Lab Director (she/her)

Dr. D is Director of the Indigenous Land & Data Stewards Lab, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Natural Resource Stewardship at Colorado State University’s Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Department, and an Associate with Native Nations Institute at the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy at University of Arizona, working in partnership with the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance.

Dr. D draws from her experiences as a multicultural Caribbean Indigenous (Arawak Taíno) community member, research scientist, educator, and learner in her scholarship and practice. In doing so, she holds an intergenerational commitment towards supporting culturally grounded community members as researchers and science leaders, restoring pathways for knowledge regeneration with the original stewards of Indigenous knowledge systems and lands in which they are embedded.

CV | Google Scholar

Research Consultant (she/her)

Brianne is the descendent of Filipino plantation workers who immigrated to Hawaiʻi in the early 1900s. She is the daughter, granddaughter, and great-granddaughter of local fishers and hunters and has begun to document the land and water traditions of her family.

Brianne is a first-generation college student. She graduated from Colorado State University with a bachelor of science degree in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources. She is also a 2020 Truman and 2020 Udall Scholar.

Currently, Brianne is an Aloha Ambassador at the Kahaluʻu Bay Education Center, a program of The Kohala Center, for beloved elder and director, Aunty Cindi Punihaole. In her role, she assists community members and visitors with a pilot parking program which supports ongoing 'āina stewardship, outreach, and education at Kahaluʻu.

Brianne is also a Research Consultant for the Collaboratory for Indigenous Data Governance working in partnership with the Indigenous Land and Data Stewards Lab. In her role, she supports Indigenous and community-based natural resource stewardship and data governance through a research project titled: Supporting Indigenous data stewards: Indigenous governance and ethics in scientific research.

Graduate Researcher (she/her)

Serena (Dine') is a graduate student in the Forest and Rangeland Stewardship program. She has been with the lab since fall of 2019 as an undergraduate student in Human Dimensions of Natural Resources. As a graduate researcher, she is working on multiple projects including, Supporting Indigenous scholars as data stewards and leaders in STEM project and Shifting from Extractive to Self-determined: Enhancing Indigenous Research and Data Governance in Southwest Climate Adaptation Initiatives.

Collaborator (she/her)

Nizhoni is studying Biomedical Sciences with minors in Chemistry and Indigenous Studies. She is from Denver, Colorado, and a member of the Navajo Nation. Nizhoni joined the Indigenous Land and Data Stewards Lab as a lab manager in the fall of 2021 so she could use her passion for science and research to support Indigenous communities. During her time with the lab, she has been named a 2022, 2023 Udall Scholar and a 2023 Truman finalist. Outside of work, you can usually find her studying at her favorite coffee shop, the Alleycat, hiking in the mountains, or hanging outside in her hammock.

Graduate Researcher (she/her)

Ariana is a proud Chicana rangeland ecologist and social scientist that holds a B.Sc. degree from Colorado State University (CSU) in Rangeland Ecology and Management with a concentration in Restoration Ecology and is currently a graduate student in the Forest and Rangeland Stewardship Department’s Rangeland Ecosystem Science M.Sc. program. She honors her own lived experiences, teachings passed down through her family and employs a Chicana Feminist and Indigenous Feminist theoretical framework, methodology and praxis in her research. Her thesis research works to center and document the herstories, leadership, lived experiences, ways of knowing, contributions, successes, unique challenges and hopes and concerns for the future of ranching in collaboration with Lakota, Diné, Chicana, Latina y Hispana womxn ranchers across the western bioregion of Turtle Island. She has a combined 12 years of community-led rangeland socio-ecological academic and professional experiences and is very excited to now be working with an incredible organization and team at First Nations Development Institute as a Program & Operations Officer. Ariana is deeply committed to practicing and sharing ways of healing, thriving and taking action con nuestra comunidades who continue to fight for the holistic health, rights and liberation of our peoples, all our more-than-human-kin and Mother Earth in varied and transformative ways.

Graduate Collaborator (she/they)

Tamara is an Ecology PhD student at Colorado State University, focusing on the implementation of Indigenous research and data governance frameworks within natural resource fields. Tamara’s lens is informed by their multicultural and global identity as a descendant of displaced South Asian farmers and land stewards. Overall, Tamara values the role of science and research in disrupting settler colonial and capitalist norms embedded within the field, to re-orient towards the recovery, resurgence, and reclamation of Indigenous connections to place. Read more about their work via their personal website.

