Maia Wikler is an anthropologist, climate justice organizer, and writer. Her most recent work appears in Teen Vogue and VICE. In June 2019, as a member of The North Face New Explorers Arctic Expedition, Maia journeyed to the Arctic Wildlife Refuge to report the impacts of the ongoing environmental and human rights crisis from the fossil fuel industry and climate change. She will be returning to the Arctic in March to direct a short documentary film with an all-female crew on the women leading the fight to protect the Arctic Refuge, supported by The North Face. Maia was recently selected as a National Geographic Early Career Explorer 2020 and will be documenting cross-border salmon stories to raise awareness about the threats to wild salmon from mining in Northern British Columbia.
The progression of her academic work in anthropology, and as a writer, filmmaker and community organizer, has compelled her toward work focusing on the intersectionality of climate justice and wielding storytelling as a tool for justice.
Maia will begin her PhD studies in Political Ecology at the University of Victoria in September 2020 where she will research corporate abuse, shifting baselines and how to effectively mobilize corporate accountability for climate justice via storytelling and memory methods. Maia seeks to connect dynamic and diverse audiences on issues of climate justice and corporate abuse through dynamic mediums of academia, film, writing and community organizing.
Follow her on Instagram and her website.
