Speakers and Panelists

Guy Archibald

Guy Archibald is an Environmental Analytical Chemist who works with communities, tribes, and environmental justice groups on managing the local, public natural resources they depend on and provides tools for how communities respond when large extractive industries seek to access those same lands.

Bobbie Bigby

Bobbie Chew Bigby is an enrolled member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and a native of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Bobbie has BA degrees in Chinese Language/Literature, as well as Anthropology. Bobbie obtained her MA degree in International Studies, Peace, and Conflict Resolution at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia as a Rotary Peace Fellow from 2014-2015. Bobbie also holds an MS degree in Arts and Culture Administration as an AIANTA Scholar from Drexel University. Bobbie completed her thesis research on examining the potential for cultural tourism development among Tribal Nations (Quapaw, Shawnee and Miami Tribes) in far Northeastern Oklahoma. Bobbie has engaged in research focused on Indigenous peoples, tourism and connections to traditional culture in China, India, Cambodia, Myanmar, Australia and back home in Oklahoma Indian Country.  Bobbie is currently based between Tulsa, Oklahoma and Broome, Australia where she is pursuing a PhD at the University of Notre Dame Australia focused on comparative Indigenous cultural tourism. This research is being supported through the West Australian Government’s JTSI Science/Tourism Fellows program and the University’s Research Training Program. Bobbie is also engaged in co-editing and co-writing a book focused on reexamining the possibilities for tourism post-COVID 19 and the ways that tourism can better support social and ecological justice. Bobbie has a deep passion for Indigenous-participation in tourism and believes that tourism can be used as a tool for culture and language revitalization, along with environmental stewardship.

David Chambers

David Chambers is the founder and president of the Center for Science in Public Participation, a non-profit corporation formed to provide technical assistance on mining and water quality to public interest groups and tribal governments. He has a Professional Engineering Degree in physics from the Colorado School of Mines, a Master of Science Degree in geophysics from the University of California at Berkeley, and is a registered professional geophysicist in California (# GP 972).

Steven Emerman

Dr. Steven H. Emerman has a B.S. in Mathematics from Ohio State University, an M.A. in Geophysics from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. in Geophysics from Cornell University. Dr. Emerman has 31 years of experience teaching hydrology and geophysics, including teaching as a Fulbright Professor in Ecuador and Nepal, and has 69 peer-reviewed publications in these areas. Dr. Emerman is the owner of Malach Consulting, which specializes in evaluating the environmental impacts of mining for mining companies, as well as governmental, and non-governmental organizations. Dr. Emerman has evaluated proposed and existing mining projects in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania, and has testified on mining before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Indigenous Peoples of the United States. Dr. Emerman is the author of the chapter on “Waste Disposal” for the upcoming Society for Mining, Metallurgy and Exploration (SME) Underground Mining Handbook and one of the contributors to Safety First: Guidelines for Responsible Mine Tailings Management.

Wanda Fox

White Eagle Cloud Woman, whose English name is Wanda Fox, is from the Eagle clan of the Mishkeegogamang Ojibway (Anishnaabe) Nation, a community located three hours north of Ignace, Ontario on highway 599. She is from treaty 3 and 9 territories. She was born on the main reserve of her community and raised on the traditional homeland. She attended day school on the reserve in Mishkeegogamang and left the community to attend high school in Ignace and at Pelican Falls First Nation high school. She attended Lakehead University where she studied indigenous wellness and addiction prevention. She currently lives in Ignace, Ontario.

Grace Goodeagle

Grace Marie Goodeagle is an Elder of the Quapaw Nation. Born in northeast Oklahoma, she is part of the Quapaw and Potawatomie Families, Goodeagle and Redeagle. After graduating from Miami, Oklahoma High School, Grace attended the University of Colorado, Ft Collins; the University of California, San Francisco; and the Colorado Women’s College, Denver.
 
Over the course of her career, Grace worked for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service in San Francisco, local governments, tribal governments, the United States Senate, Gulf Oil, and law firms in California, Colorado, and Washington, D.C. Grace has traveled extensively for pleasure and business across the United States and abroad including Hong Kong, Israel, Europe, New Zealand, South America, and the Caribbean.
 
Grace is engaged with many native organizations, especially the Quapaw Nation, for which she worked in Administration before serving as its Chairman. She volunteers as an Elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), as a teacher and speaker for AARP, as a board member for the Ottawa County, Oklahoma Health Department, and as a board member for LEAD Agency.

Kirsten Francescone

Kirsten Francescone is the Latin America Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada. She works to support communities and workers in Latin America as they engage with mining companies. Kirsten forms part of the COVID-19 International and Regional Allies coordinating group, which seeks to bridge communities and organizations addressing the impacts of COVID-19 caused by the mining industry. She is one of the co-authors of the report “ Voices from the Ground: How the Global Mining Industry is Profiting from COVID-19 Pandemic”, published in June 2020.