Graduate Collaborator (she/her)

Arielle is a proud tribal member of Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico. She is a Native PhD student in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources program at Colorado State University. Her interests are reclamation and rematriation of Indigenous and Pueblo land stewardship and food sovereignty, with particular emphasis on gender roles and practices. As a Pueblo woman from a long line of matriarchs and land stewards, her work is focused on supporting tribes in the stewardship of ancestral lands to strengthen tribal sovereignty. She has over 10 years of experience in tribal natural resources management and food systems, in addition to a B.S. in Rangeland Ecology/Restoration Ecology from CSU. Within the Indigenous Land & Data Stewards Lab, Arielle centers Indigenous and Pueblo epistemologies, pedagogies, and worldviews to assist in the development and implementation of natural resources curriculum/courses.

Graduate Researcher (he/him)

T.R. is a graduate student studying Forestry Science and holds an undergraduate degree in Natural Resource Management with a minor in Watershed Science from CSU. T.R. joined the lab in the fall of 2022. A native Oklahoman and proud citizen of the Cherokee Nation, T.R. continues to learn the Cherokee language and enjoys spending time outdoors, woodworking, and foraging edible plants. T.R. is currently working on a project supported by the Transformation Network (NSF-funded) to identify the impacts of laws and policies created under settler-colonialism and the contemporary implications for Indigenous water rights and management. TR has formed an Indigenous advisory council to help guide his project and to gain a more in depth understanding of Indigenous worldview and ontology in terms of water and natural resources.

Undergraduate Researcher (she/her)

Brianna is a Warner College of Natural Resources student studying Fish, Wildlife, & Conservation Biology with a concentration in Conservation Biology. She grew up in Yellowstone County, Montana and is a proud descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa. Brianna joined the lab in spring of 2023. Currently, her research interests are surveying riparian plant life and remote wildlife monitoring. Brianna plans on incorporating Indigenous science methods and ethnobotany in her research to serve all our relations.

Prior to attending CSU, Brianna was an executive member of Kyiyo and a lab assistant for the Flathead Lake Biological Station at the University of Montana. Now, she is vice president of the American Indian Science & Engineering Society’s chapter at CSU. She is very grateful to be given so many opportunities to support her community.

Undergraduate Researcher (she/her)

Aida is an undergraduate student in the College of Agricultural Sciences studying Horticulture and Business Management. Her interests are medicinal plants and their laws and policies and the impacts of climate change on agriculture and Indigenous populations. Aida is from Colorado and a black Indigenous member of the Oglala Lakota Nation. Research at CSU has given Aida the opportunity to engage in projects that impact her cultural communities. As an undergraduate researcher in the lab, she is an assistant for the Southwest Climate Adaptation Science Center research study.

Graduate Researcher (she/her)

First generation student and a member of Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo. A graduate student studying Rangeland and Ecosystem Science. Graduated from New Mexico State University with an undergraduate degree in Environmental Science with a minor in Chemistry. Joined the lab in the fall of 2023. Current research focuses on post-fire governance and management priorities impact on Tribal communities in the Southwestern United States.

Graduate Researcher (she/her)

Griselda earned her B.S. degree in Wildlife & Conservation Biology along with a minor in Ethnic Studies. She has worked for the National Park Service in Alaska and Florida. Additionally, she has worked for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service in Oregon and for Environment for the Americas, a non-profit based in Boulder, CO. Most recently she served as a Water & Land Steward with Colorado Open Lands.

Her interests as a scholar include Ecological Restoration and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge which aligns well with the Indigenous Land & Data Stewards Lab. Griselda's parents are from the southernmost migration route of the Monarch butterflies in rural Michoacán, Mexico, where she spent a lot of her time as a child. Her family is partially descendent from the Purépecha people which is where her passion for working with Indigenous communities stems from and another reason she felt her background aligned well with the Indigenous Land & Data Stewards Lab.

When she’s not in the office or out in the field monitoring, she likes to spend her time rock-climbing, riding her bicycle, and finding beautiful places to go swimming in Colorado’s great outdoors. She is also a big fan of science-fiction and fantasy novels.

Undergraduate Researcher (he/him)

Jesus is the child of Mexican immigrants who settled in Western Colorado, growing with an affinity for nature surrounded by public lands and rivers that were traditionally managed by Ute Peoples. Studying in the Department of Forest and Rangeland Stewardship at Warner College of Natural Resources and aims to connect with other minority serving organizations. 

