Kandi Mossett grew up on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota and experienced first-hand how unfairly Indigenous communities are affected by oil drilling and fracking. Since 2007, she’s been focusing on educating people about the environmental, social, and health impacts of fracking. She helped her Fort Berthold community prevent a solid waste disposal pit from being placed nearby, and also kept wastewater injection sites from being placed too close to water sources. Mossett’s plan for the future is to find out if the rise in asthma in certain Indigenous communities is related to fracking’s impact on water and air quality. She is also planning to found a nonprofit that teaches food sovereignty and encourages reservations in Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota to adopt renewables. Usually, Mossett’s tribal leaders are all male and she would like to see more women stepping forward to fight. Photo credit: grist 50!
