Luna The Graphic Novel
A true story of youth-led environmental justice
(Left) Julia Butterfly Hill during a 738 day tree sit in redwood tree Luna, 1998. (Right) Sample pages from "Luna", our first historical, biographical graphic novel. Illustrations from our artist Julia Yellow.
Our team is currently working on Luna, connecting the personal narrative of then-youth activist, Julia Butterfly Hill to the environmental issue of deforestation and clearcutting. This provides a rich, engaging, and cohesive platform to investigate the history, science, and social issues behind the redwood forest's history, and its parallels to forests around the world. We also explore the relationships that indigenous people learned to cultivate with the redwood ecosystem, exposing our readers to lifeways informed by a worldview very different from our dominant culture's. By illustrating the role human beings have played throughout our environmental history, we can understand more clearly where we are now and how things might progress. Youth who participate in our programs provide our team with crucial feedback during our process.
“‘Luna’ the graphic novel and its accompanying curricula will most definitely spark a desire for change in many hearts. I also love that RE is creating lessons about environmental science and indigenous people. I personally would have loved to have learned about these things in school.”
