Spring Symposium on Indigenous Land Stewardship

April 6 & 7, 2023 | James E. Rogers College of Law

in-person and remote options available

One hundred and fifty years ago the federal government established the first National Park at Yellowstone. Built upon a foundation of colonial violence, nascent environmental conservation policy prescribed the forced eviction of Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories there and across the country in order to create what we experience today as our protected public lands. However the urgent twin crises of climate change and rapid biodiversity loss demonstrate the deep inadequacy of previous conservation policy in meeting its stated goal of environmental protection. Our governments continue to struggle to effectively address these threats to the vitality of our lands and waters. Now is the time to think expansively and creatively to develop intersectional land management policy solutions for our collective future that center Indigenous peoplesʼ rights and environmental justice.

We are witnessing a shift in the broader publicʼs understanding of the active role Indigenous peoples played in sustaining landscapes of biodiversity and abundance across North America prior to European colonization. These rich, extensive bodies of knowledge about land stewardship developed over thousands of years of living within particular landscapes and ecosystems. Conservation and land management science is now validating what Indigenous peoples have known for a long time: that returning land to Indigenous stewardship is an extremely effective way to protect species from further land fragmentation and habitat loss, and can contribute to slowing global climate change. Addressing environmental conservation goals and Indigenous peoplesʼ rights to their ancestral lands need not be mutually exclusive: rather, they are mutually reinforcing.

The Arizona Journal of Environmental Law and Policy’s 2023 Spring Symposium focuses on Indigenous Land Stewardship. The Symposium brings together a diverse array of leaders from tribal communities, academia, the public sector, and advocacy organizations to discuss current efforts within the field of Indigenous land stewardship and its intersections with domestic and international law and policy. The Symposium is organized around four panels: Land Back in Action, Protecting Indigenous Sacred Sites, Tribal Co-Management of Federal Lands, and Indigenous Knowledge in Land Stewardship Law and Policy. To make these discussions as accessible as possible to the public, the Symposium will be held in a hybrid format, with speakers and panelists attending both in-person and remotely. The symposium will be streamed live over Zoom.

The Symposium is co-organized this year with the James E. Rogers College of Law Native American Law Students Association and the Environmental Law Association. We are receiving sponsoring support from the Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, the Indigenous Resilience Center, the Udall Center for Public Policy, the Native Nations Institute, the Agnes Nelms Haury Program in Environment and Social Justice, and the Office of the Provost.

For more information, please contact Arizona Journal of Environmental Law and Policy Editor in Chief Analisa Skeen at eic@ajelp.com.

Thursday, April 6th

Keynote Address

4:30 - 6:00 PM | LAW 164

Introduction
Charles F. “Chuck” Sams III was ceremonially sworn in as the 19th director of the National Park Service on Dec. 16, 2021, by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland.
Sams is Cayuse and Walla Walla and is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Northeast Oregon, where he grew up. He also has blood ties to the Cocopah Tribe and Yankton Sioux of Fort Peck.
Sams most recently served as Oregon Governor Kate Brown's appointee to the Pacific Northwest Power and Conservation Council (NW Council) where he held a position as a council member from March to December of 2021. Prior to joining the NW Council, he served as executive director for the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
For 30 years, Sams has worked in tribal and state government, and in the non-profit natural resource and conservation management field, with an emphasis on the responsibility of strong stewardship for land preservation for this and future generations.
Sams is a veteran of the U.S. Navy where he served as an intelligence specialist. He holds a Bachelor of Science in business administration from Concordia University and a Master of Legal Studies in Indigenous Peoples Law from the University of Oklahoma School of Law. He lives with his wife, Lori Lynn (Reinecke) Sams and their youngest daughter in Alexandria, VA.

In October, 2020, Dorothy FireCloud became the Native American Affairs Liaison and Assistant to the Director of the National Park Service (NPS). Her responsibilities include ensuring the NPS meets the requirements of the Department of the Interior’s Policy on Consultation with Tribal Nations, and supporting the Director on issues impacting Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian communities.

