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Speaker Biographies

Thematic Sessions
April 21-22, 2009

Andrea Carmen
Yaqui Indian Nation, Arizona, USA has been a staff member of the International Indian Treaty Council since 1983 and IITC’s Executive Director since 1992. She was a founding member of the Indigenous Initiative for Peace with Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchu and has participated as a human rights observer and mediator in crises situations in the US, Chiapas, Mexico and Ecuador.  She has served as the co-coordinator for the Chickaloon Village Tribal Environmental Program and a member of the Indigenous Environmental Network National Council, a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Working Group on Extractive Industry and Bio-Diversity, and the Calvert Group Social Investment Advisory Council. Andrea was selected as an expert participant as well as the Rapporteur for the United Nations “Expert Seminar on Indigenous Peoples’ permanent sovereignty over natural resources and their relationship to land” in Geneva, February 2006, the first time an Indigenous Women has served as Rapporteur for an UN Expert Seminar. She graduated from the University of California with a Degree in Women’s Studies, and was selected, as "Speaker of the Year" by People Are Speaking in San Francisco. She has three sons and two grandchildren.

Violet Ford
Violet Ford was born and raised in Makkovik, Labrador and now resides in Ottawa, Ontario. Violet has represented ICC and Inuit interests at many international forums and in particular the World Intellectual Property Organization for the purposes of raising the importance of protecting Inuit traditional knowledge from misuse and misappropriation. Violet has also represented Inuit at the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, was a member of the official Canadian government delegation in successful negotiations of the Work Program. Violet is presently a doctor of laws candidate with a focus on international law at the University of Lapland (Province of Finland). She was elected to the ICC Executive Council at ICC’s ninth general assembly held in Kuujjuaq, in August 2002 and re-elected at the tenth general assembly held in Barrow, Alaska in July 2006.

Larry Merculieff
Larry Merculieff, BS, has almost four decades of experience serving his people, the Aleuts of the Pribilof Islands and other Alaska Native peoples in a number of capacities. Larry served as the Director of the Department of Public Policy and Advocacy in the Alaska RurALCAP. As Director, Larry led the largest subsistence rights march in Alaska’s history and emceed the subsistence rally after the march. Larry is co-founder and former chairman of the Alaska Indigenous Council on Marine Mammals; former chairman of the Nature Conservancy, Alaska chapter; the former co-director of the Native American Fish & Wildlife Society, Alaska chapter, co-founder of: the International Bering Sea Forum, Alaska Forum on the Environment, and the Alaska Oceans Network. Larry was one of four Native Americans to present at the White House Conference on the Oceans during the Clinton administration.

Cletus Springer
Mr. Springer assumed duties as a Director of Sustainable Development for Organization of American States March, 2008.  Mr. Springer is a national of Saint Lucia. He is a graduate of the University of the West Indies (Public Administration and Mass Communications respectively); Oxford Brooks University (Urban Planning Studies, with a major in Regional Planning); and the Centre for Environmental Management and Planning of Aberdeen University (Environmental Impact Assessment).  In 2001, Mr. Springer completed a 20 year tour of national and regional public service which included stints in Saint Lucia’s Public Service as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Tourism, Public Utilities, Civil Aviation and National Mobilization (1992-94); and in the Ministry of Planning, Development, Environment and Housing (1994-97); and as Adviser in Policy and Strategy Development with the OECS Secretariat, based in Saint Lucia (1998-2001).

Victoria Tauli-Corpuz
Victoria Tauli-Corpuz is the Chairperson of the United Nations Permanent Form on Indigenous Issues. She is the Founder and Executive Director of Tebtebba (Indigenous Peoples’ International Centre for Policy Research and Education) based in Baguio City, Philippines.   Victoria is the Convenor of the Asian Indigenous Women’s Network and the co-President of the International Forum on Globalization as well as the Indigenous and Gender Adviser of the Third World Network. Some of the other positions which she holds at present are as follows: member of the World Commission on the Social Dimensions of Globalization, chairperson of the UN Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations, commissioner of the National Commission on the Role of Filipino Women, and chair of the World Summit on Sustainable Development Indigenous Peoples Caucus. Victoria is an indigenous activist belonging to the Kankana-ey Igorot peoples of the Cordillera region in the Philippines.


