Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is a Denè Indigenous rights advocate, activist, member and employee of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN) of Northern Alberta, Canada, downstream of Alberta’s Tar Sands. She is also the founder of Indigenous Climate Action, Canada’s only Indigenous-led climate justice social movement organization. Eriel's work focuses on raising awareness about the devastation caused by the fossil fuel industry’s immense extractive operations in Alberta’s tar sands and the local impacts in her people’s ancestral homelands in the boreal forest around Lake Athabasca downstream. She takes the story international by drawing connections between her region and the global biosphere already in the throes of climate change-induced cataclysms. Eriel has traveled the world delivering workshops, keynote address and lectures that empower and inspire people to understand, support and uphold the unique rights of Indigenous peoples to defend her people’s right to survive and the fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitat of northern forests at risk of annihilation, as well as the very future of life on this planet.