From 2012 to 2020, FireCloud served as Superintendent at two Puebloan NPS sites, Montezuma Castle National Monument and Tuzigoot National Monument in the Verde Valley of Arizona. She joined the National Park Service in 2006 as Superintendent of Devils Tower National Monument, a site of significant spiritual connection to her tribe. She holds a Juris Doctorate from the New Mexico School of Law and has been a member of the New Mexico State Bar since 1991.

Reception with refreshments to follow.

6:00 - 7:00 PM | Law School Courtyard

Friday, April 7th

Panel I - Land Back in Action

9:00 - 10:30 AM | LAW 164

Land Back is a decentralized, international Indigenous-led movement that picks up the mantle from previous generations of activists and leaders who have fought for the return of their ancestral homelands across North America. At its core, Land Back calls for unjustly taken lands to be returned to Indigenous ownership, rather than securing access rights or entering into co-management agreements. But it also recognizes that justice demands a more holistic recognition of Indigenous peoples’ enduring cultural and ecological relationships with and within their homelands and the revitalization of Indigenous land stewardship practices. Today, Indigenous peoples are utilizing new strategies to recover ownership of their ancestral lands. This panel will discuss how to advocate for and negotiate land return from federal, state, and local governments, as well as the development of innovative inter-tribal initiatives working with land trusts/conservancies to recover lands and waters and provide for their lasting protection.

Moderator
Professor Heather Whiteman Runs Him is an Associate Clinic Professor at the James E. Rogers College of Law and is Director of the Tribal Justice Clinic. Professor Whiteman Runs Him joins Arizona Law from the Native American Rights Fund in Boulder, Colorado, where she represented tribal clients on water rights and advised clients on claims relating to water, land, and other natural resource issues. Prior to that she was joint lead counsel at the Crow Tribe Office of Executive Counsel and an assistant public defender for New Mexico Public Defenders – Metro Division. Professor Whiteman Runs Him received her JD from Harvard Law School, her BAFA in studio art and art history from the University of New Mexico, and her AFA in museum studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Krystal Two Bulls, Co-Executive Director of Honor the Earth, is an Oglala Lakota and Northern Cheyenne organizer and the former Director of the NDN Collective’s Landback Campaign. She is a grassroots organizer with experience on the frontlines with campaign development and management around social, racial and environmental justice. Krystal’s identity as a Native American veteran is central to her organizing and storytelling. At the heart of Krystal’s work is Sovereignty, LANDBACK, cross movement relationship building and a deep commitment to her People. In healing from her experience as a veteran, Krystal has dedicated herself to embodying what she views as the essential quality of a warrior: a commitment to the well-being of not only her People and their relationship to the land, but that of all Peoples.

Brian Upton is a Tribal Attorney with the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes’ Legal Department, where he has worked since 2003. Before working for CSKT, he worked in Michigan as a Tribal Attorney for the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians’ Legal Department from 1998-2003. Prior to law school, he worked for a consulting firm in Washington, D.C. serving tribal governments, and later for a business consulting firm in Jakarta, Indonesia. He received his bachelor’s degree in international relations from Michigan State University and his J.D. from the University of Montana School of Law.

Hawk is of Ndé (Apache) lineage. An Indigenous artist, land defender and student of nature, he works with Tribes and conservation organizations to design and implement initiatives that protect, restore and return Indigenous Peoples’ traditional lands and waters. From 1990 to 2021, he directed the InterTribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, a consortium of Tribes re-establishing traditional land tenure through cultural protection, education and advocacy. He coordinated acquisition of 1834 hectares (4531 acres) of Sinkyone land in Northern California for the first intertribal network of protected areas, and has designed and led numerous efforts to support ecosystem healing. Hawk has written and co-produced documentaries on protection of Indigenous lands and waters. He co-led Tribal efforts in the process to establish a network of 124 marine protected areas (MPAs) along California’s coastline, and authored two law journal articles on the topic. He has co-developed several culturally focused conservation easements, and led numerous Tribal partnership endeavors with California State Parks.

