This Awards Night opened with a special recognition of Youth Action
The first Youth Environmental Activist-Greta Thunberg Award was presented to 3rd grade students from Eisenhower Imersion School in Tulsa.
This group, Robert Lindstrom, Sam Pollard, Parrish Swanson, and Oscar LaFon, are members of an environmental club at their school. They were studying about what local environmental problems there are in Tulsa and if there was something they could do about it. They agreed that plastic was a huge problem and especially the use of styrofoam in the Tulsa Public School cafeterias. They used their letter writing skills and wrote to the Tulsa School Board requesting that styrofoam be removed from all the Tulsa Public Schools. After several months wait, they received notice that the TPS school board agreed with their request and they removed all styrofoam from the TPS cafeterias. BRAVO!
Green Country Sierra Club is very proud to have these young students receive our first Youth Environmental Activist-Greta Thurnberg Award. They certainly were not hesitant to find a solution to their problem. It is impressive that they were so successful. Greta Thurnberg's rise to promenance and acclaim by her supporters is because she sees that we are not acting fast enough to keep our Earth livable. She has been couragous speaking out about the world's leaders are not doing enough right now to stop our climate crisis. These students are activating their courage to make changes here in Tulsa where they live, even if the adults do not see it.
The Media Activist Award was given to Scott Swearingen and Steve Herren, film producers of BIG CHICKEN!
These filmmakers worked over many months filming interviews, on site shots and researching the story of the invasion of local corporate chicken farming over the last two years. These are not the usual sized chicken farms you see in rural areas. These farms are over twice the size of regular chicken farms that are scaled to fit the landscape. The old chicken farms house up to 20,000 chickens about twice a year or less. The new corporate farms produce 50,000 chickens 4 times a year! There is a huge difference in the amount of chicken waste produced which is the beginning of the local problems. The short film BIG CHICKEN can be seen at a link on our opening web page.
The Indigenous Environmental Activism Award was given to Casey Camp Horinek.
Casey Camp Horinek is an Oklahoma environmental activist, actress, grandmother, international women's rights advocate and she brought peace to the Standing Rock Standoff in South Dakota with her indigenous prayers. She is also the first and only woman councilperson for her Ponca tribe. We are very proud to have worked with her on her Rights of Nature conference in Claremore, OK. Casey Camp Horinek has lead her community to ban fracking and her leadership is evident wherever she travels. She was an honored speaker at the Tulsa Earth Day Celebration this past year. We salute our fellow native Oklahoman for reaching out to those in need in all her work in all places in Oklahoma and around the globe.
Year of Environmental Journalism Award given to Kelly Bostian of the Tulsa World.
Kelly Bostion is an environmentalist by trade and by pleasure. We appreciate all the excellent and revealing articles he wrote throughout the year and continues writing about the invasion of industrial chicken farming in northeastern Oklahoma. His support has widened the awareness locally in northeast Oklahoma with the huge water quality and quantity issues connected to the industrial sized chicken operations brought to Oklahoma by Simmons Foods and others. He also exposed that the historical pristine water supply for Tulsa's water resources, the Spavinaw and Eucha lakes, is being threatened by the presence of many of these new mega farms in the watershed area. Now some may feel that Sierra Club would not consider a hunting and fishing journalist would be our friend, but we honor Kelly Bostian for recognizing the importance of this huge threat to our environment including our water supply. All life aincluding wildlife needs clean, fresh water to survive.