Dialogue Day
April 23, 2009

Barnaby Briggs
Mr. Briggs heads the Social Performance Management Unit Shell International.  Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies under the umbrella of the corporate centre known as Shell International. Living Earth Foundation,
based in the UK, is an international environmental NGO working in more than 11 countries and specializing in environmental education and community development.

Francisco Cali
Brother Francisco Calí Tzay, Maya Kaqchikel was recently designated Guatemala’s representative to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.  Francisco Cali Tzay is a member of the Presidential Commission against Racism and Discrimination against the Indigenous Peoples in Guatemala, created in the year 2002. That commission is currently being sidelined and marginalized. Yet now, the commission has received global recognition through Mr. Cali Tzay’s designation as Guatemala’s representative.

Estebancio Castro Diaz
Kuna Nation, Panama, is an Indigenous Rights and Bio-diversity Program Consultant for the IITC. He has worked on Indigenous Issues for more than 18 years. He served as Treasurer and Coordinator of the Kuna Youth Movement (MJK) and has represented the Kuna Youth Movement before the Kuna General Congress.  Estebancio has attended a wide range of meetings related to Indigenous Peoples in the United Nation as well as seminars, workshops and briefings organized by international organizations. He coordinate IITC’s participation in COPS 7 and COPS 8 of the Convention on Biological Diversity (February 2004, Kuala Lumpur and March 2006, Curitiba) and at the World Conservation Congress of IUCN (November 2004, Bangkok), where he worked to educate and collaborate with States, non-governmental organizations and other indigenous representatives to reach agreement on key issues. Currently Estebancio is one of IITC’s representative to the UN Food and Agricultural Organization, and IITC’s principle representative to the Convention on Biological Diversity Working Groups on Article 8j and traditional knowledge as well as on Access and Benefit-Sharing.

John Crump
John is with UNEP/GRID-Arendal.  John’s academic background is in journalism, communications and political economy.  He has a Master’s degree in Northern and Native Studies from Carlton University.  His practical northern experience began when he migrated to the Yukon Territory in the early 1980s.  After working with CBC Radio in the Yukon, he was Cabinet Communications Advisor to Tony Penikett’s NDP government.  Currently residing in Ottawa, John has worked on policy issues for prominent indigenous organizations including serving as Executive Secretary of the Indigenous People’s Secretariat in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Ian Dutton
Dr. Ian M. Dutton Ian was appointed President and CEO of the Alaska SeaLife Center in November 2008.  The Alaska SeaLife Center was established in 1998 and is dedicated to understanding and maintaining the integrity of the marine ecosystems of Alaska. He previously worked throughout Asia and the United States and in Australia as an academic, in the private sector and in the Federal government on a wide range of research, education and natural resources management initiatives.  Ian holds a doctorate in environmental monitoring from the University of Queensland. His research interests include climate change adaptation, measuring management effectiveness and integrating social and biological sciences.

Leanna Ellsworth
Leanne is Policy Advisor on Climate change and Health for Canada’s Inuit Circumpolar Council.  Leanna grew up in the beautiful Arctic community of Pangnirtung, Nunavut.  Leanna has a diploma inn Environmental Technology from Nunavut Arctic College, and is currently finishing the Bachelor of Circumpolar Studies through the University of the Arctic.  Leanna is a member of the National Inuit Climate Change Committee and forks for the Inuit Circumpolar Council-Canada and Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami in Ottawa in the environmental divisions, focusing mainly on climate change issues.  She currently resides in Chelsea, Quebec with her husband Jaymes and son Jeremy.

