Event

Octaviana V. Trujillo

JPAC Chair

Octaviana V. Trujillo (Yaqui), Ph.D., is the 2023 chair of the CEC’s Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC), having been first appointed as a member of JPAC by US President Barack Obama in 2015. She is founding Chair and Professor Emerita in the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University and the former chairwoman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. She has spent her career advocating for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and developing educational courses, initiatives, and programs to support Tribal Nation Building and Indigenous communities, especially with regard to sustaining Indigenous languages, cultures and lifeways, and working with Indigenous youth.

She is a current Soros Equality Fellow and the 2021 American Educational Research Association, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Research awardee for outstanding scholarship. She is also an advisory board member to Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, whose mission is to affirm the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including their right to self-determination, their collective human and civil rights, the rights of sovereignty and the protection of sacred sites, and their right to free and unrestricted movement across international borders. Trujillo also served as an active national member of the American Friends Service Committee and Farmworker Justice, working to foster community-based resources for promoting social justice.

Her extensive international experience as researcher, mediator, and advisor on the topics of human and Indigenous rights includes participation in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and serving on the EPA Governmental Advisory Committee, which helps to shape US policies that are intended to improve environmental and health conditions in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and the Global Diversity Foundation, which promotes agricultural, biological, and cultural diversity around the world through research, training and social action.

Kathy Hodgson-Smith

TEKEG Facilitator

Kathy L. Hodgson-Smith is a Saskatoon lawyer who practices criminal and Aboriginal law, as well as on behalf of the Métis Legal Research Education Foundation. She has litigated in all levels of court including the Provincial Court and Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatchewan, the Courts of Appeal in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Federal Court of Appeal, and as co-counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada.

She has worked on various national policy initiatives for the Métis National Council (MNC), including the Aboriginal Human Resources Development Agreement Strategy, Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtables, the Kelowna Accord, and Post-Powley. She has also given evidence at the Canadian Aboriginal Affairs Standing Committee on the effects of McIvor decision on the Métis. She has researched and presented on Métis Aboriginal rights law and traditional knowledge at local, provincial, national, and international forums and conducted research for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Canadian Education Association and the Canada Council on Learning and conducts traditional land-use studies for the Métis.

Internationally, she also represents the MNC on the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Committee on the Protection of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Genetic Resources, and on the Canadian Delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

She has chaired a number of committees, including the MNC National Research Strategy and Urban Aboriginal Strategy committee, National Environment Committee, in addition to the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee, which established a national standard for the operation of Mètis Nation Registries.

Jorge Daniel Taillant

CEC Executive Director

Jorge Daniel Taillant serves as the CEC’s Executive Director since August of 2022.

He is a life-long global advocate for human rights and environmental protection. His career spans several decades, working with international development agencies, as an advisor to governments, leading innovative civil society organizations and networks, and with disadvantaged communities to tackle some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.

He has spear-headed incisive global initiatives to link human rights and environmental advocacy, pushing for more effective public policies, stronger legislation and greater corporate accountability and respect for human rights and environmental sustainability.

During the past decade, he has turned his focus to tackling the triple planetary crisis of climate change, pollution and biodiversity loss, advocating for immediate actions to aggressively phase out the most intense climate pollutants, such as methane, black carbon, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and tropospheric ozone (O₃), while promoting inclusive, equitable and resilient adaptation for the most climate-vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.

Nicolas Kosoy

Associate Professor, Faculty of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, McGill Bieler School of Environment

Nicolas is interested in the interface of climate, energy and land-use governance, including the analysis of Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES). He also does research on alternative economic models and plural values as it characterizes degrowth research. He has undertaken fieldwork in Mexico, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela, Kenya, Uganda, Lao PDR,  and Thailand and I am starting new research projects in other Latin American, Asian and African countries. He teaches courses that address a wide range of topics and debates in the area of ecological economics, political ecology and global environmental policy at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels at McGill University since 2010.

Ronald Trosper

Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona

Ronald Trosper is in his last year as Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. His latest work is Indigenous Economics; Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands (University of Arizona Press, 2022), which explores the consequences of Indigenous relationality for economic activity. He examined the institutions that provided stability for the peoples of the Northwest Coast in his book, Resilience, Reciprocity and Ecological Economics: Northwest Coast Sustainability (Routledge, 2009). His Ph.D.  degree is in Economics, from Harvard University (1974). He is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana.

