Autumn Peltier
Indigenous Water Activist
“Kids all over the world have to pay for mistakes we didn't even make. This is our future, we're the elders, we're the next leaders. This is our future.”
Autumn Peltier is a 15-year-old water activist from the Wikwemikong Unceded Territory. Peltier grew up with an understanding of the importance of water and the need to protect it. Upon hearing and learning about the unsafe water conditions in neighbouring Indigenous communities, she began to speak out for the universal right to clean drinking water. She was eight years old. Since then, she has become a force to be reckoned with as she continues to advocate for safe waterways and drinking water for Indigenous peoples in Canada and beyond.
In 2019, Peltier succeeded her late great aunt, Josephine Mandamin, and was named chief water commissioner for the Anishinabek Nation. Josephine Mandamin served as a great mentor to Peltier’s activism and continues to be a source of motivation. In a Flare interview, she reveals, “Before [my great-aunt] passed away, she told me, ‘Don’t let anyone stop you. And don’t care what people say - just keep on doing the work.’ So that’s exactly what I’m going to do.”
- Sarah Allam
Nellie McClung
Suffragette
“Why are pencils equipped with erasers if not to correct mistakes?”
Nellie McClung (1873-1951) was a Canadian suffragette, temperance advocate, author and social activist. Born in Chatsworth, Ontario and raised on a homestead in Manitoba, McClung received her teaching certificate at age 16. At age 23, she joined the Manitou Women’s Christian Temperance Union and wrote her first novel “Sowing Seeds in Danny”. McClung gained prominence by advocating for factory safety, health care for school children, women’s voting rights, equity in divorce laws, and more. Nellie McClung was also one of the “Famous 5,” a group that included Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Louise Crummy McKinney, and Irene Parlby, who, in 1928, successfully won recognition for women as “persons” under the British North America Act. Nellie McClung continues to be recognized as a hero in women’s activism for her dedication to improving their lives.