Claire Greensfelder
Claire Greensfelder has been an advisor to the California-based granting foundation, Lia Fund since its inception in 2006 where she participates in the small family fund’s committees on climate solutions and the arts.  She is also the Deputy Director for Communications, Development and Special Projects for the International Forum on Globalization of San Francisco and coordinates IFG’s Indigenous Program.   She is a former Director of Greenpeace-USA’s Nuclear Free Future Campaign, where she was also active on indigenous sovereignty issues. Greensfelder has served as staff or consultant to dozens of environmental, peace, and human rights NGOs, most recently as founding executive director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Freedom Center for Nonviolence, Equality, Youth, and Ecology in Oakland, California.  Greensfelder holds a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and a Diplôme Supérieure from the Université Aix-Marseille, France

Terence Hay-Edie
Terence Hay-Edie joined UNDP in 2003 to work with the GEF SGP as Biodiversity Programme Officer. Prior to working in UNDP, Terence worked with the UNESCO Man and the Biosphere (MAB) programme, and the UNESCO World Heritage Centre in both its Natural Heritage and Asia-Pacific sections (1995-2003). He has been a research associate with the Mountain Natural Resources division of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal (1997-1998); and is a current member of the IUCN World Commission on Protected Areas and IUCN Task Force on the Cultural and Spiritual Values of Protected Areas. He has extensive field experience in Nepal, Mongolia, China, Mali, and Ecuador, and has written numerous articles and publications in the field of ethno-ecology. He holds a Ph.D in Social Anthropology from Cambridge University (2000), an M.Sc in Environmental Change & Management from Oxford University (1995), and a BA in Human Sciences from Oxford University (1994). He has also served as a visiting Research Fellow at the Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale in the Collège de France, Paris.

Anne Henshaw
Anne Henshaw joined the Oak Foundation in September 2007 as a marine conservation program officer in the North Pacific and Arctic program, with a special interest in climate change and community-based conservation. Before joining Oak, Anne was a visiting Professor in the Sociology and Anthropology Department at Bowdoin College from 1996-2007, and director of Bowdoin’s Coastal Studies Center from 2000-2007.  Anne holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard University and a B.A., magma cum laude, from the University of New Hampshire in anthropology. Anne brings a unique perspective to marine and climate change issues developed through her community-based research activities in Arctic Canada which link Inuit experiential knowledge and land use with western science using Geographic Information Systems. Anne has been a fellow with the National Institute for Global and Environmental Change at Indiana University and with the American Association of University Women.  The results of her work have been published in a variety of peer reviewed journals and international venues including the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment and the International Panel on Climate Change. She currently serves on the Advisory Committee for the Office of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation.

Sam Johnston
Sam Johnston is an Australian national. He has degrees in chemistry and law and is a qualified lawyer in the Supreme Court of Victoria, Australia. Before joining UNU-IAS, Johnston worked at the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, where he has held a variety of positions, including: secretary of the second meeting of the SBSTTA, acting Principal Officer for Implementation and Communication, acting Legal Advisor and Program Officer for Financial Resources and Instruments. He also represented the Executive Secretary of the Convention at a wide range of diplomatic and academic conferences, including the United Nations General Assembly, Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization and the Global Environment Facility’s Participants Assembly.  His research interests include: international environmental law; governance of international spaces and international regulation of biotechnology. He has published extensively on these topics.  

Kai Lee
Dr. Kai Lee joined the Packard Foundation in 2007 as program officer for Science in the Conservation and Science Program.  His work focuses on improving the links between knowledge and action, in decisions that affect the environment.  The challenges facing REDD, including the use of traditional knowledge to verify reduced deforestation and forest degradation, intersect with Dr. Lee’s work on certification of sustainably harvested fish, timber, and other products. Dr. Lee served as professor of environmental studies and adjunct professor of political science at Williams College from 1991 through 1998, becoming Rosenburg Professor of environmental studies in 2000. He was also the director for the Center for Environmental Studies at Williams from 1991–1998 and 2001–2002. Prior to joining Williams College, Lee was a visiting professor at Kyoto University, served as a member of the Northwest Power Planning Council in Washington State, and taught from 1973 to 1991 at the University of Washington in Seattle. Lee holds a Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University and an A.B., magna cum laude, in physics, from Columbia University.

