Tom is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), the oldest Indigenous- based and grassroots network working on environmental, energy, climate and economic justice issues in North America including the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Tom has been the lead of the Indigenous delegation of IEN within the UN Framework Conference on Climate Change (UNFCCC) since COP 04 in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1998. Tom and IEN participated in the formation of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change (IIPFCC) in 2008. Tom has been awarded with recognition of his achievements throughout the past 32 years as a change maker within the environmental, economic, energy and climate justice movement. From his participation and leadership in the First National People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit in 1991 in Washington D.C., to the 2010 World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and to the recent co-formation of the US-based Green New Deal Network and the United Frontline Table and its People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy platform, he has been on the forefront of key moments fighting for systemic change. In 2007, Tom co-founded the Indigenous World Forum on Water and Peace lifting up the spiritual- cultural values and ethics of water policy. Tom initiated the first international Indigenous conference on the rights of Mother Earth in 2012 at the Haskell Indian Nations University and serves as a member of the Global Alliance of the Rights of Nature. Tom wrote the IEN Indigenous Principles of Just Transition as an organizing tool of using Indigenous Original Instructions as the foundation for building sustainable and healthy Indigenous communities. Tom is a recipient of numerous awards including the 2015 Gandhi Award and in 2016 was presented Sierra Club’s highest recognition, the John Muir award.

Alberto Saldamando, a Xicano/Zapoteca, is the IEN Counsel on Human Rights and Climate Change. He earned a Bachelor in English and Philosophy, and a Juris Doctorate of Law degree from the University of Arizona. Bilingual in English and Spanish, he is an internationally acknowledged expert on Indigenous and human rights. He has represented Indigenous Peoples, communities, organizations and individuals before international human rights venues, including the United Nations Human Rights Commission, now the Commission’s Human Rights Mechanisms, the International Labor Organization, the OAS Commission on Human Rights, and the OECD Specific Instance procedure. He began his work with IEN as Counsel in 2009 at Copenhagen, Denmark, for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference Of Parties, or COP 15, and serves as head of IEN’s delegation to these international venues. He also maintains relationships with IEN’s international allies. Prior to 2009, he served as General Counsel to the International Indian Treaty Council for 18 years and takes pride in his active participation during negotiations leading to the 2007 UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the establishment of the UN Permanent Forum for Indigenous Issues, and the initial mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Indigenous Peoples. Alberto was accredited as an expert by the Food and Agriculture Organization to the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples in 2014 and was elected by UN Consultative Status NGOs to the International Steering Committee for the World Conference Against Racism, from 1998 to 2001. Through his life’s work, he hopes to leave future generations with a better world and takes great pleasure in working with Indigenous youth to that end. Alberto practices yoga and takes long walks with his longtime partner.

Great-grandmother Mary Lyons is an Anishinaabe-Ojibwe Elder, formally known as a world-renowned Wisdom Keeper, Knowledge Holder, Humanitarian, an Empowerment Coach, Activist and Author. She is an International Keynote speaker and seminar leader, from the Parliament of World Religions, World Council of Churches Indigenous Sessions, NYC Climate March, Global Elder’s Gathering on Climate Change and a United Nations Indigenous Observer/COP26 Elder Observer, just to mention a few. Mary is a visionary co-founder of several global groups, including Women of Wellbriety, International, a 100% volunteer on-line wellness group with yearly gatherings that promote sobriety and healing. Amongst her strong commitments, she is one of the 5 women who co-founded the global “Grandmothers of the Sacred WE, etc. She developed a Circle Leadership style of organizational structure to bring the collaborative process to change the hierarchical structure in today’s society. She continues to work at the intersections of criminal justice, environmental issues, child welfare systems and develops policy and advocacy strategies to help reduce the chances of family separation and MMIW (Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women). She is a writer and storyteller and has published books about spirituality, self-examination, and cross-cultural understanding. She is also a community organizer and world traveler and has often appeared in the media as an activist for climate justice and social justice issues. As an Ojibwe Elder, a non-violent direct action activist, she believes we can change the world for the better again if we come together as a community.

Faith Gemmill (Neets’aii Gwich’in, Pit River and Wintu) of Vashraii K’oo (Arctic Village), Alaska is the current Tribal Court Clerk for Venetie Village Council and continued Tribal Justice advocate. Faith became passionate about Tribal Justice issues in recent years and worked for her Tribe as the Tribal Court Administrator, Tribal Justice Director and ICWA Specialist. She also served on the Arctic Village Council for three years. Through recent work on Tribal Justice issues, a healing paradigm was born and she is now engaged in personal and community healing and wellness.