Kathy Hodgson-Smith

TEKEG Facilitator

Kathy L. Hodgson-Smith is a Saskatoon lawyer who practices criminal and Aboriginal law, as well as on behalf of the Métis Legal Research Education Foundation. She has litigated in all levels of court including the Provincial Court and Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatchewan, the Courts of Appeal in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Federal Court of Appeal, and as co-counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada.

She has worked on various national policy initiatives for the Métis National Council (MNC), including the Aboriginal Human Resources Development Agreement Strategy, Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtables, the Kelowna Accord, and Post-Powley. She has also given evidence at the Canadian Aboriginal Affairs Standing Committee on the effects of McIvor decision on the Métis. She has researched and presented on Métis Aboriginal rights law and traditional knowledge at local, provincial, national, and international forums and conducted research for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Canadian Education Association and the Canada Council on Learning and conducts traditional land-use studies for the Métis.

Internationally, she also represents the MNC on the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Committee on the Protection of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Genetic Resources, and on the Canadian Delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

She has chaired a number of committees, including the MNC National Research Strategy and Urban Aboriginal Strategy committee, National Environment Committee, in addition to the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee, which established a national standard for the operation of Mètis Nation Registries.

Octaviana V. Trujillo

JPAC Chair

Octaviana V. Trujillo (Yaqui), Ph.D., is the 2023 chair of the CEC’s Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC), having been first appointed as a member of JPAC by US President Barack Obama in 2015. She is founding Chair and Professor Emerita in the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University and the former chairwoman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. She has spent her career advocating for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and developing educational courses, initiatives, and programs to support Tribal Nation Building and Indigenous communities, especially with regard to sustaining Indigenous languages, cultures and lifeways, and working with Indigenous youth.

She is a current Soros Equality Fellow and the 2021 American Educational Research Association, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Research awardee for outstanding scholarship. She is also an advisory board member to Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, whose mission is to affirm the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including their right to self-determination, their collective human and civil rights, the rights of sovereignty and the protection of sacred sites, and their right to free and unrestricted movement across international borders. Trujillo also served as an active national member of the American Friends Service Committee and Farmworker Justice, working to foster community-based resources for promoting social justice.

Her extensive international experience as researcher, mediator, and advisor on the topics of human and Indigenous rights includes participation in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and serving on the EPA Governmental Advisory Committee, which helps to shape US policies that are intended to improve environmental and health conditions in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and the Global Diversity Foundation, which promotes agricultural, biological, and cultural diversity around the world through research, training and social action.

Kathy Hodgson-Smith

TEKEG Facilitator

Kathy L. Hodgson-Smith is a Saskatoon lawyer who practices criminal and Aboriginal law, as well as on behalf of the Métis Legal Research Education Foundation. She has litigated in all levels of court including the Provincial Court and Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatchewan, the Courts of Appeal in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Federal Court of Appeal, and as co-counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada.

She has worked on various national policy initiatives for the Métis National Council (MNC), including the Aboriginal Human Resources Development Agreement Strategy, Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtables, the Kelowna Accord, and Post-Powley. She has also given evidence at the Canadian Aboriginal Affairs Standing Committee on the effects of McIvor decision on the Métis. She has researched and presented on Métis Aboriginal rights law and traditional knowledge at local, provincial, national, and international forums and conducted research for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Canadian Education Association and the Canada Council on Learning and conducts traditional land-use studies for the Métis.

Internationally, she also represents the MNC on the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Committee on the Protection of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Genetic Resources, and on the Canadian Delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

She has chaired a number of committees, including the MNC National Research Strategy and Urban Aboriginal Strategy committee, National Environment Committee, in addition to the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee, which established a national standard for the operation of Mètis Nation Registries.

Gwen Bridge

CEO and Founder, Gwen Bridge Consulting

A member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Gwen Bridge has over twenty years of experience providing advice, developing strategies, and managing natural resource-related projects for First Nations and their partners, including in land and water planning, protected areas planning, and policy. Gwen has worked on watershed planning with the Mescalero Apache, the Makah Tribe (including collaborative Recovery Planning for the Ozette Sockeye with the US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the State of Washington and the Makah Tribe), the Okanagan Nation Alliance, the Okanagan Indian Band, and the Lower Similkameen Indian Band. Gwen has led and facilitated land-use planning and title and rights protection processes with those nations and others, including the West Moberly First Nations.

Gwen has been recently working on Indigenous-led conservation, including caribou habitat protection and old growth protection with the Okanagan Nation Alliance and negotiating and planning for the South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Reserve.