Hawk is the recipient of a Lannan Foundation Cultural Freedom Fellowship. He also is a recipient of the California State Parks Dewitt Award for Partnership. In 2013, he was appointed by the Natural Resources Agency Secretary to serve on the Parks Forward Commission, formed to re-design California’s system of 279 state parks. He currently serves on California’s Expert Assessment Group for the Green List (EAGL), convened by International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in partnership with Ocean Protection Council and Department of Fish and Wildlife, to evaluate the state’s MPA network. Hawk is on the steering committee of the UC Hastings Indigenous Law. He was a featured artist at UC Hastings Law’s art exhibit Ripples (May 2022).

Panel II - Protecting Indigenous Sacred Sites

10:45 AM - 12:15 PM | LAW 164

Indigenous peoples face uniquely difficult challenges in the exercise of their religious freedoms in the United States given that Indigenous religious practice is often tied to specific sacred sites that are outside the boundaries of Indian Country and now under public or private ownership. Today, many sacred sites are under threat of imminent destruction from extractive natural resource development, pollution, recreation, vandalism, and other public and private actions. This panel will discuss successes and challenges in legal actions to stop the destruction of sacred sites such as Chi’chil Bildagoteel (Oak Flat) in Arizona and Mauna Kea in Hawaii, as well as the role of federal agencies in protecting sacred sites. The panel will also discuss how federal law and policy can be challenged and changed to protect sacred sites by fully recognizing Indigenous peoples’ religious freedom and human rights.

