Climate Justice + Responsible Journalism with Maia Wikler

I’m speaking with Maia Wikler, who is an impressive force for climate advocacy and environmental justice. Maia is a PhD student in Political Ecology and journalist for outlets such as Teen Vogue and VICE.

On this episode we chat about:

• The importance of access to nature on our health—and why we need to fight for it
• How early health challenges led Maia to understand how the health of the environment affects us personally
• The fallacy of individualism. We’re not separate from our environment or each other
• Why it actually matters that we understand how ecosystems work
• The intersections of food security and sovereignty in the North. “They’re just SO inextricable from oil and gas drilling impacts on the Arctic”
• The Indigenous Elders who informed and shaped Maia’s experience of Alaska
• How Fairy Creek, while local in scale, is global in what it represents: the extreme scarcity of old growth, intact, ancient rainforest in Canada
• The value of contextualizing an expedition with the stories of the land—and how orienting that is for researchers
• The shocking truth about the forestry industry’s carbon emissions
• How violent “road building” is on both the land and the local Indigenous communities
• How politics affects biodiversity and corporate abuse in BC forests
• Campaigns of misinformation “greenwashing”

Learned something new? Have questions?

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Connect with Maia:

Website: maiawikler.com

Instagram: @maiareillyw

Twitter: @maiawikler

Maia’s essays are featured in the book, No Planet B, and she has a chapter titled When the Salmon Spoke: A Community-led, Storied Resistance and Resilience to Colonial Violence, in the forthcoming Book Business Storytelling and Postcolonialism

Support the Defence of Indigenous Land BIPOC fund – Fairy Creek

Maia’s Recommendations:

Finding the Mother Tree by Suzanne Simard

Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Vogue Mexico’s cover feature on Quannah Chasinghorse + following her on Instagram