Checking In With Serena Mendizibal
Young Leaders Award recipient Serena Mendizabal (she/her) is a Cayuga Wolf Clan-Panamanian woman from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Serena is a community-based researcher, grassroots organizer, and environmental advocate. Serena began her journey in climate justice and clean energy when she was 18 finding gaps in community consent for renewable energy projects and further explored what climate justice and a just transition can look like in a community of over 28,000 members. From then on, Serena has dedicated her life to Indigenous self-determination, climate justice, environmental health impacts, and clean energy transitions through studies, work, and extracurriculars. Serena is passionate about self-determined community development, action, and futures led by sovereign, healthy nations. Serena is the Just Transition Manager at Sacred Earth Solar, Co-Chair at SevenGen National Indigenous Youth Energy Council, Climate Action Strategy Co-Lead at Protect the Tract, and Course Collaborator for Connecting for Climate Change Action, as well as Board of Director at Student Energy and an Advisory Council member for Indigenous Clean Energy.
We recently checked in with Serena to learn more about her background and plans for the conservation and regeneration of the planet.
WS: Could you start by telling us a bit about yourself and what inspired you to embark on your current project?
SM: Sgeno! My name is Serena Mendizabal and I am a Cayuga Wolf Clan Panamanian woman from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. I am currently the Interim Managing Director at Sacred Earth Solar, an Indigenous women-led organization empowering frontline Indigenous communities with climate solutions and healing justice. I am also the Co-Chair of SevenGen, a National Indigenous Youth Energy Council and the Climate Action Lead for Protect the Tract, a Haudenosaunee-led group in Six Nations enforcing our hereditary governance’s Moratorium on Development along the Grand River. Land Back is central to my climate advocacy as I have been influenced by the work of my family and community since I was a child. With my exposure to both clean energy development and land back movements in Six Nations, I wanted to explore how to actually implement a just transition in my community. I did not want to replicate the same inequities of the fossil fuel industry through lack of consent as I was seeing with previous utility scale projects on our territory, but instead to do things differently. As a young person I felt it was my obligation to implement climate solutions in a just, equitable way that would represent who we are as Haudenosaunee people. As Haudenosaunee people, we have been governed by our clan system since time immemorial, and our Longhouses are at the heart and soul of who we are through ceremony, culture, language, harvest, and even our place of funerals. The Longhouse represents our life as Haudenosaunee people, a place where our families gather and we make decisions as a collective. Since November 2022, I have been working with Haudenosaunee leadership for the Sour Springs Longhouse to implement a Sustainable Restoration of our ceremonial space through energy efficiency, solarization and a food security build. I wanted to bring my knowledge home and create a project that would make space for Haudenosaunee peoples and our hereditary governance to engage in self-determining community development. For most of my life, I have seen our people opposed to mass development on our territories to protect our lands, and I wanted to create something that we would not be opposed to, but proud of. A project that represents our relationship to the lands and waters, and that reflected our teachings of the Thanksgiving Address.
WS: In what ways does your project engage with local communities? How important is community involvement to the success of your initiative and why?
SM: My project is governed by the hereditary governance system of the Haudenosaunee people at the Sour Springs Longhouse in Six Nations. Our clan decision making has been interwoven into the fabric of this project, and it is central to our restoration. In our community, we see a lot of First Nations owned projects with companies or governments coming for approval, but I never really see community-led projects. Ones from the ground up, governed by our people and for the benefit of our people solely. The Sustainable Restoration would not be possible without the Haudenosaunee people of the Sour Springs Longhouse. Every decision has been made by our people, every step of the project inclusive of our needs, and all with the goal of making a healthy, comfortable, and safe place for us to gather at Sour Springs Longhouse. We deserve access to funding, resources, and opportunities as grassroots organizations and traditional governance systems because we are the ones leading the Just Transition. The Sour Springs Longhouse Sustainable Restoration is the Just Transition.
WS: Could you share a particular success story from your project that you feel proud of?
SM: A few weeks ago, my community came together to install the Solar PV System. All hands on deck, we constructed a ground-mounted 24 kW solar system on our lands to power the 4 buildings at the longhouse. In March, we trained members of the longhouse in solar installation, and many members of the longhouse came together to do it themselves. I am really proud to see a project in our community that we are proud of, and that we did ourselves without government or corporate funding. For us, by us!
WS: Who are your role models in the environmental and climate movements, and how have they influenced your approach to your work?
SM: My role models in the climate movement are the auntys and uncles who came before me. I grew up seeing my family on the frontlines from Oka to Kanonhstaton. I would not be here today, doing this work without them. Through their influence, every fibre of my climate and environmental justice work is grounded in Indigenous sovereignty and rights. There is no climate justice without Indigenous sovereignty!
WS: What advice would you give to other young individuals who want to start their own environmental or climate projects?
SM: Listen to those who have come before as well as the coming faces, find your community, and build long lasting kinship networks. We must take a collective approach to our climate justice work because who is this all for? Our communities, our families, and all human and non-human kin!
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