Julian Brave NoiseCat

My work cuts across the fields of journalism, policy, research, art, activism and advocacy, often engaging multiple disciplines at once. I am the Vice President of Policy & Strategy with Data for Progress, a think tank, the Narrative Change Director of The Natural History Museum, an artist and activist collective, and a fellow at the Type Media Center, NDN Collective and the Center for Humans and Nature. Absent titles and at heart, I am a writer, son, brother, nephew, cousin, godfather, friend and community member.

You can find my work in print or online in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The California Sunday Magazine, Harper’s, Rolling Stone, The Paris Review, Columbia Journalism Review, The Guardian, The Nation, The Walrus, Vox, Vice, Esquire, NBC News, CBC, HuffPost, High Country News, Literary Hub, Pacific Standard, The Marshall Project, ESPN: The Undefeated, Dissent, Jacobin, Crooked, Splinter, Salon, In These Times, The American Prospect, Aperture, BOMB, Open Space, Indian Country Today, Canadian Geographic, Canadian Art, Canada’s National Observer, Courier, Frontier Magazine, World Policy Journal, Harvard Law & Policy Review and other publications. I am a correspondent for Real America with Jorge Ramos, contributing editor at Canadian Geographic and have appeared as a commentator on many programs including MSNBC, NPR, BBC, Marketplace, The Weeds, CBC, WNYC, Univision, Democracy Now!, Al Jazeera, For the Wild, TVO, Fusion TV, APTN and France 24.

My work has been recognized by the judges of the Livingston Award for Young Journalists as well as the Canadian National Magazine Awards and Digital Publishing Awards. I wrote the foreword to the Indigenous Peoples Atlas of Canada and was invited to consult for the forthcoming UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights' general comment on land rights. I have authored and edited many public policy briefs, memos, reports, polls, scorecards and other works, shaping progressive platforms like the Green New Deal.

The belief that Indigenous peoples can contribute to understanding and addressing the world's most pressing challenges inspires my work. In 2019, I helped lead a grassroots effort to bring an Indigenous canoe journey to San Francisco Bay to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Alcatraz Occupation. Eighteen canoes representing communities from as far north as Canada and as far west as Hawaii participated in the journey, which was covered by dozens of local and national media outlets, including The New York Times. In addition to the canoe journey, I guest edited “Alcatraz is Not an Island”, a special issue of Open Space magazine, and moderated a four-part speaker series, “Alcatraz: An Unfinished Occupation”, co-hosted by five local museums.

I studied history at Columbia University and the University of Oxford, where I was a Clarendon scholar. I led 350.org’s US policy work and was an Urban Fellow in the Commissioner’s Office of the NYC Department of Housing Preservation & Development. (And when I was fresh out of high school I interned for the coolest Member of Congress: Representative Barbara Lee, who speaks for me.)

Raised in a single-mother household in Oakland, California, I am a proud member of the Canim Lake Band Tsq'escen and a descendant of the Lil'Wat Nation of Mount Currie.