David Suzuki Foundation
Janelle Lapointe is a climate justice and Indigenous rights organizer, writer and strategist from Stellat’en First Nation, of mixed Black, Dakelh and French (Québécois) ancestry. She draws on her experience growing up on a small reserve in northern B.C. to centre race, class and Indigenous sovereignty in environmental conversations. Her work is rooted in building power, challenging the status quo and helping people see their stake in this fight.
Janelle writes and speaks about the weaponization of “economic reconciliation,” whose interests it serves, and what it could mean to reclaim traditional economies and imagine new ones. Her writing has appeared in The Breach, Canada’s National Observer, The Walrus, The Hill Times and The Narwhal.
She is Interim Director, Communities at the David Suzuki Foundation, and previously served as Senior Adviser, Indigenous Strategic Approach. She teaches Foundations in Climate Action at Simon Fraser University, trains grassroot organizers at the Organizing Centre, serves on the boards of Common Horizon and Sacred Earth Solar, and is a member of the Indigenous Climate Adaptation Working Group and SevenGen Energy’s youth council. She was previously a regular contributor to CBC Vancouver’s The Early Edition climate panel.
Across organizing, teaching and storytelling, her focus is collective action: equipping everyday people to organize, lead and fight for a just and liberated future. She is an uninvited guest on Treaty 13 territory, the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Huron-Wendat peoples, as well as the Mississaugas of the Credit, but makes her way home to Stella for several months of the year.
