations like Friends of the Earth and Amnesty International while campaigning globally for environmental and climate justice.

Melina has also worked on the issue of Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women since 2013 after the suspicious death of her sister Bella whose case still remains unsolved in Toronto.

Melina has served as a board of director with NDN Collective, David Suzuki Foundation, 350.org and the national steering committee of Indigenous Clean Energy and advisory panels with Canadian Climate Institute and the Indigenous Leadership Fund with Environmental Climate Change Canada.

Speaker Videos

United Shades of America Interview | CNN

A Just Transition to an Equitable Future

SPF23-Vancouver | Keynote: Melina Laboucan-Massimo: Sustaining the Sacred + Opening Remarks

The World is Watching

Power to the People

Violence Against the Earth is Violence Against Women

On the Pervasiveness of Western Culture

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Speech Topics

Climate Justice, Gender Equality, & Indigenous Rights

The path toward a cleaner, safer and more just world means reconciliation with all women, girls and Mother Nature alike. If we are serious about social equity for all women and girls - especially Indigenous women - we must recognize that violence against Earth is violence against women.

Melina speaks on the need to unpack the patriarchal, racist and colonial mentalities of our societies to move towards justice. In this talk, she addresses the reasons why Indigenous women’s lives are not valued and how that devaluation is related to the devaluation of our natural world — which Indigenous Peoples call Mother Earth.

Community Based Solar & Energy Sovereignty

In this talk, Melina shares how Indigenous communities are implementing clean energy projects, and how women in particular are creating climate solutions critical to addressing the growing impacts of climate change. Indigenous communities are on the frontlines of fighting resource extraction and climate change, but they are also on the frontlines of solutions. Growing up in one of the world’s most intensive fossil fuel extraction zones on the planet in the Alberta tar sands, Melina became increasingly aware that our current global energy strategy is unsustainable. After witnessing a massive oil spill in her home community, she dedicated her advocacy work to building renewable energy solutions that are key to a community’s health and vitality.

A Just Transition to an Equitable Future

A Just Transition places Indigenous communities at the forefront of the energy transition to ensure that our future energy system does not reproduce the imbalances and inequities of the current one. Indigenous Peoples are already leading the way towards this transition. Melina shares evocative stories of climate action taking place across North America.

Reimagining our Relationships & Communities

How do we create a future that is rooted in sustainability and reciprocal relationships with the Natural world?

For us to truly solve the climate crisis — we need a global paradigm shift back to understanding and living within the natural laws of our Earth. We must relearn how to live in reciprocity with the land. It comes as no surprise, as indicated by our current climate crisis that humans do not have dominion over the Earth. Our relationship with the Natural world cannot be a transactional one, we have seen this fail time and time again.

There needs to be a widespread understanding of what Indigenous Peoples have always known. What we do to the land, we do to ourselves. Humanity has lost this sacred connection to the Earth — this is why we are now living in an era of consequence.

Testimonials

"Melina Laboucan-Massimo was the perfect keynote for our Earth Week events. She was able to speak about decolonization and environmental justice in ways that were accessible and impactful for a diverse audience. As an environmental center that puts justice and equity at center of our mission, Melina's ability to weave the history of indigenous people with current issues related to environmental justice and renewable energy, perfectly embodied what we stand for. I received many comments thanking us for bringing her to speak to our campus."

- Mount Holyoke College

"I am writing to thank you for teaching this absolutely amazing session yesterday at the UNITED Conference! Several attendees shared with me that you provided an incredible session and I could not agree more. Thank you for your time, effort, and for sharing your expertise with us."

- Northern Michigan University

"I write to confirm that Melina Laboucan-Massimo is an excellent speaker with a lot of experience speaking before large and prestigious crowds such as the United Nations. She knows how to express herself eloquently and interestingly."

- Jane Fonda

"Melina Laboucan-Massimo is a powerful speaker and an inspiring force for climate justice and the rights of Indigenous people. We were incredibly fortunate to have her join a panel for the keynote event of our 2021 Community Summit: Towards Equity. Grounding her talk in her experience with the devastating impacts of an oil spill in her community of Little Buffalo, she made clear that Indigenous communities bear the brunt of harm from extractive industries and climate change. Linking this with the ongoing violence against Indigenous women, she voiced a powerful call for decolonization. She also offered a clear vision for a just transition, sharing stories of Indigenous-led community solar projects that point a way to a cleaner, more equitable future. Melina left us with stirring calls to action and hard-won wisdom on how to protect ourselves from the psychological wounds of pursuing climate justice, centered on the ideals of healing justice."

- Executive Director, Simon Fraser University (SFU) Public Square

"Melina opened up to the student audience and generously shared her experiences with us. She connected her personal experience to the larger issues of climate justice in an accessible way. Her talk resonated with our audience and served as a call to action."

- Humber College

"Melina Laboucan-Massimo is one of the most remarkable people on this continent. Time and again she's raised the most important questions facing us, and helped supply the answers. I know that listening to her speak can help change one's life: her vivid accounting of the damage done in Alberta's tar sands helped convince me to join in the ultimately successful fight against the Keystone Pipeline. But I've learned so much more from her: about missing and endangered Indigenous women, about the possibility that Native communities could help lead the charge on renewable energy, about the daily courage it takes to make change. I'd listen to her talk about just about anything, confident that it would connect, and that it would motivate."

- Bill McKibben, Schumann Distinguished Scholar, Middlebury College, Author & Founder 350.org

“Melina Laboucan-Massimo is among the most visionary climate justice leaders in the world. When few even knew it was happening, she raised the international alarm about the impact of tar sands extraction on Indigenous people in Northern Alberta, helping to build a transformational movement that has blocked multiple new pipeline projects. In her riveting presentations, she shares first-hand experience of the devastating impacts of pipeline spills on her own territory as well as the connections between violence against the land and violence against Indigenous women. But Melina also leaves her audiences with a powerful and credible hope for the future, as she shows what can happen when the tools of renewable energy are put in the hands of frontline Indigenous communities and rooted in respect of land rights. I don’t know anyone who brings these threads together like Melina. Listening to her is a lifechanging experience.”

- Naomi Klein, Award Winning, New York Times Best-Selling Author, The Inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair at Rutgers University

“We invited Melina to speak to our Leading Social Justice Fellowship, a leadership development initiative for individuals from the public, private, and community sectors who want to rebuild an equitable and inclusive city. From the first to the last minute, Melina created a highly engaging and intimate space, as she deftly threaded her personal story and experiences in to the work of social, environmental and healing justice, unwinding the complexity of the issues. From the start of the session Fellows felt welcomed in and could see their role in advancing this work in their personal, professional and organizational lives. Melina’s presentation and subsequent conversation afterwards was as one fellow put it – ‘so thought-provoking, empowering, and motivational, I could’ve listened to her speak for three hours.’ By the end of our time together Fellows were deeply reflective and inspired to take further action on how they want to show up in the world. She has our unreserved recommendation for delivering an essential set of insights with a unique ability to make them land with a range of audiences.”

- University of Toronto