Robert Blake & Tara Houska: 3 Questions
Mon, Jan 31, 5:30 pm (5 pm doors)
Free, registration required
Moderated by Jothsna Harris
Please note: Proof of COVID-19 vaccination or a negative test taken within the prior 72 hours is required to attend this event. Masks are required regardless of vaccination status.
Robert Blake (Red Lake Nation) is the owner of Minneapolis-based solar installation company Solar Bear, executive director of Native Sun Community Power Development, and a graduate student at the University of Minnesotan Carlson Executive Master of Business Administration program. His passion is spreading the word of renewable energy through communication, cooperation, and collaboration.
Tara Houska (Couchiching First Nation Anishinaabe) is a tribal attorney, founder of Giniw Collective, and a former advisor on Native American affairs to Bernie Sanders. She spent six months on the frontlines fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline, a years-long struggle against Enbridge’s Line 3, and is currently engaged in the movement to defund fossil fuels. She is a co-founder of Not Your Mascots, a group committed to positive representation of Native peoples.
She is a TED speaker, the 2017 Harvard “Public Interested” keynote, received an “Awesome Women Award” from Melinda Gates, the 2021 American Climate Leadership Award, a 2019 Rachel’s Network Catalyst Award and is featured in “Women: A Century of Change” by National Geographic. Tara has written for the women-led climate anthology “All We Can Save”, the New York Times, CNN, the Guardian, Vogue, and Indian Country Today. She lives in a resistance camp in Northern Minnesota.
Admirers of each other's work and leadership in climate action, Blake and Houska will each prepare three questions to pose to the other for a wide-ranging mutual interview, ending with audience Q&A.
Jothsna Harris (she/her) is a climate and cultural strategist and the principal consultant of Change Narrative LLC. With nearly a decade of experience building capacity for the climate justice movement, most recently as the Director of Special Projects and Partnerships at Climate Generation: A Will Steger Legacy. Jothsna has designed and implemented award-winning climate change programs that are rooted in community, center personal stories, and other values-based ways that resonate, coaching thousands of people to find compelling narratives as an advocacy tool for solutions. Jothsna led the creative process and co-edited the book, Eyewitness: Minnesota Voices on Climate Change; an anthology of community-sourced stories, poems, and art, and developed a campaign that utilized the book to build public will and share testimony with legislators to help move climate justice policy. Jothsna currently serves on The Great Northern Board of Directors. In her spare time, she is a small-scale organic farmer and proud member of the Midwest Farmers of Color Collective.