MJ Longley
MaryJean “MJ” Longley, Ed.D., Portland State University, Portland, Oregon.  Also an anthropologist, Dr. Longley has a M.A. and B.S. in Education and Cultural Anthropology with a minor in Archaeology .Dr. Longley, Inupiat, is one of eight children born and raised in the rural community of Nome, Alaska.  Her 25 years of experience includes the five years in research on indigenous social service issues at Portland State University; and last nine years as Chief Operating Officer of Cook Inlet Tribal Council, a regional nonprofit serving the largest Alaska Native population from the urban hub of Anchorage. Alaska.  She has also traveled extensively within the State traveling to 98 of Alaska’s 231 villages and has resided in four distinct regions of Alaska.  

Jacqueline McGlade
Jacqueline McGlade is Executive Director of the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen since 2003; she is on leave from her post as Professor in Environmental Informatics in the Department of Mathematics at University College London.  Until 2003, she was a Board member of the Environment Agency of England and Wales with responsibility for Thames Region, navigation and science.  Formerly she was Director of the NERC Centre for Coastal and Marine Sciences, Professor of biological Sciences at Warwick, Director of Theoretical Ecology at the Forschungszentrum Juelich and senior scientist in the federal program of Canada.  Her research has focused on the spatial and nonlinear dynamics of ecosystems, with particular reference to marine resources, climate change and scenario development.  In her non-academic life she is the mother of two daughters, director of a software development company and has written and presented a range of radio and television programs

Douglas McGuire
Doug McGuire is a forester by training who has worked in international
development for more than 25 years, serving first as a Peace Corps volunteer
in Cameroon and subsequently managing participatory natural resource
management projects in Madagascar and Rwanda. He was responsible for the UN
Food and Agriculture Organization’s watershed management and sustainable
mountain development program for several years starting in 1995 and led the
global observance of the UN International Year of Mountains in 2002. Doug is
currently Coordinator of the Mountain Partnership Secretariat, based at FAO
in Rome, a position he has held since 2002 when the Mountain Partnership was
first established at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in
Johannesburg. The Mountain Partnership has more than 160 members from civil
society, governments, IGOs and the private sector who share the common goal
of improving the lives of mountain people and protecting mountain
environments around the world.

Charles McNeill
Dr. Charles McNeill is the Senior Policy Advisor in the Environment & Energy Group within UNDP’s Bureau for Development Policy, a member of UNDP/EEG’s Senior Management Team and is responsible for one of the group’s four major areas of focus: ‘Local Access to Environmental and Energy Services’. He is currently engaged in developing UNDP’s work on Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) with FAO and UNEP as part of the UN REDD Programme.  Dr. McNeill oversees the work of the Equator Initiative, a multi-partner effort to foster successful community initiatives in the Equatorial belt to reduce poverty through the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity.  Prior to joining UNDP in 1992, Dr. McNeill worked in the non-governmental sector on hunger eradication and sustainable development programs in South Asia and Africa.  After receiving his Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California at Davis, Dr. McNeill held several academic posts addressing a range of issues.