Kandi White grew up on the Fort Berthold Indian reservation in so-called North Dakota, on the territorial homelands of the Nueta, Hidatsa, Sahnish Nations, surrounded by coal, oil, gas extraction and contamination. Kandi went to college at the University of North Dakota (UND) & studied Natural Resource and Park Management, hoping to find a way to simultaneously protect natural resources and stop the contamination causing reservation wide health problems. Upon completion of her degree, she worked as an Interpretive Ranger and Supervisor at Big Bend National Park, Texas working in the Mandan Village at Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park in North Dakota. During that time, her own battle with cancer was a deciding factor of her return to school, where she earned a Masters Degree in Environmental Management. Upon completion of the Earth Systems Science and Policy Program at UND she joined IEN in 2007 as the Tribal Campus Climate Challenge Coordinator, and engaged with more than 30 tribal colleges to enact community based environmental programs, discussed issues of socio-ecological injustice, and connected indigenous youth with job opportunities outside the fossil fuel industry. She transitioned into being IEN’s Lead Organizer on the Extreme Energy and Just Transition Campaign where she brought awareness to the environmentally & socially devastating effects of hydraulic fracturing on tribal lands and worked towards a Just Transition away from the fossil fuel industry. As IEN’s current Programs Director and member of the Leadership Team, Kandi’s work guides our programs and campaigns with strategic direction and visioning towards a fossil fuel free future working against false solutions and towards a future in which Indigenous Peoples are not only surviving; but are thriving. Kandi is a wife and mother of two delightful young beings and enjoys spending her free time with them reading, camping, kayaking, swimming, gardening, canning, baking and, when possible, sleeping!

Brenna Twobears is from the Ho-Chunk, Navajo and Standing Rock Nations and grew up between Navajo Nation and Wisconsin. At the young age of 13, she began contending with environmental racism in her tribal homelands. Growing up near Dook’o’oosłííd (one of the Navajo Four Sacred Mountains), in Flagstaff, AZ, she witnessed the use by local ski resorts of reclaimed water to create fake snow on which resort visitors actually would ski. She earned a Bachelor in Art History and Visual Culture Studies from Whitman College, in Washington state, with a focus on Tribal Museums and the Politics of Display. As a former museum professional, Brenna connected Indigenous communities with institutions like the Maxey Museum, in Walla Walla, Washington; the Indian Arts Research Center, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. After which, She also taught media literacy skills to BIPOC youth in New Mexico, taught middle school in Arizona, and worked with teens on the Salt-River Pima reservation. Utilizing her research skills, she has assisted Indigenous communities to address environmental justice issues as human rights violations in Indigenous regions like Black Mesa, AZ, dealing with Peabody Coal; Standing Rock Nation’s stand against The Dakota Access Pipeline; and, the Tar Sands in Northern Alberta. Since then, Brenna has focused her work on uplifting voices that often go unheard. Now, her focus is on grassroots organizing with community groups, museum consultation on behalf of Native communities, with a passion for working with Native youth. As the IEN KIITG program coordinator, Brenna provides logistical support to the organizers within the KIITG team, lending strategic vision to IEN’s partners working with the program objectives to achieve its goals. Having danced at powwows in Ho-Chunk lands before she could even walk, she now enjoys competing in Women’s Northern Cloth and Contemporary Jingle Dress competitions.

Panganga Pungowiyi is an Indigenous mother from Sivungaq, located in the so-called Bering Strait. Panganga has been involved in many grassroots efforts seeking justice for Indigenous Peoples including efforts to protect lands and water from extractive industry, MMIWG, and DVSA against Indigenous Womxn. Social justice and healing are recurring themes woven within Panganga’s personal and professional life as the director of Kawerak, Inc.’s Wellness Program, where she sought funding for wellness camps, healing camps, undoing racism and decolonizing workshops, community safety patrol, youth leadership training, bystander intervention training and cultural humility. Many years were spent developing and hosting communal healing spaces for historical trauma and colonial oppression. Most recently Panganga began training as a Tribal Healer. Saying that her higher education comes from her elders who taught her about traditional plant medicine and body work, healing, justice and advocacy continues in Panganga’s role at IEN as the Climate Geoengineering Organizer. Joining IEN in August 2021, her work is focused on Climate False Solutions, specifically in dangerous and hazardous Climate Geoengineering Projects, including Carbon Dioxide Removal, Carbon Capture and Storage, Carbon Capture Use and Storage, Direct Air Capture, Bio Energy Carbon Capture and Storage, Ocean Fertilization, Solar Radiation Mitigation, Stratospheric Aerosol Injection, Surface Albedo Modification, Marine Cloud Brightening, and Marine Geoengineering. She continues to gather information about other false solutions technologies, as the overwhelming majority are tested in Indigenous territories without Free, Prior and Informed Consent. She rallies against such projects as the Arctic Ice Project and works to make educational materials and resource lists available to Indigenous Peoples so they can protect themselves against potentially harmful technologies. Panganga says unjust contamination and experimentation are part of her family history. Both Climate change and false climate solutions are only possible because of racism, capitalism and colonization. They are not root problems, but are instead symptoms of a deeper issue relating to our relationship with each other as peoples, and the relationship that the extractive-based economy has with the Natural World and Indigenous Peoples. She enjoys making soap that resembles traditional foods and other symbols of her culture, beadwork, singing, acting and parenting.

