Lauren Chief Elk

Jennifer Schaffer explains, "Women were banding together to demand payment for all the emotional work we do that goes completely unpaid—the exhausting work of being a tolerant, gentle, nurturing, listening woman in our relationships with men, at all times. Women put up with a lot of bullshit, and we have a science-backed term for it: emotional labor. And as with any kind of labor, women are now ready and eager to get paid."

She contributed an article to Salon.com in 2014, another to Truthout in 2014, and has posted half a dozen articles on Model View Culture. She was banned from Twitter in December 2016 and has stated that she will rely on Instagram instead. As of July, 2017, Chief Elk-Young Bear was tweeting under the handle @elle_chiefelk. This account was also suspended because the new account violated the Twitter terms of service prohibiting the creation of new accounts to avoid Twitter bans.

She co-founded the Save Wiyabi Project in August 2011 with Jessa Rae, which focuses on serving Native American women who have experienced sexual violence and creating solutions in urban and rural environments. The project was created as a social media campaign to assist in the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization with full tribal provisions.

She was involved with the 2007 De Anza rape investigation, as one of three women soccer players who interrupted the gang rape. She testified against ten members of the De Anza College men's baseball team, but the criminal case was dismissed due to insufficient evidence and difficulties in positively identifying the participants. The victim pursued damages against two alleged participants, losing a civil trial presided over by Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky.

Lauren Chief Elk (born 1987) is a Native American feminist educator and writer.

Lauren Chief Elk was born in San Jose, California, in 1987 and lived in a white middle-class neighborhood there. She is Assiniboine and Blackfeet from Fort Belknap, Montana, raised in San Francisco, California. She also lived in other parts of the Bay Area and also later in Oregon. She comes from a family that is in academia. Her mother, who is white, teaches at the university Lauren attended.