Inuuteq Holm Olsen  
Is the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs in the Greenland Home Rule Government.  He started his career as Head of Section in the Department of Foreign Affairs, been Private Secretary to the Premier, served in the Danish Foreign Ministry and posted at the Greenland Representation at the Danish Embassy in Brussels. In 2003 he returned to Nuuk, Greenland to become Head of Department and from December 2004, has been Deputy Minister in the Department of Foreign Affairs. Inuuteq has been engaged in a wide variety of issues concerning Greenland’s foreign relations and Arctic issues including, negotiations with bilateral agreements with the EU, Arctic Council, indigenous peoples issues, security and defence including climate change and security policy, expert adviser and co-drafter to the Greenland-Denmark Commission on Self-Governance on the chapter on foreign affairs, Member of the Danish Defence Commission (2008-2009).  Mr. Olsen has a B.A in Political Science from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (1994) and a M.A. in International Affairs from The George Washington University (1996).

Dave Porter
Mr. Porter is a member of the Kaska Nation whose traditional territory covers a large part of north-eastern British Columbia and south-eastern Yukon. His career includes journalism, politics, communications and extensive public service on behalf of aboriginal organizations as well as public governments in the Yukon, British Columbia and the Northwest Territories. Dave is currently the interim CEO for the BC First Nations Energy and Mining Council and was also the first Oil and Gas Commissioner in British Columbia, where he strived to build an open environment that would bring various interests in the province to a common table.  He has served in the Yukon Legislature, as Minister for Constitutional Devolution and subsequently Executive Director of the Yukon Human Rights Commission and Deputy Minister of Culture and Communications of the Northwest Territories

Navin Rai
Navin K. Rai, a Nepali national, is the Lead Specialist and Team Leader for the Inclusion and Social Safeguards Team in the Bank’s Social Development Department.   In this capacity, he coordinates the implementation of the Bank’s social safeguards policies as well as the program on Indigenous Peoples and Climate Change and the Pilot Initiative on Enhancing Development Benefits to Local Communities in Bank-financed Hydropower Projects. As the World Bank coordinator on Indigenous Peoples issues, Mr. Rai oversees the formulation and implementation of the World Bank strategy and policy on Indigenous Peoples. In his role as Lead Specialist, he provides technical expertise on the Bank’s corporate vision related to Indigenous Peoples, conducts quality assurance reviews for complex development projects affecting Indigenous Peoples, and supports capacity building for Indigenous Peoples’ organizations and borrower agencies on Indigenous Peoples issues.

Gleb Raygorodetsky
Born and raised in a small coastal village in Kamchatka, Russia, Gleb has expertise in resource co-management and traditional knowledge systems. Gleb has lived and worked with the Even reindeer herders of Kamchatka (Russian), the Aleut fur seal hunters of the Pribilof Islands in Alaska, the Caboclos pirarucu fishermen of the Brazilian Amazon, and the Gwich’in caribou hunters of Canada’s Northwest Territories.  For his doctoral thesis, Gleb explored the resilience of social-ecological systems undergoing rapid change, focusing on wildlife use in the Russian northeast after the collapse of the Soviet Union.  Gleb is a prolific author and writer.  Prior to joining the Christensen Fund, Gleb managed a portfolio of conservation projects in Russian for the Wildlife Conservation Society

Henry Red Cloud
Henry Red Cloud is a respected Lakota elder and a fifth-generation descendent of Chief Red Cloud, the last Lakota war chief.  Henry is the Director of Lakota solar Enterprises (LSE) located on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota; one of the nation’s first 100% Native American owned and operated energy companies.  LSE began as an expansion of Trees, Water and People, TWP’s solar heater work on Pine Ridge.  The new Red Cloud Renewable Energy Center (RCREC) broke ground in November 2007 and seeks to bring renewable energy choices to Native Americans living on reservations in the American West. The RCREC will help fill the need by serving as a residential workshop site where tribes can send people to learn hands-on how to implement renewable energy technologies.  

