Panelists
Abel R. Gomez is an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Native American Studies Department at the University of Oklahoma. His research examines relationships between sacred sites, ceremony, gender, and (de)colonization, particularly among Ohlone communities of the San Francisco and Monterey regions of California. He is a steering committee member for the Native Traditions in the Americas Unit of the American Academy of Religion and will begin his new position as Assistant Professor of Native American spiritual traditions in the Religion Department at Texas Christian University next fall. Born and raised in Ramaytush Ohlone territory (San Francisco Peninsula), Abel’s family is originally from Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico.
Angie Tucker is a Métis scholar whose family is from the historic communities of St. Andrews and Poplar Point in Manitoba. She is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation and Métis Nation of Alberta, and PhD student at the University of Alberta in the Faculty of Native Studies. Angie is currently focused on collecting oral stories about the everyday experiences of contemporary Métis women in southwestern Manitoba to uncover how they and their families have navigated and responded to the ever-changing social, political and economic pressures of 1940-1990. Her areas of specialization include presenting and publishing on topics such as: missing and murdered Indigenous women, Indigenous gender, relationships with the land, land-based education, identity, media, and the role of memory and storytelling as systems for contemporary Indigenous knowledge. Angie is also the host of ‘Métis Confessions’, a series of events that focus on the importance of decolonizing Indigenous sexuality while strengthening Metis kinship principles.
Annie Taylor is a PhD Candidate at UC Berkeley. At Berkeley, I'm partnering with the Amah Mutsun Tribal Band of California's Central Coast to study the ecological impacts of Indigenous stewardship practices with innovative geospatial tools. In particular, we're working to rebuild reciprocal relationships with food and medicine plants through spatial modeling and field surveys. I’ve also worked extensively in Google Earth Engine, a powerful remote sensing API, to study ecosystem change over time and space. I aim to apply my skills in remote sensing, ecology, and GIS to promote environmental justice and Indigenous sovereignty. I have led several introductory GIS and remote sensing workshops for various communities, and I hope to make these tools accessible and exciting for all people, and particularly people who are traditionally excluded from programming communities.
Dr. Atoinette “Konia” Freitas was born and raised in Hawaiʻi on Oʻahu island. She is an Associate Specialist faculty at the Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa where she currently serves as the Department Chair. As a Specialist Faculty, she works in the area of program planning, curriculum development, and program assessment and evaluation. For several years, she worked several initiatives focused on community engagement and engaged scholarship that linked education, research and practice together in ways that reinforced the fundamental importance of place, Hawaiian culture and philosophy. Her academic areas of interest span indigenous planning, Hawaiian focused education and indigenous research methodology. She has professional land use planning experience and holds a Ph.D. in Urban and Regional Planning. Her doctoral research examined the link between education to the necessity of land among Hawaiian-focused public charter schools.
Attaqua Ethel Williams Herandien is a member if the Attaqua tribe of the clan Herandien of the Klein Karoo in the Cape. Attaqua is a social justice activist, knowledge keeper, oral and visual storyteller, born in District Six, Cape Town in 1964. Due to Apartheid she lived in Germany and the United Kingdom. Returning to South Africa in 1990 she work for the Department of International Affairs of the governing party. In 1994 she joined the film industry. She now works full-time doing Indigenous treatments and consultations which include colonial, inter-generational, historical and oppression trauma and Indigenous historian.
Elena Cortés Farrujia is a post- MA (soon to be PhD) student/ researcher at the University of Barcelona. She coursed an MA degree in "Construction and Representation of Cultural Identities," which enabled her to pursue her primary area of interest from a holistic approach, Queer Indigenous literature(s). Since then, she has participated in some symposiums, such as the AIW "Sovereign Erotic" conference or the international conference "Queer Temporalities". She became passionate about this field while writing her BA thesis at the University of La Laguna in Tenerife, her birthplace, where she graduated with an English Studies degree. In the future, she strives to continue with this line of research to pursue a PhD revolving around the Queer Indigenous Spatio-temporal orientation(s) in connection with affect and waste theories. At the moment, she is working as an assistant professor at UNED.
Jarita Chen is Macalester College senior majoring in Political Science and Environmental Studies. She was born and raised in Shanghai, China on her mom’s side and is a Taiwanese citizen of Hoklo-settler descent through her dad. Her research interests are driven by understanding global imperialism and colonialism and how they relate to her identities and obligations. She spent a semester studying at the National Dong Hwa University’s College of Indigenous Studies, located in Hualien, Taiwan. Her work is indebted to the immeasurable generosity and knowledge of the people she met there, especially Ptasan, NDHU's Tayal, Truku, Seediq, and Say Siyat student organization.
Laura Anderson is a first year MA Student in Literature at the University of New Mexico. Her area of academic interests includes investigating cinematic practices and the portrayal of gender with a focus on the Hollywood Code Era. She intersections her research with comparative literature and theory.
Dr. Lianboi Vaiphei teaches International Relations in the Department of Political Science, Indraprastha College for Women, University of Delhi for the last fifteen years. She has done her doctoral thesis on Sustainable Forest Management in Canada and the Indigenous people of Canada from the School of International Studies, JNU New Delhi. Her research interests include Indigeneity, Identity, diversity, environmental politics and governance in North East India and in Global politics.