Gwen is an adept researcher with experience in forest hydrology and natural resources management grounded in technical knowledge (Gwen has a Master of Science in Renewable Resources with a thesis specialization in forestry hydrology) and indigenous perspectives, including designated community-developed bio-cultural use indicators for Water Quality Standards for the Makah Tribe. Gwen has been advising the evolving provincial policy environment for forestry and climate change, land use planning, Indigenous-led conservation in BC, and watershed planning. Gwen teaches courses in Ethical Space and Indigenous Leadership at University nuhelot’ine thaiyots’i nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills and is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. Gwen has provided Ethical Space training to many levels of government including; BC Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, BC Ministry of Forests, BC Ministry of Environment, BC Water Land and Resource Stewardship, Parks Canada, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Chief of Staff office, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, City of Nelson, Association of Kootenay Boundary Local Governments, District of Mission, Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, US National Parks Service, and many others.

Jorge Ramírez Pech

Director, abejasmiel.com

With a bachelor's degree in biology and a master’s degree specializing in apiculture, Jorge Ramírez Pech has worked at Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY) in Mexico; as a research technician at Bochum University in Germany; and as a field and laboratory worker at Düsseldorf University in Germany. He was also a technician and a lead honey promoter at Citrofrut. He has extensive experience in apiculture training, project and enterprise management, and honey marketing. He is currently an apiculturist and meliponiculturist (keeper of stingless bees) and manages the website <abejasmiel.com> and its social networks, with the fundamental mission of creating knowledge and awareness of honeybees (including stingless bees).

Website: abejasmiel.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jorge-ramirez-pech/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/abejasmiel1/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/abejasmiel1/

James C. Hopkins

Associate Clinical Professor, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, and Affiliated Professor of American Indian Studies & Latin American Studies), University of Arizona

James Hopkins is Algonquin/Metis from Quebec. He is a former law clerk to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and is a member of the Ontario Bar. Prior to joining the College of Law, University of Arizona, he was an Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. He graduated from Harvard Law School’s joint Masters of Laws and International Tax Program (LLM/ITP) in June 2000. Professor Hopkins’ area of interest is the intersection between trade, tax and aboriginal law. He is a recipient of the Harvard University International Tax Program’s Award for Excellence in Research and Writing for his graduate thesis, titled “Democratization by Taxation: Democratic Experimentalism in Aboriginal Canada.”

Octaviana V. Trujillo

JPAC Chair

Octaviana V. Trujillo (Yaqui), Ph.D., is the 2023 chair of the CEC’s Joint Public Advisory Committee (JPAC), having been first appointed as a member of JPAC by US President Barack Obama in 2015. She is founding Chair and Professor Emerita in the Department of Applied Indigenous Studies at Northern Arizona University and the former chairwoman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona. She has spent her career advocating for the rights of Indigenous Peoples and developing educational courses, initiatives, and programs to support Tribal Nation Building and Indigenous communities, especially with regard to sustaining Indigenous languages, cultures and lifeways, and working with Indigenous youth.

She is a current Soros Equality Fellow and the 2021 American Educational Research Association, Indigenous Peoples of the Americas Research awardee for outstanding scholarship. She is also an advisory board member to Alianza Indígena Sin Fronteras, whose mission is to affirm the rights of Indigenous Peoples, including their right to self-determination, their collective human and civil rights, the rights of sovereignty and the protection of sacred sites, and their right to free and unrestricted movement across international borders. Trujillo also served as an active national member of the American Friends Service Committee and Farmworker Justice, working to foster community-based resources for promoting social justice.

Her extensive international experience as researcher, mediator, and advisor on the topics of human and Indigenous rights includes participation in the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues and serving on the EPA Governmental Advisory Committee, which helps to shape US policies that are intended to improve environmental and health conditions in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, and the Global Diversity Foundation, which promotes agricultural, biological, and cultural diversity around the world through research, training and social action.

Theresa Aslin Fresco

Senior Manager, Indigenous Partnerships and Initiatives Program, Fraser Basin Council

Theresa Aslin Fresco is the Senior Manager of the Indigenous Partnerships and Initiatives Program at Fraser Basin Council.  She is a member of the Lake Babine Nation on her mother’s side and an immigrant settler from the Visayas region of the Philippines on her father’s side.  She has a background in community and regional planning and has a over a decade of experience in watershed governance, facilitation, process design, project management and program delivery in a diversity of areas spanning across the environmental, social, economic and cultural dimensions of sustainability.  Theresa holds a Masters in Planning from the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning and a Bachelors of Arts in Geography and English Literature from the University of the Fraser Valley.  In addition to her research and work experience across BC, she has worked and lived in the Philippines, Ireland, Japan and Mexico.