Tarcila Rivera Zea
Tarcila Rivera Zea is Executive Director of Chirapaq, our program partner in Peru. Tarcila is a Quechuan activist from Ayacucho, Peru who has devoted over 20 years of her life to defend and seek recognition and acknowledgment of Peruvian indigenous peoples and cultures. Her contributions have resulted in the creation of the Permanent Workshop of Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Women of Peru, the International Forum of Indigenous Women of the Americas and the Continental Link of Indigenous Women of the Americas. She has served as a resource person to the NGO Committee on Indigenous Rights, and has participated in forums in Nairobi, Cairo, Beijing, Durban and in the United Nations Permanent Forum for Indigenous Peoples. As a child Ms. Rivera became a domestic worker in exchange for education, learning Spanish only at age 18. She founded Chirapaq, in 1985, initially to help Quechua children whose parents had been murdered by Shining Path guerillas. She has led Chirapaq to become a leading agency for the rights of indigenous women.

David Secord
Dave Secord is a program officer at the Wilburforce Foundation, where he has worked since 2007. He is responsible for Wilburforce’s grantmaking strategy for Alaska and parts of western Canada, which focuses on large landscape conservation and habitat connectivity. Climate change and human communities are critical dimensions of his work. A marine ecologist by training, before joining the foundation world he was a professor at the University of Washington for 11 years, where he retains affiliate faculty appointments in Biology and Marine Affairs. At UW, he founded or directed two award-winning environmental studies programs, and taught field courses in Alaska, Ecuador, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Northwest. Dave has a BA in Ecology and Evolution from Pomona College and a PhD in Zoology from the University of Washington. He was a Fellow of the Aldo Leopold Leadership Program and the International Canadian Studies Institute

Jenny Springer
After four years at Harvard, Jenny decided to see some of the world. She spent several months volunteering on community development projects in South Asia before joining the Peace Corps and heading to the Philippines, She moved on to the Ford Foundation and the Henry Luce Foundation before joining WWF in 1997. In her current role, she leads efforts to shape and support WWF’s global policy on indigenous peoples, populations that, in many cases, are traditional stewards of high biodiversity areas WWF seeks to conserve. "Conservation activities often involve changes in how resources are used," she says. "In areas traditionally owned or used by indigenous peoples, they need to be key decision-makers in these changes." Jenny works to support WWF programs in understanding the rights of indigenous peoples and engaging communities as partners in joint activities, so the outcome is beneficial for all involved.

James Stauch
James Stauch is a Program Manager with the Walter & Duncan Gordon Foundation, where he manages the Canadian North Program.  This program supports northern citizens and communities in shaping public policy related to matching local knowledge with governance, sustainability and leadership.  Previously, he managed the Community Grants Program at The Calgary Foundation.   James holds a graduate degree in Environmental Design (Planning).  James has co-designed and facilitated culturally-based community development initiatives with in Hay River, Northwest Territories and with the Arctic Institute of North America.  James was recent past Chair of the Canadian Environmental Grantmakers Network and has just been appointed to the Board of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples.  He represents the Foundation as part of the new Arctic Funders Group and has recently helped guide the emergence of a first-ever formal conversation between Indigenous Peoples and philanthropic foundations in Canada, networking now under the moniker Circle on Aboriginal Grantmaking in Canada

Clive Tesar
Clive Tesar is Head of Communications for WWF International’s Arctic Programme. He grew up in Canada’s Northwest Territories, and worked there for ten years as a reporter, producer and host for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. For the past eleven years, he has worked across the Arctic as a communications consultant for Indigenous peoples’ organisations, NGOs and governments. He has a Masters degree in Environmental Education and Communications.

Mead Treadwell
Mead Treadwell is Chair U.S. Arctic Research Commission was appointed to the US Arctic Research Commission in 2001 and was designated chair by the President in 2006. During his 30 years residency in Alaska, Mead Treadwell has played an active role in Arctic research and exploration. His focus has been on development of natural resources, protection of the Arctic environment and fostering international cooperation after the Cold War. In business, government and the academy, Treadwell has helped establish a broad range of research programs in technology, ecology, social science and policy.  Currently, Treadwell serves as Senior Fellow of the Institute of the North, founded by former Alaska Governor Walter J. Hickel. He served as the Institute’s first full time Managing Director and Adjunct Professor of Business when the Institute was part of Alaska Pacific University. Treadwell’s research at the Institute focuses on strategic and defense issues facing Alaska and Arctic regions, management of Alaska’s commonly owned resources and integration of Arctic transport and telecommunications infrastructure.