Moderator
Rebecca Tsosie is a Regents Professor at the James E. Rogers College of Law at the University of Arizona. Professor Tsosie, who is of Yaqui descent, is a faculty member for the Indigenous Peoples’ Law and Policy Program at the University of Arizona, and she is widely known for her work in the fields of Federal Indian law and indigenous peoples’ human rights. Prior to joining the UA faculty, Professor Tsosie was a Regents' Professor and Vice Provost for Inclusion and Community Engagement at Arizona State University. Professor Tsosie was the first faculty Executive Director for ASU’s Indian Legal Program and served in that position for 15 years. Professor Tsosie has published widely on sovereignty, self-determination, cultural pluralism, environmental policy and cultural rights. She teaches in the areas of Federal Indian Law, Property, Constitutional Law, Critical Race Theory, and Cultural Resources Law. Professor Tsosie is a member of the Arizona Bar Association and the California Bar Association. Professor Tsosie serves as a Supreme Court Justice for the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation and as an Associate Judge on the San Carlos Tribal Court of Appeals. She received her B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Dr. Wendsler Nosie Sr. is a former Peridot District Councilman and Tribal Chairman of the San Carlos Apache Tribe, which consists of nearly 17,000 tribal members on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. San Carlos stretches across Gila, Graham and Pinal Counties, totaling 1.8 million acres and is situated in the southeastern portion of the State. Wendsler was born on July 10, 1959 on the San Carlos Apache Reservation. He was raised in the traditional Apache way of life. He graduated from the Globe High School in May 1978 and attended Merritt College in Oakland, California, attended Phoenix College in Phoenix, Arizona, and completed the State of Arizona Banking Academy. Dr. Nosie specializes in Bioethics, Sustainability and Global Public Health.
Following college, Wendsler Nosie returned to San Carlos and began his employment as the Tribal Work Experience Program Director in 1982. In 1988, he was elected to Tribal Council for the Peridot District, which governs the San Carlos Apache Tribe through its Amended Constitution and By-Laws, being federally recognized in 1954 through the U.S. Indian Reorganization Act. Wendsler Nosie then founded Rural Opportunities of Arizona (ROA) in 1990, an individually owned business owned and operated by a tribal member, which provided opportunities for tribal members to become skilled in trade and trained for jobs throughout Arizona.
In 1995, Wendsler established Apaches for Cultural Preservation and founded the Spirit of the Mountain Runners in 2000, which is a traditional runners organization. Wendsler Nosie was re-elected as the Tribal Council Representative for the Peridot District in 2004 to serve another four-year term. It was then he was inspired to run for Tribal Chairman. Then in 2006, he was elected by the San Carlos Apache People as their Tribal Chairman. He was recognized in 2006 and given an Honorable Mention by Wake Forest University of Winston-Salem, North Carolina for his coordination bringing students from Wake Forest to the San Carlos Apache Reservation for a cultural integration program and was also recognized and honored in 2007 by the National Council of Churches from New York City for his accomplishments in Indian Country as a leader of spirituality among youth and organizing many events for over fifteen years, which includes having worldwide participation of sacred runs in protection of Native American culture, tradition and heritage. The National Council of Churches comprises over 30 million membership throughout the nation.
Wendsler Nosie Sr. became an executive committee member for the AZ State Democratic Party, District One and introduced the resolution which established the AZ Native American Democratic Caucus. He was the first Native American electorate member of the National Electoral College for Arizona for Obama’s first term as President. He established the Apache Messenger Newspaper in 2011 and owns and operates the newspaper currently. He received the honor of being added to the Globe High School Hall of Fame for Sports. In 2010 and again in 2012, Wendsler Nosie Sr. was re-elected as Tribal Council for the Peridot District.
Wendsler has been instrumental over the course of his political career with the Tribe in establishing, the Apache Gold Casino, Bashas, and currently, the Peridot District Enterprises which include Apache Burger, True Value Hardware, PDEE shopping center, etc. etc. He has also been appointed as the San Carlos Recreation and Wildlife Director and has marketed and expanded the Hunting and Recreational area of the Tribe.
In 2013, Wendsler Nosie Sr. received the Presidential Award from National Progressive Baptist Convention for his fight for human rights for all Native Americans. He is the first Native American to receive such an award. Dr. Wendsler Nosie recently accepted a position with the American University of Sovereign Nations as a Professor in the Practice of Indigenous Knowledge, where he will be teaching a range of Masters and Doctoral program courses to students from around the world.
Wendsler is married to Theresa Beard Nosie, a member of the Navajo Nation. They reside in Peridot, Arizona on the San Carlos Apache Indian Reservation and have six children and 17 grandchildren. Wendsler is a long distance runner and has participated in numerous marathons and half marathons over the years. He is dedicated to the preservation and protection of Native American culture, artifacts, history religion, and tradition. He is the leader of the Apache Stronghold and Director of Gaan Bike Goz aa where he continues to advocate for indigenous religious and human rights and protecting the future for our next generations to come.

Ashley worked as an NHLC staff attorney from 2010 to 2015 and rejoined the litigation team in 2020 after a stint as a land asset manager at Kamehameha Schools. Her advocacy at NHLC has included efforts to: protect Native Hawaiian land and water rights, cultural resources, sacred places, and traditional and customary practices; enforce the State’s trust responsibilities to Native Hawaiians and public trust resources; and ensure that the State upholds its constitutional duty to provide access to Hawaiian immersion education. She also regularly assists clients in amending their birth certificates to correctly document their genealogy. Ashley previously served as associate editor of the Native Hawaiian Law, A Treatise (2015) and is currently assisting with drafting for the next edition of the Treatise. She is also a former law clerk to retired Chief Justice Ronald T.Y. Moon of the Hawaiʻi Supreme Court.

Based out of Kona, Hawaiʻi Island, Ashley serves on the board of directors of Kahaluʻu Kūāhewa, Amy B.H. Greenwell Ethnobotanical Garden, and Hawaiʻi Island-Pacific & Asia Cultural Celebrations. She is a mom of two girls, Kawaiaulia (7) and Hanuola (2), an ʻōlapa of Hālau Kaʻeaikahelelani, and a proud supporter of the normalization of ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi in her community.

