Rosalyn LaPier

Rosalyn LaPier is a Native American traditionally trained ethnobotanist, writer, professor and environmental historian. She is an enrolled member of the Blackfeet Tribe of Montana and Métis.

Early life and education Rosalyn LaPier was born in 1964 in Montana, and is the daughter of late William LaPier, Sr. and Angeline Wall of Browning, Montana. She was heavily influenced by her grandmother, Annie Mad Plume-Wall, and great aunt Theresa Still Smoking, who taught her about plants and medicine knowledge.

Career LaPier taught at Native American Educational Services College, a community based tribal college, and at the Piegan Institute which is non profit for the preservation of research of Native American Languages on the Blackfeet reservation in Montana, She was motivated to return to school for her Ph.D. by her community elders and attended University of Montana to study environmental history. She is also a Research Associate at the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution.

Her work, both academic, written and activism, has been beneficial to the national science community in an area that has been ignored and has raised an important viewpoint in a country that usually dismisses ideas that are not western research and practice. It won the Robert G. Athearn Book Award in 2016. Activism

LaPier served on the National Environmental Justice Advisory Council (NEJAC) for two terms (2013 - 2019), which is a Federal Advisory Committee to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). She also served on NEJAC's Youth Perspectives on Climate Change Work Group to address environmental justice issues. She co-founded Saokio Heritage, a community based organisation which raises the voices of indigenous women writers and activists. LaPier also worked to stop coal removal in the Rocky Mountains in the Blackfoot territory (her commentary on "Mountain Removal Threatens Traditional Blackfoot territory,"in High Country News). She is working on strengthening Public policy for Indigenous languages with the National Coalition of Native American Language Schools and Programs, believing that indigenous languages is environmental knowledge of a community.

Personal life She is married and has two grown daughters.