Saul Vicente Vasquez
From Zapoteca, Oaxaca Mexico, is a long-time community leader, organizer and human rights activist, as well as an economist, who has worked on the local, national and international levels on behalf of Indigenous Peoples and his own community for more than 25 years. He is currently a special projects consultant for the IITC, focusing on Right to Food and Sustainable Development issues. Saul is a graduate of the Universidad Autónoma Nacional de México (UNAM) with a degree in Economics. Saul is currently working as the Right to Food Project Consultant to IITC as the Project Coordinator for the 2nd Global Summit of Indigenous Peoples on the Right to Food and Food Security and is IITC’s principle Liaison with FAO/SARD and the International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty.

Kristen Walker-Painemilia
Kristen Walker Painemilla is Vice President at Conservation International and Executive Director of CI’s Indigenous & Traditional Peoples Program ( ITPP). Ms Painemilla created ITPP in 2003 to consolidate and review CI’s work with indigenous and traditional people and to continues to strengthen CI’s commitments to indigenous and traditional peoples and support the vital role of their territories in conservation landscapes. Prior to her work on the Indigenous and Traditional Peoples Program, Kristen was the Senior Director of Program Strategy in the Center for Applied Biodiversity Science (CABS) at CI from 1999 through 2005. Prior to joining CI, Ms. Painemilla conducted field research in Chile funded through the Fulbright Commission. She holds her degree in Latin American Studies and Anthropology from George Washington University.  She resides in Silver Spring, Maryland with her husband, Fabian, a Mapuche Indian from Chile and her son, Linkoyam.

Deborah Williams
Ms. Williams has been actively involved in conservation and sustainable community issues in Alaska for over 25 years. Currently, Ms. Williams is President of Alaska Conservation Solutions, an organization that is devoted primarily to addressing global warming. She received her B.A. from Pomona College, summa cum laude, with a concentration in Biology and Economics. Subsequently she was graduated from Harvard Law School, with honors, and was the principal founder of and co-editor-in-chief of the Harvard Environmental Law Review.  In 1994, Ms. Williams received a Presidential appointment, and became the Special Assistant to the Secretary of Interior for Alaska, in which position she advised the Secretary about managing over 220 million acres of national lands in Alaska and working with Alaska tribes and others associated with the Department’s broad natural and cultural resource jurisdiction.

Kenneth Wilson
Ken Wilson has served as executive director of The Christensen Fund (TCF) since August 2002 developing the Foundation’s mission of support to indigenous peoples.  Born in Malawi with “a life spread rather across the world,” Wilson studied zoology at the University of Oxford and anthropology at University College London where his doctorate focused on indigenous knowledge, health and human ecology in the agro-pastoral arid savannahs and woodlands of South Zimbabwe.  He was a research officer at the University of Oxford, spent nine years with the Ford Foundation.  He has personal interests in wilderness, photography and the arts and currently serves as vice president of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples. He is also active in a number of grantmaking associations.


Plenary Speakers

Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann
Rev. Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, born in Los Angeles, California, is a Nicaraguan diplomat, politician and Catholic priest.  D’Escoto was ordained a Roman Catholic priest for the Maryknoll congregation before engaging in politics. He also served as an official with the World Council of Churches.  In 2008 Latin American and Caribbean nations selected D’Escoto as their candidate for President of the United Nations General Assembly.  He began his one year term in September 2008 presiding over the 63rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly.  

