Board of Directors

At the Tribal Trust Foundation, we honor Indigenous peoples as keepers of critically important knowledge and recognize the deep value of preserving their languages, art, stories and songs around the world. As allies, we are committed to showing up to support, protect, and preserve their ways so we may all live more fully and holistically with, and as part of, nature and the sacred web of life on Earth.

Janis Salin

President

Janis is a retired corporate attorney who served as the Senior Vice President and General Counsel of Tetra Tech, Inc. after leaving private practice. In addition to her role with TTF, she is active in the local non-profit community through her membership on the Boards of the Carpinteria Children’s Project, CALM and Prepare Kids for Life. She is also a member of the CALM Auxiliary Executive Committee as Vice President of Governance, and recently co-founded Friends of the United Boys & Girls Clubs of Santa Barbara County. In addition, Janis volunteers for the Women’s Fund of Santa Barbara (serving on the Governance Committee), the Scholarship Foundation of Santa Barbara, and the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County. She earned her B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Téana David

Vice President

With a passion for creating at the intersection of ecology, spirituality, and social justice, Téana David served as the director of Deepak HomeBase in New York City where she designed, curated, and produced a year-round transformational event series featuring hundreds of authors and activists. Currently the co-director of Circle of Wisdom, she conducts video interviews with wisdom-keepers from many traditions to make their knowledge available to the next generations. Recent producing credits through her media company, Wise Planet Media, include livestream events Artists United for Amazonia, No Vote Left Behind, and the Protect Our Planet’s Vital Organs film which played at the Washington Mall throughout Earth Week, 2021. She also serves as the co-director of the annual Shift Your World Film Festival and is a founding member of Artists For Amazonia, engaging the entertainment industry with critical issues impacting the Amazon Rainforest..

Holly Sherwin

sECRETARY

Holly Sherwin has spent her career working in the environmental field as an educator,
advocate, author and artist. She began as a naturalist and boat guide in southwest Florida, then travelled to Nashville where she worked in film for the PBS show “Tennessee’s Wildside”. After her move to Santa Barbara, Holly became involved with SB Channelkeeper as well as the Community Environmental Council. In her work she has always encouraged others to strengthen their relationship with the earth, it’s creatures and sacred plants.
Sherwin believes that “We as humans have the least experience with how to live on this earth, and thus the most to learn, and so must look to our teachers among the plants and creatures with which we share this planet”.

Barbara Savage

Founder, Executive Director and Treasurer

Over the past twenty-five years, Barbara Savage has dedicated her time, energy, expertise, and resources to further the mission of the Tribal Trust Foundation to share indigenous wisdom. She has personally witnessed the struggle for survival of indigenous peoples throughout the world and identified the sustainable cultural preservation projects supported by the foundation. An activist, educator, and thought leader, Barbara produced two award winning documentary films that required her to risk her life in politically hostile environments to support the threatened indigenous people requesting her help.

Jill Elisofon

DIRECTOR

Jill has over 30 years of fundraising experience working with international nonprofits including the Smithsonian Institution and Conservation International, both in Washington, DC. Since moving to Florida in 1996, Jill has consulted with varied nonprofits to advise on fundraising and strategic planning. Her secondary career as a jewelry designer was inspired by her experiences with Indigenous people around the world. Jill’s one-of-a-kind necklaces featuring ethnic/tribal beads and rare pendants are sold predominantly in museum shops.

ADVISORS

Art Cisneros

Advisor

Art Cisneros is a Chumash Elder and firekeeper. The Chumash People are the original native peoples of the central California Coast. Art holds the sacred space for their annual Tomol crossing to Limu on the Channel Islands. His spiritual name means “Earth Man with a Good Heart” and he truly embodies these virtues. Art also speaks throughout the US for the indigenous voice and for those who have no voice. He offers fire ceremonies for the Santa Barbara community and also offers healing and cleansing ceremonies.

Maya Shaw Gale

Advisor

Maya has had a deep love affair with nature since childhood and was naturally drawn to the wisdom ways of indigenous cultures that support living in harmony with the Earth. As a Certified Life Coach, Hakomi practitioner and international trainer, Maya has been passionately immersed in the field of mind/body/spirit wellness for over 40 years. Her work is grounded in eco-psychology, embodied mindfulness and energy medicine; she respectfully integrates the ceremonial and shamanic practices she learned from her Wampanoag, Cherokee, Lakota, and Paiute teachers to support people in healing themselves and their relationship to nature. Maya is the founder of Write from the Heart and Inner Nature/Outer Nature Retreats and Power with Heart, a feminine-principled leadership training. She is also a published poet and playwright. (The Last Wild Place).

Bob Hitchcock, PhD

Advisor

Bob (PhD, University of New Mexico, 1982) is currently a professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque as well as an Adjunct Professor of Geography and Geospatial Sciences at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. He is a board member of the Kalahari Peoples Fund, a nonprofit 501©3 organization that assists poor people in southern Africa. Bob has worked on indigenous peoples’ rights issues in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas since the 1970s. He has provided anthropological expertise in land and resource rights-related legal cases involving indigenous people, including in Botswana, Namibia, and the United States. Some of his early field work was among Al-Murrah Bedouins of eastern Saudi Arabia, Chumash of the Santa Barbara and Malibu and Santa Ynez Valley regions of southern California, and Navajo (Diné) of New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah. His work focuses on genocide and human rights among indigenous peoples world-wide.

Dawn A. Murray, M.S., PhD

Director of International Education & Research

Dawn received her masters and doctorate in Ocean Sciences from the University of California, Santa Cruz. She researched the effects of climate change on intertidal life, deep sea jellies, and created a citizen science program. She created the environmental studies program at Antioch University Santa Barbara and is passionate about conservation and environmental justice. She spent 6 months in Bhutan teaching at the Royal Thimphu College and 6 months in Costa Rica teaching in the cloud forest. She has led many ecocultural trips, including to Bhutan and the Galapagos Islands, focusing on preserving indigenous cultures and habitats. Dawn works to promote conservation initiatives advocating for a sustainable future. She was past president of the board and has been a proud TTF board member for over 8 years.

Cory Stover

Advisor

Corey Stover is the Director of Vocational Education at Oglala Lakota College on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southwestern South Dakota. Through his career in education administration, Corey’s focus is on enhancing the lives of community members through recruitment into Oglala Lakota College’s award winning technical training programs provided under the Vocational Education department. Corey is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe and holds a Bachelor's degree in Lakota Studies with emphasis in Indian Law as well as Associates degrees in Lakota Studies and Tribal Law from Oglala Lakota College. Along with his career, Corey is a self-taught traditional Lakota artist focusing on traditional Lakota beadworks and dance regalia. Corey is very knowledgeable of the Lakota culture and way of life as well as the Lakota language.

Corey grew up in South Dakota on the Pine Ridge Reservation and has lineage tracing back to Chief Whistling Elk of the Northern Cheyenne. Corey graduated from Shannon County Virtual High School in 2008, making history in South Dakota for being the first Native American in the state to graduate from the first virtual high school in South Dakota while also being on an Indian Reservation. Corey is currently working on a Masters degree in Indigenous Peoples Law from the University of Oklahoma College of Law. Corey has also served as the Vice President for the Medicine Root District Executive Board from 2019-2021.