Jared Hautamaki is a Senior Advisor at the Bureau of Indian Education. He previously worked as a Policy Advisor at the White House Council on Native American Affairs, leading implementation of the Tribal Treaty and Reserved Rights MOU and the Sacred Sites MOU. Prior to the White House Council, he worked in a variety of capacities at the Environmental Protection Agency. Jared is a member of the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians from Michigan's Upper Peninsula. He was appointed to serve as a Reserve Appellate Judge for his tribe in May 2016. Jared has an undergraduate degree in theater performance from Saginaw Valley State University. Before law school, he attended the Pre-Law Summer Institute for Native Americans and Alaskan Natives at the University of New Mexico. He earned his Juris Doctor from the University of Arizona James E. Rogers College of Law in 2007 and a Master of Laws in International Aviation and Outer Space Law from McGill University in 2013.

Lunch - Catered by Cafe Santa Rosa

12:15 - 1:00 PM | Law School Courtyard

Panel III - Tribal Co-management of Federal Lands

1:15 - 2:45 PM | LAW 164

For the past century, prevailing federal conservation policy forcibly evicted Indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands to create protected public lands like National Parks and National Monuments. These forcible evictions eliminated a legally recognizable property title, but they did not eliminate the connection or the relationship between Indigenous peoples and those lands. Today, Indigenous peoples are serving in some of the highest leadership roles in the federal government responsible for the protection and management of these public lands. Thirty-five years ago, the US Supreme Court held in the Lyng case that Indians could not stop commercial timber harvesting on federal public land managed by the US Forest Service, as that would give the Indians a “veto” over how the government uses “what is after all, its land.” Rather than providing the death knell to Indigenous efforts to have input into the management of federal public lands, Lyng actually provided the spark that led to meaningful change. Beginning with Medicine Wheel and Devils Tower, federal land managers began inviting tribal governments to participate in the early stages of developing management plans. Today, thanks to Indigenous-led advocacy efforts, the federal government appears to be entering a new era of public lands management that recognizes the injustice of these dispossessions and develops frameworks to center tribes as decision-makers in the co-management of their ancestral lands. This panel will discuss opportunities in the existing federal legal framework for tribal co-management of land; successes and challenges in implementation; and avenues for not only land-based co-management, but also for co-management of particular sacred relatives–like bison and salmon.

Moderator
Professor Melissa Tatum specializes in tribal jurisdiction and tribal courts, and in issues relating to cultural property and sacred places. She was a contributing author to Felix Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law, and has written extensively about both civil and criminal procedural issues, and the relationship between tribal, state, and federal courts. Professor Tatum consulted with the Pascua Yaqui Tribe as it became one of the first in the nation to implement VAWA 2013's special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction. She has served on task forces in Michigan and New Mexico charged with developing procedures to facilitate cross-jurisdictional enforcement of protection orders, and has taught seminars on domestic violence and protection orders throughout the United States for judges, attorneys, law enforcement, and victim advocates, including at the National Tribal Judicial Center. Between 1999 and 2006 she served as a judge on the Southwest Intertribal Court of Appeals. Professor Tatum joined the University of Arizona faculty in January 2009, after serving as a faculty member at the University of Tulsa for more than thirteen years.