Mindahi Bastida

Founder and Convenor, The Earth Elders

Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz, Ph.D., was born in San Pedro Tultepec, Lerma, Mexico. He is part of the Otomi-Toltec Peoples and a former JPAC-CEC member. Mindahi is a traditional authority of the Grand Council of the Eagle and the Condor. His mission is to ensure that the Earth Mandates are implemented in 52 major bioregions in the world. The Earth Mandates were received in a ceremony hosted by the Kogi, Arwak and Kankuamo in Sacred Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in May 2013.

He is the General Coordinator of the Otomi-Toltec Regional Council in Mexico and caretaker of the philosophy and traditions of the Otomi-Toltec peoples. He has been an Otomi-Toltec Ceremonial Officer since 1988 and, since 2012, has been a consultant to UNESCO on Sacred Sites and Biocultural protection. He has served as the Director of the Original Nations Program of the Fountain (2020–2023), the Director of the Original Caretakers Program at the Center for Earth Ethics, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (2017–2020), and as the Director of Sustainable Development Division, Intercultural University of Mexico State (2002–2012).

His two most recent books are Ancestors. Divine Remembrance of Lineage, Relations and Sacred Sites (Translated in four languages and available as Audiobook) and Rooted in Ethics. He has written extensively on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Sacred Sites, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, among other topics. He was also chief editor of a book series on Culture, Gastronomy, and Biodiversity of the Wetlands of his original homeland in the highlands of Mexico.

He is an international speaker, having been invited to over fifty countries and to every continent. Currently there are two films being produced that focus on his message and legacy. Mihandi is a member of the Advisory Group, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, the Advisory Council of Kiss the Ground, the Executive Committee of the Alliance Guardians of Mother Nature and a  Former Member of the board of directors of The Fountain.

Kathy Hodgson-Smith

TEKEG Facilitator

Kathy L. Hodgson-Smith is a Saskatoon lawyer who practices criminal and Aboriginal law, as well as on behalf of the Métis Legal Research Education Foundation. She has litigated in all levels of court including the Provincial Court and Court of Queen’s Bench in Saskatchewan, the Courts of Appeal in Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Federal Court of Appeal, and as co-counsel at the Supreme Court of Canada.

She has worked on various national policy initiatives for the Métis National Council (MNC), including the Aboriginal Human Resources Development Agreement Strategy, Canada-Aboriginal Peoples Roundtables, the Kelowna Accord, and Post-Powley. She has also given evidence at the Canadian Aboriginal Affairs Standing Committee on the effects of McIvor decision on the Métis. She has researched and presented on Métis Aboriginal rights law and traditional knowledge at local, provincial, national, and international forums and conducted research for the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Canadian Education Association and the Canada Council on Learning and conducts traditional land-use studies for the Métis.

Internationally, she also represents the MNC on the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Committee on the Protection of Indigenous Traditional Knowledge and Genetic Resources, and on the Canadian Delegation to the Convention on Biological Diversity.

She has chaired a number of committees, including the MNC National Research Strategy and Urban Aboriginal Strategy committee, National Environment Committee, in addition to the Canadian Standards Association Technical Committee, which established a national standard for the operation of Mètis Nation Registries.

Mindahi Bastida

Founder and Convenor, The Earth Elders

Mindahi Crescencio Bastida Muñoz, Ph.D., was born in San Pedro Tultepec, Lerma, Mexico. He is part of the Otomi-Toltec Peoples and a former JPAC-CEC member. Mindahi is a traditional authority of the Grand Council of the Eagle and the Condor. His mission is to ensure that the Earth Mandates are implemented in 52 major bioregions in the world. The Earth Mandates were received in a ceremony hosted by the Kogi, Arwak and Kankuamo in Sacred Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in May 2013.

He is the General Coordinator of the Otomi-Toltec Regional Council in Mexico and caretaker of the philosophy and traditions of the Otomi-Toltec peoples. He has been an Otomi-Toltec Ceremonial Officer since 1988 and, since 2012, has been a consultant to UNESCO on Sacred Sites and Biocultural protection. He has served as the Director of the Original Nations Program of the Fountain (2020–2023), the Director of the Original Caretakers Program at the Center for Earth Ethics, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York (2017–2020), and as the Director of Sustainable Development Division, Intercultural University of Mexico State (2002–2012).

