Tribal Resilience and Indigenous Planning 

Dr. Ted Jojola has a distinguished career as an educator and practitioner in urban and regional planning and other related subjects, with particular specialty in indigenous planning. Since 1980, he has taught at the University of New Mexico. He served as director of Native American Studies from 1980 to 1996, acting director of the Community and Regional Planning Program in 1995-96 and director in 2004-05.

In 2010, he obtained funding for iArchitecture, an interdisciplinary course on contemporary indigenous architecture at UNM. He has an ongoing cultural consultancy with the Native American Cultural Center, Northern Arizona State University, Studio Ma Architects. Dr. Jojola prepared the Tribal Planning Student Internships & Planning Information Handbook for the New Mexico Indian Affairs Department in 2009. He conducted community workshops on indigenous planning for the US Department of Justice and regional workshops on tribal community planning, Policy Research Center, National Congress of American Indians in 2008. He is an ongoing participant in the Indigenous Planning Exchange, US Department of Education since 2007. Dr. Jojola participated in the Visioning 21st Century Tribal Community Planning, Tribal Planning Summit, Arizona State University in 2007. He has also been involved since 2007 with the New Mexico Indian Education Atlas.

Dr. Jojola has published in many books and periodicals, and has prepared technical and commissioned research reports. Recently, he prepared Planning in Indian Country: Regional Conversations, a report of findings for eight regional tribal summits, 2007-2009 for the National Congress of American Indians (released 2011). He wrote the Legacy of the Pueblo Revolt and the Tiquex Province in an anthology of Po`pay and the Pueblo Revolt, edited by Joe Sando, Clear Light Book Publishers in 2005. He has also received many recognition awards for the merits of his work, including the Richard W. Etulain Honorary Lectureship in 2012 and distinguished professorship in 2011.

Michaela Paulette Shirley (Diné), MCRP, is Water Edge clan, born for Bitter Water clan, her maternal grandpa is Salt clan, and her paternal grandpa is Coyote Pass clan. Michaela grew up in Kin Dah Lichii in northeastern Arizona on the Navajo reservation. She received her bachelor’s in urban planning from Arizona State University, and a master’s in community and regional planning from the University of New Mexico.

Michaela’s background is in urban planning, community development, and Indigenous planning, with research interests in community-school relationships, biographies of landscape, Diné studies, Latin American studies, critical Indigenous studies, critical regional studies, and transnationalism. She is a current PhD student in the UNM American Studies program.

Michaela is a program manager for the Indigenous Design and Planning Institute at UNM. She plans and coordinates the development and implementation of sub-programs, special projects, and other initiatives to achieve the overall mission of iD+Pi. Michaela oversees the day-to-day operations of the various iD+Pi programs and activities. She serves as a primary liaison for the iD+Pi and represents the University with respect to program activities on a local, regional, national, and international basis. iD+Pi is a KSU Tribal TAB partner working on brownfield redevelopment projects and workshops in both Region 6 and nationally. 

Joseph Erb is a digital media artist working in 2D and 3D animation as well as other materials, and he teaches courses in digital storytelling and animation. He holds an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania, and before coming to MU served as the Digital Media and Language Technology Specialist for the Cherokee Nation. He created the first computer-animated film and the first planetarium show in a Native American language, and has led major projects—working closely with technicians and executives at Apple and later Google, Facebook and Microsoft—to embed the Cherokee syllabary on the iPhone, iPad, and social media sites as well as Gmail and the search engine Google. He liases regularly with programmers, systems engineers and executives at these companies, as well as a wide range of other organizations including tribal nations, the National Park Service, and the Unicode Consortium.

Jennifer Clancey is the  Kansas State University Technical Assistance to Brownfields Program (KSU TAB) Coordinator for EPA Region 7. Although an Iowa native, Jen grew up in Houston, Texas, but returned to the Midwest to attend University of Iowa, where she completed a double major in Geology and Environmental Science. She has more than 12 years of experience in community revitalization and redevelopment, community engagement, community strategic planning, environmental assessment and cleanup, regulatory compliance, sustainability, and grant writing and management. Formerly the Program Manager for the City of Houston’s Brownfields Redevelopment Program and the Energy Manager for the City of Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she has administered nearly $2 million in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and other federal grant funding. Jennifer takes great pride in working with communities that have been historically underserved by assisting them with realizing their community vision and working to implement this vision in order to bring about meaningful and beneficial change. 

A licensed professional engineer, Oral Saulters earned his bachelor’s degree at Kansas State University, and a master’s degree from the University of Oklahoma. His experience includes supporting the Technical Assistance to Brownfields program for community redevelopment and environmental justice with the Center for Hazardous Substance Research; green design of non-lethal technologies for the US DoD Joint Non Lethal Weapons Directorate; NEPA and CERCLA evaluations for the US Army; RCRA permitting work with the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality; and investigations of the effectiveness of hydrothermal oxidation for destroying chemical wastes with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He is a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers National Committee on Sustainability and Environment and an Associate Editor for the Journal of Science Policy & Governance.

 Dr. Cynthia Annett is a Research Associate Professor at Kansas State University working with the KSU Tribal TAB program. She received her Masters from Moss Landing Marine Labs and her Doctorate from U.C. Berkeley. As a member of the Google Earth Outreach Trainers’ Network, she is one of the trainer's for the international Indigenous Mapping workshops. Dr. Annett has worked on environmental justice issues  involving dams and fisheries, including a twenty year long project in Siberia on river management and access to drinking water for Indigenous villages. She lives on a farm in Kansas and provides training in Google geotools to tribes, nonprofits, and educational groups working to increase community participation, cultural sensitivity, and local environmental decision-making.