Special Episode : On Climate Change/Issues Featuring Jacqui Patterson and Amelia Marchand

Jacqueline Patterson, MSW, MPH, is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. She has worked on gender justice, racial justice, economic justice, and environmental justice, with organizations including Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, IMA World Health, United for a Fair Economy, ActionAid, Health GAP, and the organization she co-founded, Women of Color United. Before founding the Chisholm Legacy Project, Patterson served for 11 years as the Senior Director of Environmental and Climate Justice at the NAACP. She serves on the Boards of Directors for the Institute of the Black World, the American Society of Adaptation Professionals, National Black Workers Center Project, Bill Anderson Fund and the Advisory Boards for the Center for Earth Ethics and the Hive Fund.

Amelia Marchand’s lineage includes Okanogan, Lakes, Moses-Columbia, Palus, Chief Joseph Band of Wal’wama Nimiipuu, French, Irish, German, and Dutch.  She is a wife, daughter and granddaughter of U.S. Army veterans, and a descendant of U.S. prisoners of war, the U.S. American Indian residential school system, and the U.S. relocation program for American Indians.  Her personal experiences and family history have increased her passion for indigenous rights, environmental justice, and implementing socially equitable solutions for climate change adaptation and mitigation that not only honor values of community and reciprocity; but also heal wounds from intergenerational trauma and institutional colonialism.  

L.I.G.H.T. Foundation was born from these experiences and desires – a way to honor the memory of the land, memory of our ancestors, heal our cultural ecology, uplift our hearts, and support those whose wish to do the same.  In this way, we can find resilience, support, and connections to help our human and ecological relatives survive the climate crises.  As the salmon swim together against the current to support their future generations, we must do the same.   

A citizen of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation, Amelia is the Executive Director of the Center for World Indigenous Studies, an education, research, and public policy nonprofit established in 1979.  She also volunteers as a board member with Conservation Northwest, the Nez Perce Wallowa Homeland and serves on the Women in Conservation Leadership Advisory Council for the National…Read More