Nancy Turner, Distinguished Professor and Hakai Professor in Ethnoecology at the University of Victoria, is an ethnobotanist whose research integrates the fields of botany and ecology with anthropology, geography and linguistics, among others. She is interested in the traditional knowledge systems and traditional land and resource management systems of Indigenous Peoples, particularly in western Canada.
Nancy has worked with First Nations elders and cultural specialists in northwestern North America for over 40 years, collaborating with indigenous communities to help document, retain and promote their traditional knowledge of plants and habitats, including indigenous foods, materials and medicines, as well as language and vocabulary relating to plants and environments. Her interests also include the roles of plants and animals in narratives, ceremonies, language and belief systems.
Currently, Nancy is working on several research and writing projects. In 2011, she was named Hakai Chair in Ethnoecology and was awarded a $1.25 million grant from the Quadra Island-based Tula Foundation to support her ongoing work. This funding and new role allows her to participate more fully in community-based learning and research, especially pertaining to critical issues facing Canadians today on the importance of sustaining biocultural diversity in an ever-changing world. She remains active in organisations including The Hakai Institute, Society of Ethnobiology, Society for Economic Botany and Slow Food International.
Carolyn Finney is a writer, performer and cultural geographer. As a professor in Geography at the University of Kentucky, she explores how issues related to identity, difference, creativity and resilience impact participation in decision-making processes designed to address environmental issues. Carolyn holds a B.A. and M.A. in international development, and a PhD in geography from Clark University in Massachusetts.
Carolyn has appeared on the Tavis Smiley show, MSNBC, NPR and has been interviewed for numerous newspapers and magazines; her interview in the Boston Glove was cited as one of the top ten ideas/stories of 2014. Along with public speaking and consulting in the US and abroad, Finney serves on a number of national boards and committees including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Orion Magazine, the Center for Whole Communities and the National Parks Advisory Board. Her first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors was released in 2014 (UNC Press).
Carolyn’s work is grounded in developing greater cultural competency within environmental organisations and institutions, challenge media outlets on their representation of difference, and increase awareness of how privilege shapes who gets to speak on environmental issues and determine policy and action.
Darcie Houck joined Fredericks Peebles & Morgan LLP in 2005 and became a partner in 2007. She holds a J.D. (1998), M.S. (1998) and B.A. (1994) from the University of California, Davis, and a Land Use and Environmental Planning Certificate. Darcie represents Indian tribes in the United States on a wide range of issues including environmental and resource protection, nuclear regulatory proceedings, water rights, land claims, energy development, tribal governance, cultural resource protection, coastal marine spatial planning and sovereignty/human rights matters. She works with Tribal governmental entities facing critical decisions on how to utilise resources to promote economic development, protect the environment and preserve the social and cultural structure of the communities impacted by these decisions. Darcie is of Mohawk and Ottawa heritage.
Dune Lankard, an Eyak Athabaskan Native of the Eagle Clan, is a strategic and guiding force for the Eyak Preservation Council (EPC). His stances in his community have shown vision and courage, even though they have not always been popular and understood. He is ancestrally from, and a lifelong resident of, Cordova. The morning he found his homelands covered with oil from the Exxon Valdez disaster he turned from commercial fisherman to dedicated community activist. Since that day, he has been recognised for his abilities to link cultural and environmental solutions. In 2006, he was named an Ashoka Social Entrepreneur Fellow; in 2007, his non-profit business idea for the Cordova Cold Storage and Cookery was awarded a Marketplace Alaska award by the Alaska Federation of Natives. He was awarded a Hunt Alternatives Fund-Prime Movers Fellowship: Cultivating Social Capital Award. He sits on the boards of the Bioneers, EPC, the NATIVE Conservancy, REDOIL, is on the advisory board of the Seva Foundation and the Alaska Wildlife Alliance, and is Senior Alaska Representative for the Center for Biological Diversity. Dune contributes in all of EPC’s organising and strategies, and is a lead strategist in the Bering River Coal Conservation Opportunity and the Shepard Point campaigns. He is also one of EPC’s Copper River Wilderness Raft guides.
Octaviana Trujillo is a Professor at Northern Arizona University. She has worked over the past three decades in the area of educational programme development for Indigenous Peoples. She was the founding Director of the American Indian Graduate Center at the University of Arizona, where she later was Assistant Professor in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture and affiliated faculty with American Indian Studies. In 1994, Octaviana became the first woman to become chairman of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona.
Yolanda Lopez-Maldonado is a Human Ecologist and Geographer (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Germany, and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, LMU) specialised in freshwater resources. She is a successful indigenous researcher and practitioner with extensive experience in indigenous and traditional peoples, human-environmental systems, community-based conservation, participative action-research, system analysis and transdisciplinary approaches. Born and raised in Yucatan, Mexico, she has been a visiting researcher at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain, and the Natural Resources Institute – University of Manitoba, Canada. Yolanda was selected as a Young Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (2015), Austria, and the Beijer Institute, The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (2016-2019), Stockholm, Sweden.
In her professional career, Yolanda has focused on issues such as social aspects of nature conservation, indigenous peoples, stakeholder involvement in conservation, community based conservation, and women’s involvement in natural resource management. She has worked for international academic and non-academic organisations at different levels in social issues and science fields, and collaborated with communitarian organisations in Mexico towards groundwater conservation. She is a member of the Specialist Group: Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas, IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas, the Ramsar Culture Network, and Member of the IUCN Commission on Environmental, Economic and Social Policy (CEESP). Yolanda has been a Delegate at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) United Nations Headquarters, New York. In her home country, Mexico, she is working towards solutions by combining natural and social sciences with traditional ecological knowledge, which respects indigenous knowledge.