[2] She has founded a number of organizations serving the Akwesasne community, including the Women's Dance Health Program, the Mother's Milk Monitoring Project, and the Konon:kwe Council.
[5] Katsi Cook was educated at Catholic boarding school, though she began practicing the traditional Longhouse Religion as a teenager.
[8] The St. Lawrence River that runs through Akwesasne and the reservation land itself are in proximity to General Motors (GM) plants and waste dumps.
In 1981, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYS DEC) announced that Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB) had been found in the groundwater under GM property, and later in private wells on the St. Regis Mohawk reservation.
Researchers from Mount Sinai had been taking samples from animals and soil on the reservation since the 1970s, though they had never checked how the environmental contamination was affecting community-members, notably breast-feeding mothers' milk.
This coincided with growing concerns in the community surrounding high numbers of miscarriages and birth defects, which have been shown to be a consequence of exposure to PCBs.
[9] She has stated that challenges facing indigenous communities, like environmental pollution and reproductive health, must be understood and addressed in a way that acknowledges their intersecting nature, as opposed to viewing them as independent problems.
As she pursued her undergraduate degree Cornell University in 1984, Cook, along with Lin Nelson, Janet Rith-Najarian, Doug Brown, spoke with Brian Bush, a chemist at the New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) about establishing a breast milk study at Akwesasne.
In 1985, the Women's Dance Health Program became the Mother's Milk Monitoring Project which continues to provide services and advocacy to this day.
[12] Cook has been active part of national and international women's health movements which includes her work alongside Mayan midwives in Guatemala.
In 2007, she was a featured speaker at Live Earth Concert at the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C.[1] Cook married José Eugenio Barreiro, a Cuban-born academic and indigenous activist in the early 1970s.