Severn Cullis-Suzuki is a Canadian environmental activist, speaker, television host, and author. She has spoken around the world about environmental issues, urging listeners to define their values, act with the future in mind, and take individual responsibility. She is the daughter of Canadian environmentalist David Suzuki.
Biography
Cullis-Suzuki was born and raised in Vancouver, British Columbia. Her mother is writer Tara Elizabeth Cullis. Her father, geneticist and environmental activist David Suzuki, is a third-generation Japanese Canadian. While attending Lord Tennyson Elementary School in French Immersion, at age 9, she founded the Environmental Children's Organization, a group of children dedicated to learning and teaching other youngsters about environmental issues. In 1992, at age 12, Cullis-Suzuki raised money with members of ECO to attend the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Along with group members Michelle Quigg, Vanessa Suttie, and Morgan Geisler, Cullis-Suzuki presented environmental issues from a youth perspective at the summit, where she was applauded for a speech to the delegates. The video has since become a viral hit, popularly known as "The Girl Who Silenced the World for 5 Minutes". In her 1992 speech, she said: “I am afraid to go out in the sun now because of the hole in our ozone. I am afraid to breathe the air because I don’t know what chemicals are in it." In 1993, she was honored in the United Nations Environment Programme's Global 500 Roll of Honour. In 1993, Doubleday published her book Tell the World, a 32-page book of environmental steps for families. Cullis-Suzuki graduated from Yale University in 2002 with a B.S. in ecology and evolutionary biology. After Yale, Cullis-Suzuki spent two years traveling. Cullis-Suzuki co-hosted Suzuki's Nature Quest, a children's television series that aired on Discovery Kids in 2002. In early 2002, she helped launch an Internet-based think tank called The Skyfish Project. As a member of Kofi Annan's Special Advisory Panel, she and members of the Skyfish Project brought their first project, a pledge called the "Recognition of Responsibility", to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August 2002. The Skyfish Project disbanded in 2004 as Cullis-Suzuki turned her focus back to school. She enrolled in a graduate program at the University of Victoria to study ethnobotany under Nancy Turner, finishing in 2007. Severn is married and lives with her husband and two sons in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia. Severn Cullis-Suzuki is the main character in the documentary filmSevern, the Voice of Our Children, directed by Jean-Paul Jaud and released theatrically in France on November 10, 2010. Cullis-Suzuki is an Earth CharterInternational Council Member.
