Every day, I strive to surround myself with positive people who will push me to go above and beyond what I feel I am capable of. One of these people is Chiara, a 21-year-old striking woman has inspired me to fight for what I believe in and has shown me the impact that can be made by protecting what you love.

Chiara has been working in her local Salish Sea habitat to try and raise awareness, make a difference, and save the place she calls her home. At 13, she realized there were problems in the Puget Sound and became more interested in what was happening around her, trying to find ways to heal her environment.

“School started in September, and in the next nine months, I was a board member on three boards of organizations in my local community…convinced a tea party republican to vote for the plastic bag ban and just started to reach out my feelers and get a sense of my power as a young person.”

At 16, she started working closely with her community and was a board member on three different groups dedicated to the protection of the Salish Sea. Being a young person in the fight for environmental justice, she felt her voice was being heard, so she started to immerse herself in the field.

“Young people have the most power. I always thought that you needed that job or that career to make change, and I realized if I just activated my voice in the present, I had more power than a lot of the elders around me.”

Flowing from campaign to campaign, Chiara has worked on handfuls of projects involving environmental justice and sustainability in the Pacific Northwest. Bouncing from one to the other, she has worked with salmon restoration, climate justice, oil and coal industries, and indigenous rights around the country.

Earlier this year, Chiara went to North Dakota to be part of dismantling the Dakota Access Pipeline when there were only 150 people gathering. Now, there are thousands of people camping out trying to stop the pipeline from going under the water and carrying oil all the way from the Dakotas to Illinois.

“Being called to North Dakota was really cool because it was very synchronistic…I wished for a Prius and the next morning there was a Prius, and 21 hours later, we were in North Dakota.”

Currently, Chiara is leader of the Students for the Salish Sea club at Western Washington University and is planning on reaching out to other universities along the coast. The goal behind the club is to give members the necessary tools and resources that they can use later on to successfully protect the water.

Chiara graduated from Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, her concentration being Ethnoecological Justice: Systems Thinking for a Healthy Salish Sea. Her concentration came easily, as she was already studying everything around the Salish Sea and the surrounding communities. Looking at the transportation, food, and energy usage, Chiara got a big picture study of the water she wants to protect.

“I think about how can we make our manmade service more compatible with the physical environment.”

In 2015, Shell Oil took the changes in climate as an opportunity to harvest oil from the Chukchi Sea in the Arctic. The drilling scheduled to take place had a 75% chance of causing a major spill. The boat that was part of the drilling fleet was docked in Bellingham Bay, and Chiara, along with a few other friends, decided that something needed to be done about it.

They worked organizing for a few days, and after some consideration and brainstorming, eventually came up with the idea to have someone attach themselves to a chain that was hanging from the ship. Other people volunteered first, and one by one backed out of the idea. Chiara then agreed to be the one putting their body on the chain, and only planned on being there for a few hours.

Those few hours turned into three days and three nights of her body being tied to the chain, flooded with prayers and thoughts from loved ones and the public who were in support of her message and dedication to the cause.

“I think it is important to not be bound to places like this…I think being bound to stories, and being bound to truth...being bound to a vortex.”

Chiara plans on continuing her work in conservation and activism, striving to make watershed consciousness normalized and part of day-to-day life for the general public. Over her lifetime, she would like to see the Salish Sea become a marine-protected area, keeping all the fish and other organisms alive and healthy.

“I would like to see the Salish Sea become a marine-protected area, I want to kill Puget Sound Energy, and I want people in this bioregion to know that they live in this bioregion.”

Chiara is one of the strongest individuals I have had the privilege of becoming close with, and I am forever grateful for all of the wisdom and advice she has passed onto me, as well as other people around the community.

If you would like to become involved in what Chiara is working toward, look into Students for the Salish Sea and other environmental justice clubs on Western's campus. Stay open to new possibilities, and never underestimate the power of your voice.