Juliane Henningsen
She was a Parliamentary Career Member of Greenland’s Landsting for Inuit Ataqatigiit from 2005 to 2008. She is a member of the Committee regarding Greenland Affairs, the management committee of the Danish Inter-parliamentary Group, and the Foreign Policy Committee from 2007. Also she is a Deputy member of the Nordic Council and member of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region.  She has been a member of the Folketing for Inuit Ataqatigiit in Greenland from November 13th 2007.  In 2007 she was Inuit Ataqatigiit’s candidate in Greenland nomination district.  Education and Profession:  She is a student (on leave), at Ilisimatusarfik (Greenland’s University) from 2005. Her affiliations include:  member of the executive committee of Sorlak; 2006-2007, and Secretary of Inuit Ataqatigiit’s national organization and member of the executive committee as well as Secretary of the national organization of Inuit Ataqatigiit Youth.

Julie Kitka
Julie E. Kitka, is a Chugach Eskimo currently serves as president of the Alaska Federation of Natives at the pleasure of a 37 member Board of Directors representing the 13 Regional Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations, the 12 regional non-profit tribal associations and the villages. She represents AFN before the U.S. Congress and federal agencies and the Alaska State Legislature and state agencies on Native issues of statewide importance. Kitka began working at AFN in late 1981 and has held numerous positions within AFN including Special Assistant-Human Resources, D. C. Lobbyist, and Vice-President. She earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the Alaska Pacific University in Anchorage. She currently serves as one of seven Commissioners of the Congressionally formed Denali Commission overseeing federal funding of rural infrastructure.

Winona LaDuke
Winona LaDuke, Anishinaabeg, born in Los Angeles and attended college at Harvard University and Antioch University, is a Native American activist, environmentalist, economist, and writer. In 1996 and 2000, she ran for vice president as the nominee of the United States Green Party, on a ticket headed by Ralph Nader. She is currently the Executive Director of both Honr the Earth and White Earth Land Recovery Project.

Sheila Watt-Cloutier (VIDEO)
Sheila Watt-Cloutier was born in Kuujjuaq, Nunavik (northern Quebec), and was raised traditionally in her early years before attending school in southern Canada and in Churchill, Manitoba.  She is the past Chair of Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), the organization that represents internationally the 155,000 Inuit of Canada, Greenland, Alaska, and Chukotka in the Far East of the Federation of Russia. Ms. Watt-Cloutier has been an internationally-acclaimed political spokesperson for Inuit for over a decade.  In 2002, Ms. Watt-Cloutier was elected international Chair of ICC.  Among her many awards and recognitions, in 2005, she was honored with the United Nations Champion of the Earth Award and the Sophie prize in Norway.  She holds honorary doctorates from eight prestigious universities and in 2006 was made an Officer in the Order of Canada.  In 2007 she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and received the Rachel Carson Prize.  Ms. Watt-Cloutier sums up her work by saying: “I do nothing more than remind the world that the Arctic is not a barren land devoid of life but a rich and majestic land that has supported our resilient culture for millennia.  Even though small in number and living far from the corridors of power, it appears that the wisdom of the land strikes a universal chord on a planet where many are searching for sustainability.”

José Miguel Insulza Salinas (VIDEO)
Secretary General Insulza is a Chilean politician and statesman, and a member of the Socialist Party of Chile. José Miguel Insulza was elected Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS) in May 2005. He has an accomplished record of public service in his country. At the beginning of his five-year term as Secretary General, he pledged to strengthen the Organization’s “political relevance and its capacity for action.” A lawyer by profession, he has a law degree from the University of Chile and did postgraduate studies at the Latin American Social Sciences Faculty (FLACSO). He is married to Mexican Georgina Núñez Reyes and has three children.

Senator Mark Begich, Alaska  (VIDEO)
Mark Begich was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2008. Begich has been Mayor of Anchorage since 2003, where he has been a smart fiscal manager. He previously served 10 years on the Anchorage Assembly, including 3 years as Assembly Chair. A talented politician and leader, Begich was named in 1997 and 2004 as Alaska’s top official by municipal officials.