Katia Bannister (she/her) grew up on unceded Pune’luxutth territories (Thetis Island) and spent her childhood and teenage years learning, volunteering, and community organizing in the Cowichan Valley (unceded Quw’utsun territories). Her childhood love of nature led her to start participating in ecological restoration projects and community organizing through youth climate strike movement as a teenager. She is now in her final year of her undergrad at the University of Victoria, studying Environmental Studies, Geography, and Indigenous Studies, with interests in everyday practices of sustainability, community-based food security initiatives, and land- and water-back work.
Katia also loves canoe tripping and whitewater paddling and got her start canoeing on the Quw’utsun Sta’lo’ (Cowichan River) while she was in high school. Her relationship to water through paddling has been enormously humbling and impactful, reifying the strong passions for freshwater advocacy that she developed while working for the Canadian Freshwater Alliance as a teen. With her background in community outreach and engagement, she is extremely interested in helping people to connect with their watersheds in more experiential ways (like recreation) and how this can help to generate more care and action for watershed issues, as well as more holistic watershed governance practices.
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