His two most recent books are Ancestors. Divine Remembrance of Lineage, Relations and Sacred Sites (Translated in four languages and available as Audiobook) and Rooted in Ethics. He has written extensively on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, Sacred Sites, intercultural education, collective intellectual property rights and associated traditional knowledge, among other topics. He was also chief editor of a book series on Culture, Gastronomy, and Biodiversity of the Wetlands of his original homeland in the highlands of Mexico.

He is an international speaker, having been invited to over fifty countries and to every continent. Currently there are two films being produced that focus on his message and legacy. Mihandi is a member of the Advisory Group, Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, the Advisory Council of Kiss the Ground, the Executive Committee of the Alliance Guardians of Mother Nature and a  Former Member of the board of directors of The Fountain.

Gwen Bridge

CEO and Founder, Gwen Bridge Consulting

A member of the Saddle Lake Cree Nation, Gwen Bridge has over twenty years of experience providing advice, developing strategies, and managing natural resource-related projects for First Nations and their partners, including in land and water planning, protected areas planning, and policy. Gwen has worked on watershed planning with the Mescalero Apache, the Makah Tribe (including collaborative Recovery Planning for the Ozette Sockeye with the US National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the State of Washington and the Makah Tribe), the Okanagan Nation Alliance, the Okanagan Indian Band, and the Lower Similkameen Indian Band. Gwen has led and facilitated land-use planning and title and rights protection processes with those nations and others, including the West Moberly First Nations.

Gwen has been recently working on Indigenous-led conservation, including caribou habitat protection and old growth protection with the Okanagan Nation Alliance and negotiating and planning for the South Okanagan Similkameen National Park Reserve.

Gwen is an adept researcher with experience in forest hydrology and natural resources management grounded in technical knowledge (Gwen has a Master of Science in Renewable Resources with a thesis specialization in forestry hydrology) and indigenous perspectives, including designated community-developed bio-cultural use indicators for Water Quality Standards for the Makah Tribe. Gwen has been advising the evolving provincial policy environment for forestry and climate change, land use planning, Indigenous-led conservation in BC, and watershed planning. Gwen teaches courses in Ethical Space and Indigenous Leadership at University nuhelot’ine thaiyots’i nistameyimâkanak Blue Quills and is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. Gwen has provided Ethical Space training to many levels of government including; BC Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, BC Ministry of Forests, BC Ministry of Environment, BC Water Land and Resource Stewardship, Parks Canada, Minister of Environment and Climate Change Canada’s Chief of Staff office, Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada, City of Nelson, Association of Kootenay Boundary Local Governments, District of Mission, Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House, US National Parks Service, and many others.

Fadi Cherri

Policy Analyst, National Indigenous Economic Development Board

Fadi Cherri first joined the public service as an interviewer with Statistics Canada, spending significant time living and working in the North.

He then worked with The Arctic Council’s Sustainable Development Working Group, overseeing Canada’s contributions to the “Zero Arctic” project. In collaboration with Finland and Japan, the project proposed designs for carbon neutral Arctic building constructions inspired by the traditions and architecture of Indigenous Peoples.

As a policy analyst with the National Indigenous Economic Development Board, Fadi feels privileged to be able to support the Board’s vision of a vibrant economy where Indigenous Peoples are self-sufficient and prosperous.

#NIEDB

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/niedb-secretariat-086855303

Q”Apaj Conde

Associate Programme Management Officer, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity

Q”apaj Conde is Associate Programme Management Officer at the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Previously, he served as Indigenous Fellow in the World Intellectual Property Organization (2013 – 2014), and a Legal Officer in the Centro de Estudios Multidisciplinarios-Aymara (2016 – 2017). He holds a law degree from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (Bolivia), a Master of Laws from the University of Seville (Spain) and a Doctor of Juridical Sciences from the University of Arizona (USA).

