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Voices from Piikani Youth – Draven’s Story

Mentored by award-winning Blackfoot Artist Adrian Stimson, several youth from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta explored what it means to be resilient in the face of a warming planet.   

These are excerpts from Draven Morning Bull’s Story of Resilience, where he reflects on the changing climate of the Piikani reserve lands and the growing difficulty of finding traditional medicinal plants. 

“What I have noticed about climate change on the Piikani Reserve is that it keeps getting hotter in summer, and medicines like mint and sweetgrass that need lots of water are now harder to find. The weather system has changed. The heavy rains in June don’t come anymore, and instead we get hail that knocks the berry blossoms off the bushes, so the berries don’t grow. My cousins and I can’t find chokecherries at my grandmother, Cheryl Sharp Adze’s, place near the river anymore.”   

 

“The main message I want to convey is for people to be more aware of how climate change is affecting our connection to the land. How it’s impacting our ability to access and gather our medicines and berries, which help us connect to Creator. I want to express my sadness that these things are disappearing.” 

Draven Morning Bull, Youth Participant, Stories of Resilience - Voices from Piikani Youth

Visit the StoryMap to read the rest of Draven’s story, and explore all six of the youth participants’ Stories of Resilience. 

Laura Stewart

Board Member

Laura Stewart is the Community Wildfire Resilience Coordinator with Forsite Fire, supporting communities across Canada with wildfire risk assessments, mitigation planning, and program delivery. She has more than a decade of experience advancing wildfire resilience at Indigenous, municipal, provincial/territorial, and national levels. Previously, Laura served nearly eleven years as Alberta’s Provincial FireSmart Specialist, leading community, WUI, neighbourhood, and Home Ignition Zone programs, coordinating funding, and partnering with communities and fire services across the province. She has also served as Board Chair with both the Partners in Protection Association (FireSmart Canada) and the Community Wildfire Resilience Association of Alberta.

 

Sara Walsh, PhD

Board Member

Sara Walsh, PhD, is a disaster risk reduction and climate resilience specialist with more than 15 years of experience spanning Canada, Nepal, the Middle East, and North Africa. Until November 2025, she served as Thematic Lead for Climate and Resilience with the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC), where she supported Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies to strengthen their climate and risk reduction work across the region. Sara currently works as a freelance consultant with the United Nations, governments, and humanitarian organizations on recovery, risk governance, and community-based resilience. She teaches at a Canadian university and holds a PhD in Disaster Risk Reduction. Her work emphasizes anticipatory action, equity, and bridging research with practice to shape more resilient and sustainable futures.

Alison Criscitiello

Board Member

Alison Criscitiello, PhD, is an ice core scientist and high-altitude mountaineer who explores the history of climate and sea ice in polar and high-alpine regions using ice core chemistry. Alison’s work also focuses on environmental contaminant histories in ice cores from the Canadian high Arctic and the water towers of the Canadian Rockies. In 2010, she led the first all-women’s ascent of Lingsarmo, a 22,818-foot peak in the Indian Himalaya. Alison has earned three American Alpine Club (AAC) climbing awards, the John Lauchlan and Mugs Stump alpine climbing awards, as well as the first Ph.D. in Glaciology ever conferred by MIT. She is an Assistant Professor and the Director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab at the University of Alberta. She is the co-founder of Girls on Ice Canada.