Thomas Joseph is a member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe and a descendant of the Lone Pine Shoshone Paiute Tribe from the occupied and unceded lands of California. He has spent the last decade defending his peoples’ lands from carbon brokers, hydro dams and other false solutions. As California’s largest land-based tribe on their ancestral lands of Hoopa Valley, they are targeted by carbon brokers with shady tactics, akin to infamous acts of the ‘49ers during the California Gold Rush history. Thomas likens today’s carbon brokers to the gold miners of the 19th century, saying both histories led to land grabs and the continuation of environmental destruction. As a former social justice organizer, he rallied his community to pass ballot measures securing the nation’s strongest sanctuary laws for Dreamers and helped to pass racial profiling laws that California police officers are required to follow. Joining IEN fulltime in May, 2022, as the Carbon Price Educator, he follows current trends and policies regarding carbon markets and travels the country to educate communities about false solutions. Thomas embraces his work out of his great love for Mother Earth. When he is not fighting to protect Mother Earth, he enjoys the endless gifts she provides like mountain biking, snowboarding, hiking, swimming, camping – in other words, spending as much time in the natural world as possible. Having witnessed the destruction of the natural world, as an Indigenous human, he understands his responsibility to protect it.

Tamra L Gilbertson, MPH, PhD, is an activist, researcher, writer, and scholar. A contractor with IEN from 2017 to 2020, in August 2023 she marked her third anniversary as the IEN Climate Justice Program Coordinator. In her current role, she develops curricula and holds workshops on carbon markets, false solutions, the Climate Crisis and the consequences to Indigenous communities and cultures. For more than twenty years she has allied with social movements and international networks fighting for social, environmental, and climate justice. She earned a doctorate at the University of Tennessee, Department of Sociology. As a US Fulbright recipient, she conducted research on carbon markets, coal mining and conservation impacts in the Caribbean regions of Colombia. She was previously a founder and co-director of Carbon Trade Watch and former project coordinator of the Environmental Justice Project of the Transnational Institute, frequently coordinating with IEN. She continues to act as a strategic point person between Indigenous Peoples Organizations, activist-scholar networks, NGOs, ally and community organizations. Tamra is committed to field research, radical education and has authored several academic articles, book chapters and reports. She speaks English, Spanish and Portuguese. Tamra’s key areas of work include the fight to dismantle the policy barriers to achieving climate justice including: carbon markets, carbon offsets, false solutions, climate finance, and gender, racial and social justice.

Julia Bernal (they/she) is from the Indigenous Nations of Sandia Pueblo and Yuchi and is the Executive Director of the Pueblo Action Alliance. They are pursuing dual masters degrees in Water Resources and Community and Regional Planning at the University of New Mexico. She advocates for Water Back, Land Back, the rematriation of all stolen water resources and ancestral lands and the decommodification of all that is sacred. She serves on the Natural Resources Committee for the All Pueblo Council of Governors, and is a board member of the Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates.

Dr. Crystal Cavalier-Keck is a citizen of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation and is an Adjunct Professor in the Social Sciences department at Salem College in Winston Salem. Crystal has dedicated the past 5+ years to defending her homelands against the Mountain Valley Pipeline/Southgate Extension. She is leading a campaign to bring Rights of Nature laws to NC to protect the waterways and communities in the pipeline’s path. Crystal is the CEO and co-founder of 7 Directions of Service with her husband. Crystal completed her Doctorate at the University of Dayton, focusing on the social justice crisis of Missing Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) tied to gas/oil pipelines. This led her to launch the Missing Murdered Indigenous Women Coalition of NC. Crystal co-authored NC House Bill 795, the Rights of Nature/Rights of the Haw River, prioritizing environmentally impacted communities around the watershed. Crystal founded and is currently the President of the Native American Caucus of the NC Democratic Party. Crystal serves on the boards of Movement Rights and the Haw River Assembly. She has conducted training along and around the East Coast on Coordinated Tribal/Community Response for emergency management through natural, cyber, or man-made disasters.

Jason Campos Keck is from East Oakland and found the freedom to choose another lifestyle and another context for his life, ultimately becoming the VP of Outreach for an international men’s organization focused on successful families, careers, and communities. With a multi-racial heritage of Native American (Choctaw-Apache), and French-African Creole from Louisiana and European, he is also a ceremonial dancer. He works together with his wife on social justice issues in the community. Jason is the President of the Alamance County Native American Caucus and the Secretary of the 17 Rivers North Carolina Chapter of the American Indian Movement. Jason and Crystal co-founded Eastern Woodland Lacrosse and 7 Directions of Service.

Indigenous activist and PhD in plant production from the Federal University of Acre; Shyrlene was recently accepted into the post doc program at the University of British Columbia – Vancouver CA

Kariany Huni Kui Valdenira da Silva Batista Hunikuin of the Hunikuin people is the coordinator of Huni kui women within the federation of the people of the State of Acre, Amazon. She is a Traditional midwife, master in native crafts and Human rights and environmental activist.

ISAKA HUNI KUI Elvis Ferreira Oliveira Huni kui from the Huni Kui people from the Purus region – Acre – Amazon – Brazil Young leadership and communicator at national (COIAB) and international (Fephac) level Activist for human rights, indigenous peoples and ancestral knowledge and environmental protection.