Julian Brave NoiseCat

Julian Brave NoiseCat is a Fellow at Type Media Center, Vice President of Policy & Strategy at Data for Progress, Narrative Change Director for The Natural History Museum, and a writer whose work can be found in print and online in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Harper’s, The Paris Review, and many more.

NoiseCat has been recognized as a finalist for the Livingston Award, twice nominated for the Canadian National Magazine Awards, 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. He has authored and edited many public policy briefs, memos, reports, polls, scorecards and other works, contributing to progressive platforms like the Green New Deal.

Much of NoiseCat’s work is inspired by the belief that Indigenous peoples can contribute to understanding and solving the world’s most pressing challenges. In 2019, he 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, he 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.

NoiseCat studied history at Columbia University and the University of Oxford, where he was a Clarendon scholar. He 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.

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