Events

Mateo Hinojosa is a mestizo Quechua Bolivian-American storyteller based in California. Specializing in channeling collective voices and visions into creative expression, he has facilitated collaborative audiovisual productions and cross-cultural storytelling workshops with Native American youth, Argentine transgender prisoners, and climate justice activists. His feature documentary, Spectacular Movements, was co-created with young Aymara actors reviving the spirits of the recent Bolivian revolution with theater and street interventions. As Media Director at The Cultural Conservancy since 2013, he has produced numerous documentaries, community education experiences, and the Native Seed Pod podcast. He is also director of the Woven Path production company.

Rowen White is a Seed Keeper and farmer from the Mohawk community of Akwesasne and a passionate activist for Indigenous seed and food sovereignty. She is the director and founder of Sierra Seeds, an innovative organic seed stewardship organization focusing on local seeds and education based in Nevada City, CA. White is the National Project Coordinator and advisor for the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network, which is an initiative of the Native American Food Sovereignty Alliance, a nonprofit organization aimed at leveraging resources to support tribal food sovereignty projects. The mission of the Indigenous Seed Keepers Network is to nourish and assist the growing Seed Sovereignty Movement across Turtle Island. White's passion is in teaching and mentoring. She has developed many curricula which focus on a holistic, Indigenous permaculture-based approach to seed stewardship, which honors the many layers of seed culture—from practical hands-on skills, cultural context, and memory—with guiding principles that are rooted in an Indigenous ecology of relations. She teaches and facilitates creative seed stewardship immersions around the country within tribal and small farming communities. She weaves stories of seeds, food, culture, and sacred Earth stewardship on her blog, Seed Songs.

Joseph Lewis Erb (Producer/Director, Cherokee Nation Citizen) is a computer animator, film producer, educator, language technologist, and artist. He earned his MFA degree from the University of Pennsylvania. Erb created The Beginning They Told, the first Cherokee animation in the Cherokee language. He used his artistic skills to teach Muscogee Creek and Cherokee students how to animate traditional stories. Most of this work is created in the Cherokee language. He has spent many years working on projects that will expand the use of Cherokee language in technology and the arts.

David Crawler (Narrator/Cultural Expert, Cherokee Nation Citizen) works in the preservation and teaching of the Cherokee language. As a first-language Cherokee speaker, Crawler has served the Cherokee Nation (CN) for more than a decade in the tribe's language department working on a number of language projects. He was instrumental in translating the CN Constitution into the Cherokee language, and is the primary translator and storyteller for Cherokee First Children's Activity Books. He has assisted in animated films with the Cherokee language, and has worked on notable translation projects for Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Crawler is also a part of the Cherokee Language Consortium, helping to translate modern words into Cherokee syllabary.