About
Storytelling as a tool for justice — through film, journalism, academia and community organizing.
Maia Wikler is a National Geographic Explorer, writer, filmmaker, and Ph.D. candidate in Political Ecology at the University of Victoria, based on Vancouver Island, BC. She also holds an M.A. in Anthropology. A recipient of the Lorene Kennedy Environmental Scholarship, she researches memory and storytelling as forms of resistance to corporate abuse, with a particular focus on deforestation, shifting baselines, and the climate crisis.
Her reporting has appeared in Teen Vogue, VICE, Vogue, Atmos, High Country News, and Canada’s National Observer, among others. In 2018, she received the CC Faces of Innovation award for her work at the UN Climate Talks in Bonn, Germany. In 2019, as a member of The North Face Explorers Arctic Expedition, she reported on the climate crisis for Teen Vogue, and that reporting was presented to congressional leaders on Capitol Hill. In 2020, she was named a National Geographic Explorer to document cross-border salmon stories and the threats that mining in Northern British Columbia poses to wild salmon.
Maia’s directorial debut, the award-winning short documentary Walking Two Worlds, grew out of her advocacy for the Arctic Refuge. It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in 2022 and was a Vimeo Staff Pick. Her second short, Wild East, which she developed as a filmmaker-in-residence at the Woodstock Film Festival, premiered at Sheffield DocFest in June 2026. It exposes IKEA’s illegal logging of Romania’s ancient forests and has been nominated for a Wildscreen Impact Award, a Jackson Wild Award, and the Planet in Focus Eco Hero Award. She is now in development on her first feature documentary, Kills the Root, a finalist in the 2026 Banff Mountain Film Pitch Competition.
Across her academic work, journalism, filmmaking, and community organizing, Maia uses storytelling as a tool to connect diverse audiences for environmental justice.