Professor Monte Mills joined the UW faculty in 2022 as Charles I. Stone Professor of Law and the Director of the Native American Law Center (NALC). He teaches American Indian Law, Property, and other classes focused on Native American and natural resources related topics. Monte's research and writing focuses on the intersection of Federal Indian Law, Tribal sovereignty, and natural resources as well as race and racism in the law and legal education. He has published several law review articles and serves as a co-author on two textbooks: American Indian Law, Cases and Commentary (along with Robert T. Anderson, Sarah A. Krakoff, and Kevin K. Washburn) and Native American Natural Resources Law (with Michael Blumm and Elizabeth Kronk Warner). Monte also co-authored A Third Way: Decolonizing the Laws of Indigenous Cultural Protection, which was published by Cambridge University Press in July 2020. Prior to joining the UW faculty, Monte was a professor and Co-Director of the Margery Hunter Brown Indian Law Clinic at the Alexander Blewett III School of Law at the University of Montana. Prior to joining that faculty, Monte was the Director of the Legal Department for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe in Colorado, an in-house counsel department that he helped organize and implement in 2005 following completion of a unique two-year in-house attorney training program. As Director of the Tribe's Legal Department, Monte represented and counseled the Tribe on a broad array of issues, including litigation in tribal, state and federal courts, legislative matters before the Colorado General Assembly and the United States Congress, and internal tribal matters such as contracting, code-drafting, and gaming issues.

Majel M. Russell Esq. is an attorney for the InterTribal Buffalo Council. Ms. Russell is an enrolled member of the Crow Tribe with an affiliation with the Oglala Sioux Tribe. She graduated from the Montana School of Law in 1992 and is a founding partner of the Elk River Law Office, P.L.L.P., established in 1996. She has primarily a federal Indian law practice focused on representation of Tribal governments, Tribal entities and Tribal businesses in jurisdictional disputes, negotiations with state and federal governments, water rights adjudications, taxation authority and trust land transactions. Ms. Russell has also litigated on behalf of Tribes in Tribal, State District, Federal Courts and the United States Supreme Court. Ms. Russell’s practice has recently evolved into representation of Tribes and Urban Indian Health Clinics to maximize benefits available in the Affordable Care Act, negotiation of ISDEAA contracts with the Indian Health Service.

Craig Andrews is the Vice-Chairman of the Hopi Tribe and a Commissioner of the Bears Ears Inter-Tribal Coalition. He is from the village of Mishongnovi and is of the Bear Clan. Vice-Chairman Andrews previously served two terms as a Hopi Tribal Council Representative and two terms on the Board of Directors for the village of Mishongnovi. While in the Marine Corps, he was stationed in Japan, where he found his desire for construction. Since then, Vice-Chairman Andrews has had over 25 years working in the construction field, where he eventually became an integral employee of the Hopi Arsenic Mitigation Project, which provided arsenic-free water to the Hopi people as stipulated by the Clean Water Act. Vice-Chairman Andrews was also a member of the Hopi Emergency Response Team which mitigated the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the Hopi reservation. As a family man, Vice-Chairman Andrews has eleven children and avidly participates in the Hopi culture so that he can pass this knowledge to his family and future generations.

Panel IV - Indigenous Knowledge in Land Stewardship Law & Policy

3:00 - 4:45 PM | LAW 164

Indigenous communities hold extensive bodies of knowledge about land management developed over thousands of years of living within particular landscapes and ecosystems. Many tribes historically utilized Indigenous scientific knowledge and land tenure systems to effectively conserve a diverse range of ecosystems and encourage an abundance of biodiversity. Even in places where ecological and cultural relationships within ancestral lands have been fractured by dispossession and development, Indigenous peoples continue to practice their recognized human rights to conserve and protect their traditional lands and resources. This panel will explore Indigenous peoplesʼ land stewardship knowledge generally, will focus on how tribal communities and government agencies are using it in the context of cultural forest burning, and discuss how Indigenous knowledge is currently being addressed and included and protected in federal and international law and policy.

Moderator
Dr. Trosper examines principles of Indigenous economics and is writing a book on the topic. He is interested in the areas in which he teaches for the purposes of serving on student committees; in addition to Indigenous economics, he teaches in the areas of Native Nation Building, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and Community Based Research. He began his career in the field of American Indian Economic Development, working on the economic development task force of the American Indian Policy Review Commission.