Jesus intends to connect with native plants to work towards ecological restorative practices as a means to rematriate plant communities.

Undergraduate Researcher (he/him)

Jhonnie is a Restoration Ecology major from the Mojave desert region of southern California. He is a proud Chicano, 1st generation student, and USMC veteran. Jhonnie seeks to understand the local avian dynamics while verifying the use of citizen science data to track flight patterns, the potential water rights the area may be entitled to, and perform soil profiles to determine historic land use.

Graduate Collaborator (she/her)

Gemara Gifford (pronounced JEM-uh-ruh) is a community-based conservation practitioner, facilitator, and researcher with over a decade of experience working in wildlife and natural resource protection. As a connector and bridge-builder, she has forged partnerships among dozens of Indigenous and Native-led organizations and coalitions to support grassroots efforts in climate justice, rematriation, and fish and wildlife conservation. 

A lover of all animals, Gemara followed the migratory birds south, and completed her Master’s Degree in 2016 at Cornell University, in partnership with a Q’eqchi’ Mayan conservation NGO with a focus on Traditional Knowledge of migratory bird conservation in the Guatemalan Highlands. The Sandhill cranes and buffalo have rooted Gemara back home in Colorado, where her doctoral research in the Human Dimensions of Natural Resources department focuses on promising pathways for improved State-Tribal collaborations in natural resources, and Indigenous-led land stewardship efforts on public lands, including land returns, co-management, and wildlife reintroductions. Gemara’s work also looks at rematriation as an Indigenous women-led movement, where she traces her own family’s connections to the Southern Rocky Mountain region since time immemorial. She examines how Indigenous women heal from the lasting spiritual and material effects of settler-colonial violence, eugenics, and manifest destiny, particularly in Southern Colorado, where her family is from.  

In addition to her wildlife/ecology background, Gemara’s scholarship draws from Indigenous research methodologies, decolonial feminisms, and women of color activism in the United States. Gem has been recognized as a National Science Foundation GRFP Fellow (2020-present), Boyer Scholar in Women’s Studies (2022), Gates Millennium Scholar (2008-2016), Affiliate Faculty Member at Colorado State University (2018-2020), and Co-Chair of the Next 100 Colorado (2023-present). Gem was raised in North Denver where her mother instilled in her a deep love for and responsibility to animals and the environment. Gem is also a musician, creative writer, and ceramic artist and lives in Fort Collins with her husband and many critters.

Elder advisor (he/him)

Dr. Gregory Cajete is a Native American educator whose work is dedicated to honoring the foundations of Indigenous knowledge in education. Dr. Cajete is a Tewa Indian from Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico. Dr. Cajete is a practicing ceramic, pastel and metal artist. He is extensively involved with art and its application to education. He is also a scholar of herbalism and holistic health. Dr. Cajete also designs culturally-responsive curricula geared to the special needs and learning styles of Native American students.

He worked at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico for 21 years. While at the Institute, he served as Dean of the Center for Research and Cultural Exchange, Chair of Native American Studies and Professor of Ethno- Science. He is the former Director of Native American Studies (18 years) and is Professor Emeritus in the Division of Language, Literacy and Socio Cultural Studies in the College of Education at the University of New Mexico. In addition, he has lectured at colleges and universities in the U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, Italy, Japan, Russia, Taiwan, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, England, France and Germany.

Dr. Cajete has authored 10 books: “Look to the Mountain: An Ecology of Indigenous Education,” (Kivaki Press, 1994); “Ignite the Sparkle: An Indigenous Science Education Curriculum Model”, (Kivaki Press, 1999); “Spirit of the Game: Indigenous Wellsprings (2004),” “A People’s Ecology: Explorations in Sustainable Living,” and “Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence” (Clear Light Publishers, 1999 and 2000). “Critical Neurophilosophy and Indigenous Wisdom,” Don Jacobs (Four Arrows), Gregory Cajete and Jongmin Lee) Sense Publishers, 2010. “Indigenous Community: Teachings of the Seventh Fire,” (Living Justice Press, 2015). His most recent books are edited volumes entitled: “Native Minds Rising” and “Sacred Journeys” (John Charlton Publications, 2020). Dr. Cajete also has chapters in 36 other books along with numerous articles and over 350 national and international presentations.