Leadership for the
ECOZOIC

Lynn is Kanienkehá:ka of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy on her father’s side, adopted into the Turtle Clan, and mixed settler ancestry on her mother’s side. She lives and works from her home community of Kahnawà:ke, located on the shores of the St. Lawrence River near Tiohtià:ke (Montreal).

Lynn spent more than two decades working in her community caring for lands and waters, habitat monitoring, mapping, protection, and restoration. She helped to establish a new Environment Protection Unit for the Mohawk Council of Kahnawà:ke and acted as its inaugural Director for five years, before joining the Jane Goodall Institute of Canada as Director of Programs, where she advanced the organization’s decolonization goals within their programs in Canada, and supporting programs in Africa addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and environmental inequities.

Lynn currently works with the Indigenous Leadership Initiative as a Policy Advisor, focused on biodiversity, and building supports to address the unique challenges of land and water protection efforts of Indigenous communities near urbanized areas. She also does work at the international level as an Indigenous Science Expert on biodiversity and plastic pollution issues, where she strives to elevate Indigenous science, approaches, rights, and voices for solving these planetary crises.

Lynn holds a Bachelor of Environmental Science in Ecology and a Master of Environment and Management. Her doctoral research in McGill’s Department of Anthropology is focused on plastics and its colonial aspects, impacts on Indigenous Peoples at all stages of the plastic lifecycle including on Indigenous rights, and Indigenous-led solutions to address this global problem.