Earl Hatley

Mr. Hatley is a co-founder of LEAD Agency, Inc., a grassroots group in northeastern Oklahoma, and served as the Board President from 1997-2003.  He also serves as the Grand Riverkeeper, patrolling the Grand Lake O’ the Cherokees and feeder streams of the upper Grand River watershed. 

Mr. Hatley has served on the boards of numerous organizations including: Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality’s Hazardous Waste Management Advisory Council (Gubernatorial appointments) -  March, 2007 - Apr. 2014; Oklahoma Sustainability Network Board of Directors - Oct. 2007- 2014; Health and Human Service's Region 6 Health Equity Board (covering OK, TX, AR, LA & NM) - Apr. 2011- Aug. 2015; Western Mining Action Network Steering Committee and Indigenous Caucus.

Awards and honoraria include: the first ever Carrie Dickerson Lifetime Achievement Award for his work as an environmental activist on Earth Day in Tulsa 2018; the prestigious Terry Backer Award by Waterkeeper Alliance for his achievements as a Riverkeeper in June 2018; "River Hero," by the National River Network and Waterkeeper Alliance in 2013

Mr. Hatley has a B.A. degree in Human Development from Westminster College (Fulton, MO)/Flaming Rainbow University (Tahlequah, OK) and a M.A. Political Science from OK State University (Stillwater, OK) he is ABD Environmental Science Ph.D, OK State University (Stillwater, OK).

Mr. Hatley is proud of his Cherokee, Shawnee and Wendat/Algonquin/Micmaq heritage and belongs to the Cherokee Long Hair Clan.

Nicole Horseherder

Nicole Horseherder is Dine (Navajo), originally from the Black Mesa Plateau in Northeastern Arizona. Nicole is the Executive Director of Tó Nizhóní Ání, a grassroots organization focused on preserving and protecting the environment, land, water, sky and people. She advocates for the wise and responsible use of the natural resources of the Black Mesa region (Dził Yijiin).
 
Nicole grew up near Big Mountain, which is situated on Black Mesa, and continues to live there today. She began her work bringing awareness to the misuse and mismanagement of groundwater by the coal mining operation on Black Mesa in 1999. 
 
Today she continues her work educating and working with local communities to strengthen the traditional life ways of the people of Black Mesa, economically, environmentally and socially. Nicole has a B.A. in Family and Consumer Resources from the University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona and an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. Translating information on hydrology, geology, mining regulation and other technical data is an achievement Nicole is most proud of.

Rebecca Jim

Rebecca Jim, Cherokee Nation, BA, MA is a co-founder and the Executive Director of Local Environmental Action Demanded Agency (LEAD) a non-profit organization focused on environmental justice for northeast Oklahoma. She also serves as the Tar Creekkeeper with the Waterkeeper Alliance.

Chris Knopf

Chris Knopf is Executive Director of Friends of the Boundary Waters Wilderness, a nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting the lakes region in northeastern Minnesota along the Canadian border. For more than 25 years, Chris has worked to protect, preserve, and restore our wild places. Over the course of his career, Chris has practiced environmental law and run the state office of The Trust for Public Land, a national conservation organization.  He has deep love for the outdoors and enjoys hiking, kayaking, canoeing, biking, and backpacking. Chris is a graduate of Georgetown University and the University of Virginia School of Law.

Craig Kreman

Craig Kreman is the Environmental Engineer & Assistant Director for the Quapaw Nation Environmental Office and is a Licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Oklahoma. He has worked with the Nation since September 2013.  Before working with the Nation, he worked for an environmental consulting company following completion of graduate school at Iowa State University in 2010. His environmental work experiences include a broad range of environmental topics including, but not limited to: Superfund remedial action activities, Brownfields activities, surface water and groundwater sampling and analysis, groundwater modeling, air permit compliance, environmental assessments, and landfill design. He and his wife currently live in Joplin, Missouri with their daughter and three dogs.

Jim Kuipers

Jim Kuipers is a mining environmental consultant, and the principal and a consulting engineer with Kuipers and Associates based in Wisdom, Montana.  He received a B.S. from Montana College of Mineral Science and Technology in mineral process engineering, and is a registered professional engineer in Colorado and Montana.  He grew up in a mining family and has worked on mining and environmental projects including project development, engineering design, permitting, operations, reclamation and closure, water treatment and financial assurance for over 40 years.  Since 1996, his primary work has been as a consultant providing engineering and other technical expertise to governmental and non-governmental organizations relative to hardrock mining and other extractive resource environmental issues.