Theresa Aslin Fresco

Senior Manager, Indigenous Partnerships and Initiatives Program, Fraser Basin Council

Theresa Aslin Fresco is the Senior Manager of the Indigenous Partnerships and Initiatives Program at Fraser Basin Council.  She is a member of the Lake Babine Nation on her mother’s side and an immigrant settler from the Visayas region of the Philippines on her father’s side.  She has a background in community and regional planning and has a over a decade of experience in watershed governance, facilitation, process design, project management and program delivery in a diversity of areas spanning across the environmental, social, economic and cultural dimensions of sustainability.  Theresa holds a Masters in Planning from the University of British Columbia’s School of Community and Regional Planning and a Bachelors of Arts in Geography and English Literature from the University of the Fraser Valley.  In addition to her research and work experience across BC, she has worked and lived in the Philippines, Ireland, Japan and Mexico.

Guadalupe Yesenia Hernández Márquez

President, Alliance for Community-Based Biodiversity Conservation and Restoration Funding

Consultant, academic and sustainability activist, Guadalupe Yesenia Hernández Márquez advises governments, educational institutions and businesses on the socio-environmental aspects of projects implemented with financing from international banks. In addition to her expertise in the conservation and protection of biocultural diversity, heritage and rights, through the facilitation of protocols in relation to Indigenous peoples and local communities, she has experience in policy advocacy on environmental and biodiversity issues at the local, national and international issues. As director of biodiversity with the organization, Rueda de Medicina (Medicine Wheel), A.C., she promotes the program, “Biodiversity: opportunity and responsibility,” to contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of the natural wealth of Indigenous and peasant communities in Mexico.

James C. Hopkins

Associate Clinical Professor, Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program, and Affiliated Professor of American Indian Studies & Latin American Studies), University of Arizona

James Hopkins is Algonquin/Metis from Quebec. He is a former law clerk to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice and is a member of the Ontario Bar. Prior to joining the College of Law, University of Arizona, he was an Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta. He graduated from Harvard Law School’s joint Masters of Laws and International Tax Program (LLM/ITP) in June 2000. Professor Hopkins’ area of interest is the intersection between trade, tax and aboriginal law. He is a recipient of the Harvard University International Tax Program’s Award for Excellence in Research and Writing for his graduate thesis, titled “Democratization by Taxation: Democratic Experimentalism in Aboriginal Canada.”

Sabaa Khan

Director General, Quebec and Atlantic Canada, David Suzuki Foundation

Dr. Sabaa Khan (DCL, LL.M., LL.L) is Director General for Québec and Atlantic Canada at the David Suzuki Foundation. She also directs the Foundation’s national climate change portfolio. An attorney member of the World Commission on Environmental Law (IUCN) and the Barreau du Québec, she has held several advisory appointments in environmental and trade governance, including on the NAFTA Advisory Council on Environment (Government of Canada). She is co-editor and author of the collective volume, La nature de l’injustice: Racisme et inégalités environnementales (Les éditions Écosociété). Her legal research and opinions have been widely published, including by the Nordic Council of Ministers, the United Nations University - Institute for Sustainability and Peace, the Leiden Journal of International Law, and the Conference of the Four Societies of international law. She is also a national steering committee member of the National Association of Women and the Law, where she presides as Chair of the Climate Crisis Working Group.

Social media: BlueSky@sabaakhan.bsky.social

Brenda Parlee

Professor, Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta

Brenda L. Parlee is a 'settler' scholar from north-eastern Ontario, Canada.   She has a B.A.  from the University of Guelph (1995), and an M.E.S. in Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo (1998).  She went on to receive her PhD from the University of Manitoba in Natural Resources and Environmental Management (NREM) in 2005.   During 2004-2024, Brenda was a Canada Research Chair (Tier II) at the University of Alberta. She is currently Professor in the Department of Natural Resource Sciences and Bieler Chair in Northern Climate Change and Sustainability at McGill University.    Brenda has worked in northern Canada and globally for over 27 years on a range of collaborative and community-based research projects related to community-based monitoring, social-ecological change in the Mackenzie River Basin, wildlife health, Indigenous knowledge of caribou populations, sustainable resource development, the impacts of mining on community wellbeing, biodiversity conservation and cooperative (co-management) of lands and resources in Alberta.

Brenda is the Nominated Principal Investigator of the Ărramăt Project, a 6-year research initiative focused on supporting Indigenous-led research in Canada and globally on the interconnections between biodiversity and health and well-being.

Jorge Ramírez Pech

Director, abejasmiel.com

With a bachelor's degree in biology and a master’s degree specializing in apiculture, Jorge Ramírez Pech has worked at Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán (UADY) in Mexico; as a research technician at Bochum University in Germany; and as a field and laboratory worker at Düsseldorf University in Germany. He was also a technician and a lead honey promoter at Citrofrut. He has extensive experience in apiculture training, project and enterprise management, and honey marketing. He is currently an apiculturist and meliponiculturist (keeper of stingless bees) and manages the website <abejasmiel.com> and its social networks, with the fundamental mission of creating knowledge and awareness of honeybees (including stingless bees).

