{"id":17206,"date":"2017-04-19T07:07:00","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T13:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=17206"},"modified":"2017-04-19T07:07:00","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T13:07:00","slug":"shes-fighting-climate-change-from-rural-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2017\/04\/shes-fighting-climate-change-from-rural-montana\/","title":{"rendered":"She’s fighting climate change from rural Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Mossett\"<\/a>

Kandi Mossett, who lives near Rockvale, will be attending the Peoples Climate March in Washington, D.C., on April 29 as part of her work with the Indigenous Environmental Network.<\/p><\/div>\n

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to converge on Washington, D.C., on April 29 for the Peoples Climate March<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of them will be Kandi Mossett, who lives between Rockvale and Joliet. But don\u2019t assume she\u2019ll be daunted by the cig city or the big crowds.<\/p>\n

Mossett has traveled widely since joining the Indigenous Environmental Network<\/a> in 2007, attending United Nations climate-change conferences and similar events in South Africa, Guatemala, Australia, Peru and Denmark, among other countries.<\/p>\n

The IEN website describes her as \u201ca leading voice in the fight to bring visibility to the impacts that climate change and environmental injustice are having on Indigenous communities across North America.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mossett has been living near Rockvale for four years, since her partner took a job with the Native American Development Corp. in downtown Billings. Before that they lived in Bismarck, N.D., where she was immersed in the impacts of the Bakken oil boom.<\/p>\n

Mossett is a Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara, originally from Fort Berthold, N.D. She earned an undergraduate degree and a master\u2019s in environmental management from the University of North Dakota-Grand Forks, and worked for a time in Bemidji, Minn., where the IEN is headquartered, before the move to Bismarck.<\/p>\n

She used to be the IEN\u2019s Tribal Campus Climate Challenge coordinator, working with more than 30 tribal colleges to establish environmental programs, encourage conversations about \u201csocio-ecologic injustice\u201d and find green jobs for young Native Americans.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>She is now the lead organizer for the IEN\u2019s Extreme Energy & Just Transition Campaign, which is focused on creating awareness about the environmental and social impacts of hydraulic fracturing on tribal lands. But she\u2019s also active in helping tribes make the transition to new energy sources, in starting community gardening projects, working on coal issues and encouraging hemp production.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndian Country is big and there\u2019s lots of issues all over the country,\u201d Mossett said. \u201cNeedless to say, it\u2019s a big task\u2014day by day, step by step, community by community.\u201d<\/p>\n

She has also found the time to join marches and protests, including the long fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline on the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North\u00a0Dakota. Mossett spent last August, September and October there with her 3-year-old child.<\/p>\n

Although the protests\u00a0eventually ended and the pipeline was approved by President Trump, \u201cI don\u2019t look at it as a defeat at all,\u201d Mossett said.<\/p>\n

She said the Standing Rock protest energized Native Americans and other people all over the country. Before Standing Rock, she said, the general attitude was that fossil fuels and nuclear power were unavoidable, something you just had to learn to live with.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat people saw was that there are alternative solutions,\u201d she said. \u201cStanding Rock opened up people\u2019s eyes and showed them there is collaboration around the world, all around the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just as energizing was the election of Trump. Mossett said his election \u201cis sort of bringing together organizations and people that were always like-minded but didn\u2019t work together.\u201d She thinks Hillary Clinton, had she been elected, would have promoted fossil fuels, too, \u201cbut Trump takes everything to such an extreme. He is just out to do some major damage.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s never been more clear how industry mingles with politics,\u201d she continued. \u201cWhat do we do? That\u2019s kind of where we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Peoples Climate March was set for April 29 because that will be the 100th day of Trump\u2019s presidency, and the Peoples Climate Movement, made up of 50-some organizations, including the IEN, wants to protect gains made in recent years and to demand movement toward a clean-energy economy.<\/p>\n

Mossett will be going to New York City this Friday for meetings of the UN’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, then traveling by train with 30 other people from the Indigenous Environmental Network to Washington for the climate march and related events. She is acting as the logistics coordinator for the group and is also acting as a liaison to other groups and communities.<\/p>\n

It’s a lot of work, she said, but in her all travels she’s found that “the single most difficult thing” is keeping in touch with her family in Rockvale.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to converge on Washington, D.C., on April 29 for the Peoples Climate March. One of them will be Kandi Mossett, who lives between Rockvale and Joliet. But don\u2019t assume she\u2019ll be daunted by the cig city or the big crowds.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,14],"tags":[5762,5759,5761,5760,474],"class_list":["post-17206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-montana","category-news","tag-bakken-oil","tag-indigenous-environmental-network","tag-kandi-mossett","tag-peoples-climate-march","tag-rockvale","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17206"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17210,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17206\/revisions\/17210"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}