In the past he also worked on the idea of an American Indian Development Finance Institution, which led to legislation that Ronald Reagan vetoed. After a period of working outside of academia for the Council of Energy Resource Tribes and the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, he returned to university work at the School of Forestry at Northern Arizona University, followed by work at the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia before joining the AIS Department in 2011. His Ph.D. degree is in Economics, from Harvard University (1974); but he has been a multidisciplinary scholar, publishing in American Indian Studies, Ecological Economics, Economics, Policy Studies, Forestry, and Anthropology. His administrative positions in academia have been as Acting Director of the National Indian Policy Center at George Washington University (1994), and at Northern Arizona University, as Interim Director of the Institute for Native Americans (1995-96) and Interim Chairman of the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies (2000-2001). He served as Head of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona from July, 2011 to June, 2014. He is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana.

Mr. Calí Tzay is Maya Kaqchikel from Guatemala, with experience in defending the rights of Indigenous Peoples, both in Guatemala and at the level of the United Nations and the OAS.
He was founder and member of different indigenous organizations in Guatemala and as well Ambassador of Guatemala to the Federal Republic of Germany and was President of the Committee for the Elimination of all forms of Racial Discrimination, a treaty body from which he was elected for four consecutive periods of 4 years each.
He was Director of Human Rights at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala; he was member of the Presidential Commission against Discrimination and Racism against Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala (CODISRA) and President of the National Reparation Program for Victims of the Internal Armed Conflict.

Ron Goode, the Tribal Chairman of the North Fork Mono Tribe, has been conducting cultural burns in California for decades. He’s a fire expert and a scholar and has many interesting insights into the ways fire can be used as a force for good, supporting both the land and Indigenous culture. Chairman Goode and his tribal and ecological team, have been conducting cultural burns with Sequoia National Park, Bass Lake Ranger District Sierra National Forest, Cold Springs Rancheria, Private and Tribal Lands in Mariposa with the Mariposa Miwok Tribe. Chairman Goode serves his community in many capacities. He is on the Native American Advisory Committee for the Department of Water Resources for the California Water Plan Update; he was the Coordinating Lead Author for the Tribal Indigenous Communities Climate Change Assessment as a new report of the California 4th Climate Change Assessment; and has been recognized by the State of California for excellence in Indian Education.

Anthony Morgan Rodman serves as the Executive Director for the White House Council on Native American Affairs at the Department of Interior (DOI). Immediately prior, he worked as the Acting Director for the Office of Indian Economic Development. Previously, he worked in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Management – Indian Affairs (DAS-M), where his primary focus was on the emerging Section 105(l) lease process for tribes. Previously, he served as the first Executive Director of the White House Council on Native American Affairs and a Senior Advisor on Tribal Relations in the Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations. Rodman began his federal career in the tribal trust litigation office of the Office of the Special Trustee for American Indians. He has a bachelor's degree from Harvard University and a law degree from the University of Arizona with a certificate in Indigenous Peoples Law & Policy. Rodman's tribal affiliations are the Cherokee Nation and the Osage Nation.

Jade Begay (she/her), Director of Policy and Advocacy, is a citizen of Tesuque Pueblo and is also Dine and Southern Ute. Jade works at the intersections of storytelling, narrative strategy, climate and environmental justice, and Indigenous rights policy both at the domestic and international level. She has served as the Creative Director and Climate Justice Campaign Director at NDN Collective. Now, Jade directs the Policy and Advocacy work leading programs and projects that elevate policy and advocacy issues that are important to the self-determination of Indigenous Peoples and Tribal Nations.

Jade has a Bachelor’s degree in Film/Video and Communications and a Master of Arts degree in Environmental Leadership. In 2021, she was appointed by President Biden to serve on the inaugural White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council. Jade was named a “Grist Fixer” in 2022 and is a fellow in the Ripe for Creative Disruption: An Environmental Justice Movement Fellowship.