Marisa de la Peña is an artist, researcher and second year graduate student in the Department of Art at UCSB and member of UPROOT Artist coalition. Her current work revolves around the role of horror in art and media and its power to subvert settler colonialism. From reappropriating the tropes that have rendered Indigeneity invisible, to engaging Xicane and Yoeme methods of storytelling by creating edible sculptures on conversations about dispossession and consumption, her practice hopes to haunt and nourish audiences involved. Her work has been published and featured by Taschen Books, Harper Collins, UO and DC Shoes. She received her BFA in Textiles from the California College of the Arts in 2012.
McKalee Steen, a member of the Cherokee Nation in Oklahoma, grew up on a farm in the northeastern corner of the state. It was on this farm that her parents and grandparents instilled in her a deep respect and care for the environment. In May 2020, she graduated from Vanderbilt University with a degree in Earth and Environmental Science and minors in English and Environmental Sustainability Studies. She is now a second year PhD student in the Environmental Science, Policy, and Management (ESPM) department, ecosystem science division. Her research explores the impact of Indigenous land stewardship in cases of direct purchases of land within Tribal territories. Her work is interdisciplinary, combining the fields of Indigenous environmental studies, geospatial analysis, and ecology. Through all of her work, she hopes to give back to Indian Country, and leave things better than she found them. McKalee is passionate about the power of storytelling - old and new, traditional and modern, poetic and scientific - and incorporates this into her work and hobbies
Meghan Zarentske identifies as a white, queer, female-bodied, gender non-conforming, middle-class, former geologist and secondary science teacher, current examiner of problematized educational systems, marginalization of Black, Brown, and Indigenous students through the maintenance and protection of whiteness as property, de/anti-colonization, and disrupting pedagogies in K12 education. She also seeks ways to undo the settler-colonial constructs inherent in teaching and learning science, particularly within place-based educational curriculum and pedagogy. She often uses scientific processes as a way to write about and desettle whiteness as an organizing force in education.
Melinda M. Adams belongs to the N’dee, San Carlos Apache Tribe of Arizona and grew up in Albuquerque New Mexico. She is a doctoral student in the Department of Native American Studies and currently conducts research within the Environmental Policy and Management department at the University of California Davis.
Melinda's heartwork focuses on the reclamation of Indigenous land stewardship practices at the intersection of ecology, environmental policy, and rooted in Indigenous methodologies. Her work privileges Indigenous cultural fire and seeks to: contextualize climate observations via intergenerational knowledge transfer, provide space for socio-ecological-and cultural healing, and inform CA state fire and climate policy.
She received her Bachelor of Science in Environmental Science from Haskell Indian Nations University, her Master of Science in Ecology and Environmental Science from Purdue University, and most recently, her Master of Arts in Native American Studies from UC Davis.
Natasha Myhal is a PhD candidate in the Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. She received her master’s degree in Indigenous Studies from the University of Kansas, and her bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota, Morris in Environmental Studies and American Indian Studies. She is a citizen of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. Her current research seeks to understand barriers to practicing traditional lifeways, where the fields of anthropology and Indigenous studies point to three objects of concern: legal relationships, political ecologies of health, and gender practices. As such, Myhal’s doctoral work seeks to contribute to global biodiversity efforts to renew and restore the ecosystems and cultural systems upon which Indigenous people rely.
Roderick Wijunamai belongs to the Liangmai Naga community. He is currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Anthropology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY where he is a Dean’s Scholar. Roderick is also a Visiting Research Fellow at The Highland Institute, Kohima (Nagaland). Prior to commencing his Ph.D., he was a Lecturer in Sociology and Anthropology at Royal Thimphu College, Bhutan. Roderick’s research takes interest in ecological changes and food systems in Indo-Myanmar borderlands.
Rosie Ojeda is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society (ECS) at the University of Utah. Her dissertation research is centered on Decolonizing Praxis, Multilingual students, and transIndigenous/Cross-cultural collaboration in secondary schools. She previously worked as a high school teacher and teacher trainer in Santa Maria, California. She was also an English Language Fellow (a U.S. Department of State Program) in Guadalajara, Mexico. She is the teaching assistant for the Family School Partnership class which is part of the Advancing Pathways toward Equity and eXcellence with Educators of Multilingual Learners (APEX) project - a National Professional Development grant funded through a U.S. Department of Education.
Samzeila Seneca teaches at the Department of Philosophy, Ramanujan College, University of Delhi. She is working on her Ph.D project, “Status and Role of Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Sustainable Development: Some Ethical Considerations” at the Department of Philosophy, University of Delhi. Her areas of research and interest include Applied Ethics, Development Ethics, Environmental Sustainability, Environmental Justice and Traditional Ecological Knowledge. She hails from the Maram Naga tribe of Manipur, Northeast India, which has been categorised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group by the Government of India.
Sierra Hampton is Chickasaw and has a BA from the University of California, Berkeley and an MS from Lund University, Sweden. She did her Master’s thesis in Aotearoa on the role of the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples’ role there, from the perspective of Māori activists. She is interested in Indigenous food and seed sovereignty and traditional food systems. She has been engaged in the food system as a gardener, seed keeper, and cook. As a UC Berkeley doctoral student, she combines agroecology and Indigenous knowledge to analyze challenges to Indigenous self-determination and support food system revitalization.