Website: abejasmiel.com

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jorge-ramirez-pech/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/abejasmiel1/
Instagram: www.instagram.com/abejasmiel1/

Alina Liviet Santiago Jiménez

Chair and Representative for Central America and the Caribbean, FSC Permanent Indigenous Peoples Committee

A member of the Zapotec Indigenous community of Ixtlán de Juárez, Oaxaca, México, Alina Santiago Jiménez holds a bachelor's degree in business management, specialized in international trade, from Universidad José Vasconcelos de Oaxaca. Her professional career includes managing community projects in investment and field work, as well as project reporting for domestic and international organizations. For more than 20 years, she has worked with Indigenous communities and has broad experience in forestry certification issues (particularly for programs under the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)), supply chains, forestry training, community governance, business mentoring and communal enterprise management. In her work with Indigenous communities, she has provided guidance in multiple areas, including audit preparation for FSC chain of custody certification, development of control systems, and training and monitoring of certification processes. She currently acts as Chair of the FSC Permanent Indigenous Peoples Committee (PIPC), representing Mexico and Central America.

Facebook: Comunidad Ixtlán de Juárez

Ronald Trosper

Professor of American Indian Studies, University of Arizona

Ronald Trosper is in his last year as Professor of American Indian Studies at the University of Arizona. His latest work is Indigenous Economics; Sustaining Peoples and Their Lands (University of Arizona Press, 2022), which explores the consequences of Indigenous relationality for economic activity. He examined the institutions that provided stability for the peoples of the Northwest Coast in his book, Resilience, Reciprocity and Ecological Economics: Northwest Coast Sustainability (Routledge, 2009). His Ph.D.  degree is in Economics, from Harvard University (1974). He is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation, Montana.

Luis Martínez Villanueva

General Director, Mexican Network of Small Fair Trade Producers

An agroecological engineer and graduate of Universidad Autónoma Chapingo in Mexico, Luis Martínez Villanueva has since 2012 acted as the general director of the Mexican Network of Fair Trade Small Producers (Coordinadora Mexicana de Pequeños Productores de Comercio Justo), based in Oaxaca. He was technical advisor at the Union of Isthmus Region Indigenous Communities (Unión de Comunidades Indígenas de la Región del Istmo—UCIRI) from 1996 to 2019 and an organic products inspector from 1998 to 2012. He was a member of the board of directors of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Fair Trade Small Producers and Workers (Coordinadora Latinoamericana y del Caribe de Pequeños(as) Productores(as) y Trabajadores(as) de Comercio Justo) from 2012 to 2018, and a member of the Board of Examiners of the same organization from 2019 to 2022.

Facebook: www.facebook.com/coordinadora.mexicana/
Website: /www.comerciojustomx.org/

Iitoomsaokaa’sii Diandra Bruised Head

Kainaikii, Kanai Blood Tribe

Oki. Kitsiksimaatsimmahpowawa anooma kiitawahsinoon. Niistoakoke Iitoomsaokaa’sii. Nimohtoto Akainai. Nimohtotsiitapii mammyoyiiksi kii akaipokaiksi. Ninna anistawa Aatsakoomahkainai, Niiksista Naatosaakii. Diandra Bruised Head is Blackfoot from the Kainai Blood Tribe in Southern Alberta, Canada. She is a graduate of the Lethbridge College and University of Lethbridge in Environmental Sciences and began her career working in the field, connecting directly to the land through scientific data collection. In 2017, she was hired as Blood Tribe Climate Change Coordinator to raise awareness about the severe changes predicted, and to encourage youth, elders, and the community to act in resilience together. This led to the development of the Kainai Iinnii Rematriation project, which welcomed plains bison to communal lands as a practice of Indigenous Sovereignty in 2021. Diandra was elected to the Blood Tribe Chief and Council leadership team in November of 2020. During her four-year term, she led the people with Blackfoot values. She plans on continuing to advocate for landscape-scale Bison Rematriation.

