Lyla June Johnston

Lyla June is a poet, singer-songwriter, hip-hop artist, human ecologist, public speaker and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her dynamic, multi-genre performance and speech style has invigorated and inspired audiences across the globe towards personal, collective and ecological healing. Her messages focus on Indigenous rights, supporting youth, inter-cultural healing, historical trauma and traditional land stewardship practices. She blends her undergraduate studies in human ecology at Stanford University, her graduate work in Native American Pedagogy at the University of New Mexico, and the indigenous worldview she grew up with to inform her perspectives and solutions. Her internationally acclaimed performances and speeches are conveyed through the medium of prayer, hip-hop, poetry, acoustic music and speech. Her personal goal is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper.

Navajo Nation flag

3000-year-old solutions to modern problems | Lyla June | TEDxKC

In this profoundly hopeful talk, Diné musician, scholar, and cultural historian Lyla June outlines a series of timeless human success stories focusing on Native American food and land management techniques and strategies.

December 21, 2022

Lyla June Johnston

What Could Possibly Go Right?: Episode 13 Lyla June

Lyla June, musician, anthropologist and activist, introduces us to the Seven Generations New Deal and how applying this has the potential to create “what could possibly go right”.

July 23, 2020

Lyle June Johnston

Fast for the Future

So during these seven days, we will be unveiling our Seven Generations New Deal, which is a seven point program for climate action. And we’d love for you to come and listen to see what we’re thinking and give your input, because we really want this policy to be built from the ground up. We fully expect that the first draft that we are releasing on Monday will look nothing like the final draft that we have by the end of this campaign.

January 20, 2020

Lyla June Johnston

Lyla June Johnston: Let’s End Our National Addiction to Oil

But there is another way to live, which involves re-localizing goods and services. Please bear in mind we will have to do this either way. We can quit oil on our own now in a graceful way that our children will be proud of, or we can keep going and be forced to quit when we are not ready. Now is the time to start working together to be free from this addiction.

December 20, 2019

Lyla June

Kelp Gardens, Piñon Forests

It’s not as hard as you might think. If you have the right action for a couple of seasons — the Earth actually wants to be full of life. That’s it’s nature. We actually have to work to get it to not do that. So if we just get behind her and breathe life into what she’s already doing, it can change pretty fast. But we need the tools and we need the skills and we need the knowledge and most of all the wisdom that supports all of these things.

November 13, 2019