Victor Lopez-Carmen - Dakota - Yaqui Writer, Health Advocate - Co-Chair, UN Global Indigenous Youth Caucus

Victor A. Lopez-Carmen is a Dakota and Yaqui writer, health advocate, and student at Harvard Medical School. He is cofounder of the Ohiyesa Premedical Program at the Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), which supports Indigenous community and tribal college students to pursue healthcare education. He also founded Translations for our Nations, a grant funded initiation that translated accurate COVID-19 information into over 40 Indigenous languages from over 20 different countries. For his work, he has been featured on the Forbes 30 under 30 and Native American 40 under 40 lists. He is Co-Chair of the UN Global Indigenous Youth Caucus.

“One of our chiefs was a Chief Crazy Horse. When they rode into battle to meet the US soldiers, his war cry was "Only the Earth lives forever!" And to me, that's really powerful because it shows what we were fighting for, and that they were willing to die for Mother Earth to protect it from this really nasty mining. They almost massacred the buffalo to extinction. They almost made the buffalo go extinct because that was our food source, and eventually our people were starving, and that's why they moved on to the reservation because they didn't have any more food because the government killed all the buffalo. They fought for the Earth. They fought for the land to protect it, and we still have to do that.”

Forbes 30 under 30 - Healthcare 2022

Translations for our Nations

Ohiyesa Premedical Program

www.globalindigenousyouthcaucus.org

www.oneplanetpodcast.org

www.creativeprocess.info