Tekatsi:tsia’kwa Katsi Cook

Onkwehonwe traditional midwife, elder, and executive director of Spirit Aligned Leadership Program, Katsi Cook is a Wolf Clan member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Nation. She resides at the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe in upstate New York.

Katsi’s work spans many worlds and disciplines and demonstrates a lifelong career of advancing the cultural superlatives of Indigenous knowledge. She is an advocate of Indigenous women’s health across the life cycle, drawing from a longhouse traditionalist perspective the teaching of Woman Is the First Environment.

Active at the intersections of environmental reproductive health and justice, research, and policy, Katsi’s body of work connected health research scientists, community health professionals, and community members. Her groundbreaking environmental research of Mohawk mother’s milk revealed the harmful intergenerational impact of industrial chemicals on the health and well-being of the community.

Katsi leads a movement of matrilineal awareness and rematriation in Native life. Her lifelong advocacy of Indigenous midwifery and health throughout Indigenous communities in North America continues on many fronts.