Severn Cullis-Suzuki

Severn Cullis-Suzuki is an environmental and cultural activist and writer.

A longtime activist for ‘intergenerational justice’, Severn founded the Environmental Children’s Organization with friends at nine years old, which culminated in her speech to the UN at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 when she was twelve.

Severn is an Earth Charter Commissioner (earthcharterinaction.org), and she and the Skyfish Project brought the ‘Recognition of Responsibility’ pledge to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg 2002.  She attended Rio+20 as a We Canada Champion 2012.  Severn has participated in four environmental speaking tours in Japan with the Namakemono Club.  She is an Action Canada Fellow (‘04-‘05), has published several books in Japan, and is a co-editor and contributor for the book Notes from Canada’s Young Activists (Greystone books, 2007).  She is host of the APTN TV series ‘Samaqan – Water Stories’, board member of the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society and the David Suzuki Foundation, and council member of Earth Charter International. She holds a B.Sc. in Biology from Yale University and an M.Sc. in Ethnoecology from the University of Victoria, where she studied with elders from the Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations.

Severn lives on the archipelago of Haida Gwaii off the coast of British Columbia where she is studying the Haida language (Skidegate dialect) with her husband and two sons.