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    NNSL Photo/Graphic

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    New CPAWS head a longtime Northerner

    Jason Emiry
    Northern News Services
    Published Wednesday, September 3, 2008

    SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - The new executive director of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society's NWT chapter says the North can lead the nation by showing how groups with divergent interests can come together to protect wilderness areas.

    NNSL Photo/Graphic

    Lani Cooke is the new executive director of the NWT chapter of the Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. - Jason Emiry/NNSL photo

    "We as Northerners can lead and show Canada how we can protect our wilderness and show how it can be done without antagonism or friction," said Lani Cooke.

    "I would like to see it done in a collaborative way."

    Cooke came to Yellowknife from Renfrew, Ont., in 1973 to write for News of the North.

    "I wanted to go somewhere off the beaten track," said Cooke. "I wrote letters to newspapers in Yellowknife, Whitehorse and St. John's. Yellowknife was the first to offer me a job."

    As a reporter, she travelled extensively in the NWT and what is now Nunavut.

    In 1976 she moved to an island at the entrance to the East Arm of Great Slave Lake with four other women where she fished, snared rabbits, drove dogs and generally lived on the land with help from people from Yellowknife, Ndilo and Dettah.

    "There was a movement of bush hippies in Yellowknife," said Cooke. "It was exciting and adventuresome so I signed up."

    She was a commercial fisher for three summers until 1980. In the 1980s she moved to Old Town and started a film production company called Yellowknife Films with her partner.

    She spent the 1990s as the executive director of the Yellowknife Association for Community Living.

    She began a consulting business in 2004 that has been involved with numerous contracts for community consultations and organizational development training with boards, hamlet councils and First Nation bands in the NWT.

    Cooke replaces Jennifer Morin who was the interim executive director for the past year. Morin is expecting her second child in September.