Real Model Profile: Eriel Deranger

Image by TREATY

Eriel Deranger is a Dene woman from the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation of Alberta. But a month before she was born, her family was ousted from their trapline lands, thanks to the encroachment of uranium mining companies. The sudden move sent them to Regina where she was born and raised, returning for at least a month every summer to live off the land in the Boreal forests of her home. She jokes that, “Arts and crafts for (her) was making protest signs and helping come up with chants” – a life preparing her to push for change and to stand up for what she believes in.

Eriel learned a great deal from her activist parents about being on the front lines of movements. But when she got an internship with FSIN’s specific land claims and treaty land entitlement division, they indoctrinated her into the world of Indigenous rights on an academic level. She realized that environmental legislation laws and policies overlap with several Indigenous rights, but the two causes weren’t working together. A few years later she joined the Rain Forest Action Network and the Freedom From Oil Campaign where she made it her platform to bridge the gap between environmental and Indigenous issues. Things snowballed for Eriel as she soon found herself rubbing shoulders with the activist elite. One thought kept returning to her. “I wish I could just work for my people.” Now she does just that, working as a liaison and guardian for her Nation as the Communication Coordinator.

Seeing the land she spent her summers playing on replaced with holes in the ground, she’s using the skills she’s learned over the years to push back against the policies that allowed it, not just on a provincial level but nationally and internationally, empowering her community and others to take action as well. “We’ve become economic hostages in the race to industrialize our homeland. The concept of Mother Earth isn’t hokey. Without the planet, we don’t exist. She literally nurtures us and brings us to life. That is what mother’s do to their children and that is what she does to us.” Eriel knows all about being a mother, she has a teenage daughter and a toddling son. “It’s a fine balance but I have hard lines. My (work) day ends at 5 o’clock. It ends at 5 o’clock because my kids need supper and that’s not going to change.” They are her motivation after all. What drives her is the fear that there won’t be much of a world left for them. “I’ve already seen massive amounts of my land destroyed and I just really want there to be something left for them. If you destroy the land, you erase the people that were there. Culture and identity are tied to the land. We have a responsibility to bring people back to that.”

– Shane Bellegarde

Image Credits: Artist: Treaty Creative Photographer: Ben Powless Subject: ‘Unity’ Find more images like this on Facebook Search: Treaty