Ugo LaPointe

Ugo Lapointe is from and lives on unceded Algonquin territory along the Kitchissippi (Ottawa River). Ugo is currently the Canada Program Coordinator at MiningWatch Canada and the Co-Chair of the Western Mining Action Network. He graduated with an Honours Bachelor of Science in Geological Engineering from Queen's University and has over twenty years of experience in working with affected communities, governments, and the mining industry in Canada. Ugo cofounded the Quebec Meilleure Mine Coalition in 2008 and the BC Mining Law Reform Network in 2019, and has been a key leader advocating for law reforms to protect communities, Indigenous rights, and ecosystems from irresponsible mining practices. Ugo is a member of several intergovernmental and multi-interests advisory committees, including Canada’s National Orphaned/Abandoned Mines Initiative (NOAMI), Canada’s Mine Environment Neutral Drainage (MEND) initiative, and Quebec’s Mining Minister Advisory Committee. He was also a member of Ontario’s Mining Minister Advisory Committee. Ugo is Chair of a housing cooperative in Gatineau, Quebec, where he lives with his partner and two kids.

June Lorenzo

June L. Lorenzo, Laguna Pueblo/Navajo (Diné), currently divides her time between serving as a tribal judge, private practice in state and tribal courts, and human rights advocacy in the United Nations and Organization of American States systems. She works in her own community on advocacy on uranium legacy issues, including protection of sacred sites and protection of cultural patrimony.

Travis Marr

Travis, Tmicw Yecminme7 (Territorial & Environment Protection, Manager Stk'emlupsemc te Secwepemc Nation), is a member of the Tk'emlups tribe located over British Columbia Canada. With over 20 years of engagement in Territorial resource impacts with various levels of Government and Industry, Travis takes pride in ancestral responsibility to protect the Rights, Title, and interests of the biodiversity, ecosystem, cultural, traditional, and spiritual relations within his territory. Stk'emlupsemc Nation is highly impacted by Gold and Copper mining and has taken action relative to traditional ancestral tribal governance to ensure protection, compensation, mitigation & accomodation.

Dr. Sue Moodie

Dr. Moodie is a community-based health and environment researcher and a long term advocate for mining communities in Yukon, nationally in Canada, and internationally. She is a founder of MiningWatch Canada (1998), CCSG Associates consulting (1992), Council for Public Health in Mining Communities (2013), and participated on the first & current Western Mining Action Network Steering Committee (with large gaps in between).  She is a toxicologist with a master’s degree in mining engineering and a doctorate in public heath from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Department of Environmental Health and Engineering).

Leona Morgan

Leona Morgan (she/her) is Diné, and grew up on the Navajo Nation. She is a community organizer and activist who has been fighting nuclear colonialism since 2007. Leona co-founded and works with Diné No Nukes, to address uranium mining as part of the entire nuclear fuel chain; and Nuclear Issues Study Group, which works to "protect New Mexico from all things nuclear." Leona collaborates with local, regional, and national groups to address nuclear waste issues in the U.S. and is part of the international campaign Don’t Nuke The Climate that focuses on nuclear energy as a global climate issue. Leona attended the University of New Mexico and lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is currently a Co-Chair of the Western Mining Action Network Steering Committee.

Jan Morrill

Jan Morrill is an International Mining Campaigner at Earthworks. Her work focuses on supporting communities living in the shadows of mine waste dams, as well as responding to the social, environmental, and cultural disasters that result if they fail. She is a co-author of Safety First: Guidelines for Responsible Mine Tailings Management. Before coming to Earthworks, she spent five years in El Salvador supporting the community-based and national organizations that pushed El Salvador to pass the first of its kind ban on all metallic mining

Marc Nantel

Marc Nantel lives in the Abitibi region located in Anishnabe territory in the province of Quebec. He has a bachelor's degree in biology with a specialty in entomology and a teaching certificate. He taught science and computer science for 26 years in Lebel-sur-Quévillon in the territory of Ungava. He became union leader for education teachers in the regions of Ungava, Témiscamingue and Ungava from 1998 to 2012. He finished his career as vice-president of the “Centrale des syndicats du Québec” comprising 11 federations and 200,000 members in the field of education and health.  He was inducted into the Monique-Fitz Back Circle in 2016 for his political involvement in the environmental group “Établissements Verts Brundland” from 1998 to 2015.

He began to get involved in the mining issues in 2008 on the Osisko project in Malartic following questionable practices by the company in schools in the region.

Once retired, he founded the “Regroupement Vigilance Mines de l'Abitibi et du Témiscamingue (REVIMAT)” in 2015 to help citizens impacted by mining project in the vicinity of populated regions. As of today, the group helped 6 different groups by giving a hand to mobilize and organize themselves and offering communication and legal help. Their mission is also to protect the environment by putting pressure on government so that elected officials legislate in such a way as to impose more restrictive standards and regulations. 