Kerry-Ann Charles

Environment Partnership Co-ordinator, Cambium Indigenous Professional Services

Kerry-Ann Charles is a member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island First Nation and is the Co-ordinator of Lands and Climate Change for Cambium Aboriginal.  Kerry Ann was proud to serve her Community for over 17 years including a term as Councillor.  She has worked on by-law development, waste management, housing and most recently environmental project co-ordination and management.  For eight years she was responsible for researching and developing funding proposals which helped build and sustain the First Nations Environment Department including community climate change adaptation and implementation plans not only for her community but other First Nation as well.  She has had great success in initiating and building relationships with various Environmental organizations, developing partnerships to co-ordinate and carry out various environmental activities as well as promoting education and community involvement in Environmental Health within her community and others.  As a result of this work, Kerry Ann has gained International recognition and has been asked to speak across Canada, in the US and Mexico in the area of indigenous perspectives on Environmental Stewardship as well as Climate Change Adaptation.  Kerry-Ann is a member of several climate change and Indigenous perspectives committees and her wide range of career experiences give her a unique perspective that can be very valuable when assisting other communities wishing to find their balance of operations and environmental stewardship.

Matthew Foss

VP Research and Public Policy, Canadian Council for Indigenous Business (CCIB)

Matthew Foss is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, with over 20 years of research and public policy experience and is an Executive Fellow with the University of Calgary School of Public Policy. Matthew has frequently provided seminars and presentations to domestic and international audiences and has taught university-level economics courses.

Prior to joining CCIB, he ran his own energy economics and public policy consulting business for several years. Matthew recently served as the Chief Energy Economist/Executive Director of Energy Information and Analysis for the Alberta Government, where he lead a team of researchers and analysts responsible for assessing the value of Alberta’s energy resources, designing Alberta’s oil and gas royalty formulas, programs, features and incentives, forecasting oil and natural gas prices and energy revenues, and advising one of the world’s largest oil and gas producing regions on energy markets and related policies and strategies.

Matthew has a Master of Arts in Economics and a Bachelor of Arts First Class Honours in Economics, both obtained from the University of Calgary.

Benjamin Green-Stacey

Director of Environmental Protection, Kahnawà:ke Environment Protection Office (KEPO)

Benjamin joined the KEPO team in September 2022 as the new Director of Environmental Protection. He comes to this role from the Assembly of First Nations where he advocated on a wide range of environmental issues including: area based conservation and the importance of Indigenous Protected and Conserved Areas, species at risk and the stewardship of culturally significant species, wildlife health and the cultural impacts of zoonotic diseases, and on development of the Post 2020 Global Biodiversity Framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity. He is looking forward to working with KEPO and Kahnawa’kehró:non to find culturally grounded opportunities for growth in Kahnawà:ke’s environmental protections and the assertion of jurisdiction over environmental protection matters.

Dawn Madahbee Leach

Chairperson, National Indigenous Economic Development Board

Ms. Madahbee Leach, an Anishinabe-Kwe and member of the Aundeck Omni Kaning First Nation, is currently the General Manager of the Waubetek Business Corporation, a leading Indigenous financial institution, providing financial services to Indigenous entrepreneurs across Northeast Ontario in Canada. She is also the founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of Indigenous Business International, which assists Indigenous people and companies internationally with various economic sector strategies and project reviews.

Ms. Madahbee Leach is the Chair of the National Indigenous Economic Development Board and has been part of this federally appointed board since 2000, providing advice and guidance to the federal government on issues related to Indigenous economic policies and programming. In collaboration with more than 20 national Indigenous organizations, she chaired the development of the first ever National indigenous Economic Strategy for Canada, published in June 2022.

Ms. Madahbee Leach graduated from the University of Waterloo’s Economic Developers Program and has a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science and Law from Laurentian University, with a part of her studies for this degree at York University.

Angie Saltman

Impact Driven Indigenous Entrepreneur President & Partner, Saltmedia Inc. & IT Horizons Inc.

Angie Saltman is located on Treaty 8 Territory, on the homeland of many Métis in the hub of Alberta’s north, Grande Prairie. She is the president and founder of Saltmedia Inc., a marketing firm specializing in websites, graphic design, and marketing. Angie is also a partner in IT Horizons Inc., a managed service provider offering comprehensive technology solutions for businesses and organizations, ensuring their cybersecurity, backups, software, servers, and computers operate smoothly 24/7. Both businesses are majority Indigenous-owned by Angie and her life and business partner, Alex Saltman. Her primary roles within the companies include managing relationships, providing visionary leadership, fostering company culture, and overseeing marketing and sales.