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UPCOMING EVENT: Brought to you by The Graduate Program and Sustainable Agriculture, Department of World Languages and Cultures, and American Indian Studies Program

End-Stage Iowa: Big-Ag’s Sacrifice Zone and Indigenous Resistance

With Sikowis Nobiss

Sikowis Nobiss will join virtually to discuss the environmental and climate catastrophe in the State of Iowa where the water is poisoned, animals are dying, the soil is disappearing, and the landscape is turning into a desert. Indigenous concepts such as regenerative agriculture, sustainable land use, and compassion for the earth have been violently oppressed by an imperialist heteropatriarchy to make way for colonial-capitalist farming practices which are now killing us and wreaking havoc on the climate. The only way to heal this land is to adopt Indigenous ways of being and uplift an Indigenous regenerative economy.

About Sikowis Nobiss:

Sikowis (Christine Nobiss) is Plains Cree/Saulteaux of the George Gordon First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada and grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. At 19 she began her life’s work of uplifting Indigenous voices when she got her first job at the New Brunswick Aboriginal Peoples Council in Fredericton, Canada. In 2015, she founded Great Plains Action Society as a way to increase Indigenous solidarity in Iowa City. It turned into a full-fledged organization during the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, which led her to start Little Creek Camp in February 2017. From August 2017 to September 2020, she worked for Seeding Sovereignty where she organized at a national level. As her heart is with her people and the prairies, Sikowis returned to Great Plains Action Society where she can work at a grassroots level and a fully Indigenous-led organization.

Sikowis is also a speaker, writer, and artist. She believes that environmental and social justice work are inextricably linked and change will only happen when we dismantle corrupt colonial-capitalist systems and rebuild them with a decolonized worldview. She graduated from the University of Iowa in 2008 with a Masters Degree in Religious Studies (with a focus on Native American Religion and Culture) and a Graduate Minor in American Indian Native Studies. She fights for a better future for her two young children.

Watch the lecture on Zoom or join us in Curtiss 0013 to watch her virtual lecture together.

To watch via Zoom visit this link: https://iastate.zoom.us/j/94255161173

or, go to https://iastate.zoom.us/join and enter meeting ID: 942 5516 1173

— or —

Join from dial in phone line:

Dial: +1 312 626 6799 or +1 646 876 9923

Meeting ID: 942 5516 1173

Participant ID: Shown after joining the meeting

International numbers available: https://iastate.zoom.us/u/adjB7slGBA