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Shailene Woodley has starred in movies such as: The Fault in our Stars, Divergent and the ongoing show Big Little Lies. Woodley was born on November 15^th, 1991, making her 28 years old. Not only is she a great actress but she is also an Oceans Ambassador for Greenpeace. 

Shailene Woodley has over 4.4 million followers on her Instagram. Making her very open to the public and seen by many different eyes. Woodley uses her social media platforms to communicate her beliefs and opinions regarding the oceans to the world. 

Woodley also created a non-profit organization with her mother called All It Takes in 2010 to empower students to become leaders and to act on their beliefs.

(No Dakota Access Pipeline) Shailene Woodley got arrested in 2016, fighting for the adoption of renewable energy sources. She also highlighted in this protest that native people have been protesting against the pipeline and have not had their voices heard.

I personally find Shailene Woodley like me since I actually grew up to watching her on TV. She at some point in my life was someone I admired. I love the fact that she uses her fame as a way to try and change the world. Shailene Woodley is like me in the way that she is a woman for the betterment of the environment.

Woodley has been very vocal and direct about her support for the betterment of the environment and her personal life. She has admitted to using only chemical-free products for her day-to-day life as a way to cut down on harmful chemicals that can go straight into our ocean water. She states that she actually creates herself all of her own skincare and everyday uses, such as; face oils, moisturizers, cleansers and even her own toothpaste. She also explained that she does not go to doctors for medications, but she rather create her own. She further explains that she makes her own cheese, and goes to a farm to get her own food. She also goes to get natural spring water from mountains every month.

I think Shailene Woodley is unlike me because she has actually acted upon her beliefs. I, on the other hand, have not. I am still trying to educate myself on what I can do to help for the greater good of our oceans, forests and wildlife. Shailene Woodley also is American, and evidently, I am not. Her ethnic background unlike me is plentiful, she belongs to a mixed ethnic background of English, African American, French, Spanish, German, and Swiss. I, on the other hand, am Italian and Irish. 

I chose Shailene Woodley since she is someone most of us have heard of. She is mostly within our age group and I find her someone to look up to. I think that if Shailene Woodley can change her way of life, in this day and age, so can we. I think that Shailene Woodley mainly targets the youth of today, people of her age look up her, she makes herself relatable to people.

I find Woodley inspirational since not every celebrity uses their fame for the greater good. Most celebrities do not use their social media platform to convey strong messages that we need to change the world. When doing this, she obviously does not care what people think about her, she is standing for what she believes in and trying to spread knowledge. 

I define inspiration as something I would like to be or someone that motivates me to be better. And I think that Shailene Woodley does exactly that. 

Resources:

https://www.rte.ie/entertainment/2019/1111/1090073-6-celebrities-championing-climate-change/

https://gossipgist.com/shailene-woodley-biography

https://www.biography.com/actor/shailene-woodley

https://www.teenvogue.com/gallery/shailene-woodley-best-activist-moments

Ellen Page is a very inspirational woman. She is a Canadian actress, producer and activist.  She was born on February 21^st, 1987, and raised in Nova Scotia, born to her mother who is a teacher and father who is a graphic designer.  Ellen page has been in a few movies you may know such as Juno, Inception and X-Men: Days of Future Past. Ellen Page has recently become more of an active participant in climate and environmental activism.

Furthermore, in her most recent work, she travelled to her home town and surrounding areas of Nova Scotia to shed light on a problem called “environmental racism.” According to Kaitlyn Mitchell, environmental racism is used to express, “the interconnectedness of environmental health, socio-economic conditions, and racialized discrimination.” This means that there is discrimination against a minority group in an environmental context. A popular example would be if one would dump their toxic waste near a poorer African American community just because they are poorer, compromising their health. In context to Ellen Page, she went to Nova Scotia to make her documentary to make known many problems in the area and features minority communities trying to get money for a huge clean-up of major water ways such as the Boat Harbour in which tonnes toxic waste is being dumped into it.   Also these communities are fighting to stop the construction of a huge dump as well as the construction of a natural gas storage facility. All of these negative actions are seriously affecting the environment, including the contribution to climate change and many other gravely important aspects of life. Not only is it impacting climate change, but also the health ocean wildlife, the health of everyday people, and also animals.

Ellen Page is appropriately using her platform to inform and make known these events to help make instill change and make progress to halt climate change as well as aid in the end environmental racism. This documentary was shown in the Toronto International Film Festival in 2019 which I think is amazing. Ellen Page is very inspirational and a woman that we all should look up to.

Link to trailer of documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKhIYFDnCoY

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Resources:

-https://www.intechopen.com/books/water-challenges-of-an-urbanizing-world/water-pollution-effects-prevention-and-climatic-impact

-https://time.com/5669038/women-climate-change-leaders/

-https://news.trust.org/item/20190907083555-tdk8h/

The opening anecdote shows a French missionary astonished by the fact that women have so much power in an aboriginal society. It shows how our worldviews and cultures affect the roles of each gender for each society. In New France, for the Catholics, men had a god-given right to be the more powerful gender which gave them most, if not all, control on the women in their lives. That anecdote ends with the Jesuits telling the aboriginal man that men were the masters and in France, the women do not rule the husbands. This shows not only how colonization affected certain cultures with the arrival of new thoughts but also how we view our own worldviews as the “right” worldview more often than not.

Every indigenous group had economic activities that stemmed from what environment they lived in. However, most groups were hunter gatherers. The Mi’kmaw society were egalitarian, something found commonly in hunter gatherer groups. Very interestingly, they also had governmental structures that away laid beyond just the level of the individual. The Innu had a sexual division of labor even with food. Yet, these divisions played as complementary parties and both parts were essential for the group. The men hunted large game and the women, the smaller game, and yet its known that the women’s game provided more than half of the food supply for the community. I also found it really striking that both men and women had the right to become shamans. It’s very well known that the religious beliefs in animosity are strong in indigenous groups, and for women to hold the same influence as men in the domain of the supernatural and the natural shows how important and respected women have been for indigenous tribes.

Iroquoians not only matrilineal but also matrilocal. Men were expected to go and live with the families of their wives as the women were in charge of the longhouses and the distribution of food supplies among everyone. The more I read about these different ways of living, I noticed similarities and differences with our Western culture. Nowadays, some women still take care of the finances in their households even if the man might be the breadwinner. Sadly, it’s quite clear that our societies are very far from egalitarian, not only because of social class inequalities but also from gender inequalities being very present. A man and a woman might do the same high paying, prestigious job and yet the man will get paid more. Of course, women who’ve been following the more Western traditions have gained much more liberty and rights like voting, right to divorce, etc, but I truly believe we have along way to go. Women in the US now are facing troubles with the right to get legal abortion being under threat. Overall, I think we could learn a lot from indigenous tribes that don’t put women above men, but rather at the same level.