Theresa Spence is a former chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation in Canada. She was a prominent figure in the Attawapiskat housing and infrastructure crisis, Idle No More, and other First Nations issues. Prior to serving as chief, she was the deputy chief of Attawapiskat.
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Theresa Spence is a former chief of the Attawapiskat First Nation who became a national figure in Canada during the Idle No More period and a high-profile 2012–2013 hunger protest. Spence’s protest drew attention to treaty relationships, housing conditions and the relationship between First Nations and the federal government. Her hunger protest became a focal point in a broader period of Indigenous mobilization and ended after weeks of pressure for high-level political engagement. The documented institutional setting matters because formal position determines which outcomes can reasonably be connected to an individual and which belong to a larger government, party, organization or social movement. Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology (opens in a new tab) provides the primary anchor for that role and period. Read in that context, the useful question is not whether Theresa Spence was simply prominent, but what authority, leverage or responsibility the record actually placed in their hands. That distinction is necessary before assessing outcomes, because visibility can be much broader than decision-making power and because many public events involve several institutions acting at the same time.