Manny Pino

Manuel Pino is from Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico. He is currently a professor of sociology and coordinator of American Indian Studies at Scottsdale Community College. Manuel’s research addresses environmental issues as they impact American Indians and Indigenous Peoples throughout the world. His major focus is the nuclear fuel chain, in particular uranium mining and milling and its impact on Indigenous Peoples. Manuel has served as a delegate to numerous international environmental conferences at the United Nations and currently sits on numerous boards of environmental organizations throughout the United States. Manuel is currently working on health issues related to radiation exposure in communities and opposing nuclear waste storage and future mining.  In 2008, he received the Nuclear Free Future Award in Munich, Germany for activism.

Nancy Schuldt

Nancy Schuldt has served as the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa’s Water Projects Coordinator since 1997. She developed the Band’s water quality standards and long-term monitoring program, including recently approved numeric nutrient criteria for lakes and biological criteria for streams on the reservation, located in northeastern Minnesota. She has directed research into fish contaminants and sediment chemistry to characterize mercury impacts to Fond du Lac Band members, collaborated on research into wild rice ecology and toxicity, as well as watershed hydrologic modeling to inform management and restoration efforts. She participates in numerous local, regional, national and binational working groups to ensure the tribal perspective is represented, and initiated a cooperative wastewater management project with the non-tribal community to service a heavily developed lake on the Reservation. She initiated the tribe’s nonpoint source management program, and leads the Band’s environmental review of mining and energy industry impacts to treaty-protected resources. Nancy has a degree in Biology from the University of Dayton, and a Master’s Degree in Aquatic Ecology from the University of Kansas.

James Shine

Travis Stills

Travis Stills is the Managing Attorney of Energy & Conservation Law, based in Colorado. Travis advises local, regional, and national organizations that are faced with impacts of mining proposals, often compounded by the long-term impacts of existing but neglected mine wastes. He provides direct legal representation in numerous local, state, and federal forums, including courts and administrative bodies. He has advised various government and non-governmental organizations throughout the country since 1996. He has taught and developed graduate and undergraduate courses in sociology, environmental law, environmental justice, and environmental policy and politics for Fort Lewis College and the University of Colorado-Denver. He earned his J.D. at Vermont Law School, and received specialized training in administrative and environmental law while earning his Masters Study in Environmental Law (cum laude) at Vermont Law School.

Hilu Tagoona

Hilu Tagoona is from the inland Inuit community of Baker Lake, Nunavut, in the Canadian Arctic. Her people are known as the Caribou Inuit. She is a member of Nunavummiut Makitagunarngningit (or Makita for short) which means “the people of Nunavut can rise up,” an independent non-governmental organization formed in 2009 to inform Nunavut residents about the impacts of uranium mining. Hilu represented Makita in the final review process regarding the French mining company Areva’s proposal to establish the Kiggavik uranium mine 80 kilometres from her home community. The Nunavut Impact Review Board rejected the mine that would have posed a threat to caribou herds in the region. She is also a member of the Board of Directors for MiningWatch Canada (since 2018) and Oceans North (since last year). Hilu is a mother of two young adults, and has her B.A. from Carleton University.

Ananda Lee Tan

Ananda Lee Tan has been organizing grassroots, social justice movements since 1986 - building and supporting coalitions, networks and alliances for Indigenous land defense, environmental justice, worker rights, energy democracy, food sovereignty, zero waste, community self-determination and climate justice around the world.

Ananda’s family comes from the community of Santiniketan in South Asia - a “decolonization school” founded in 1901, purposed to align education with the original instructions of the Earth, so that liberation struggles could embody Indigenous ecological wisdom and values that transformed the global economy of European colonial rule. Today Ananda lives on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Tsleil- Waututh, Musqueam, and Squamish Nations in the Pacific Northwest

Ananda’s early activism included mobilizing anti-war protests, organizing direct action against multinational forest and mining corporations destroying biodiversity, and unionizing his fellow tree-planters to advance an ecosystem-based forestry agenda. Over the last decade, Ananda co-convened the Climate Justice Alliance, a network of frontline communities organizing to replace the dig, burn, drive, dump economy, with local, living, caring and sharing ones. He was part of the leadership team that mobilized the international People’s Climate March in 2014. He also convened Building Equity and Alignment for Impact, an initiative aimed at shifting philanthropic resources to, and centering the place-based leadership of Black, Brown and Indigenous communities on the frontlines of ecological crises.

In recent years, Ananda has served as trainer, facilitator, advisor, strategist and board member for a variety of grassroots movement formations and support organizations such as Just Transition Alliance, the Ruckus Society, Indigenous Food & Freedom School, Moving Forward Network, Partners for Collaborative Change, Shaping Change Collaborative and Labor Network for Sustainability.