Our Tribe
We are the women and men who feel that the loss of ancient cultures would be a loss for our whole world. There is wisdom in the languages, art, stories and songs of the tribal people who weave the fabric of our being-ness, those who once lived freely in nature and who need our help to preserve the precious pieces of their cultures. We may live more fully by listening, feeling and belonging to the stories of the indigenous people of the world.
Janis Salin
Téana David
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”.
Margaret Loncki
Margaret is the Director of Operations at Certis Capital Management, a multi-family office primarily specializing in non-correlated alternative investments. Margaret oversees all aspects of operations and directs efforts to continually improve and customize Certis’ capabilities to best serve clients’ needs. Margaret graduated from Claremont McKenna College with dual degrees in economics and organismal biology. She played varsity soccer and golf all four years at Claremont, and in her senior year, won the Division III golf National Championship both individually and as a team. As an ocean-loving, avid diver she is also a fully rated SCUBA instructor. With a passion for ocean conservation, she has conducted research on the effects of apex predator ecotourism on the conservation outcomes of marine protected areas.
Barbara Savage
Marilyn O'Malley
Marilyn O'Malley has been interested in cultures and wisdom since she was a young child. Her whole life she has ventured to explore the world, science, spirituality, creativity, and truths that empower the well-being and evolution of humanity. As a successful certified personal and professional development coach she works with leaders, entrepreneurs, innovators, pioneers, healers and highly sensitives, that are positively transforming the way we perceive ourselves, others and the world around us. She taps in, tunes in and shares the wisdom of the past and future that empowers others to stand up, stand out, speak up and make a difference in the World and in the Universe. She is a visionary of love and healing.
Jill Elisofon
Board Member
Amber Bassett
BOARD MEMBER
Jackie Gilbert
With a background as a researcher, organizer and volunteer in several social movements in South America, Jackie is dedicated to supporting Indigenous peoples’ struggles for land and water protection. She has conducted fieldwork in Bolivia, Cuba, and Colombia with a focus on water scarcity from an anthropological lens since 2014. After living in La Guajira, Colombia during 2018 and 2019 where she worked with Indigenous Wayúu communities on issues related to coal mining, Jackie cofounded One Thread Collective, a social enterprise dedicated to women’s empowerment, economic autonomy, and sustainable community-led development in remote communities. She continues to direct One Thread Collective’s programs remotely from her home in Santa Barbara, CA, returning to Colombia annually to work in the villages. Jackie is passionate about supporting the self-determination of First Nations communities, and about holding extractivist industries accountable for human rights abuses and violence against nature.
Alexandria Piccinini-Wilton
Dawn A. Murray, M.S., PhD
Maya Shaw Gale
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.
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.