INDIGIPALOOZA MT
2026 PRESENTERS

Robin Wall Kimmerer
Robin Wall Kimmerer is a mother, scientist, decorated professor, and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She is the author of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, which has earned Kimmerer wide acclaim. Her first book, Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses, was awarded the John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, and her other work has appeared in Orion, Whole Terrain, and numerous scientific journals. In 2022, Braiding Sweetgrass was adapted for young adults by Monique Gray Smith. This new edition reinforces how wider ecological understanding stems from listening to the earth’s oldest teachers: the plants around us. Robin’s newest book, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World (November 2024), is a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.Robin tours widely and has been featured on NPR’s On Being with Krista Tippett and in 2015 addressed the general assembly of the United Nations on the topic of “Healing Our Relationship with Nature.” Kimmerer is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology, and the founder and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, whose mission is to create programs which draw on the wisdom of both indigenous and scientific knowledge for our shared goals of sustainability. In 2022 she was named a MacArthur Fellow.As a writer and a scientist, her interests in restoration include not only restoration of ecological communities, but restoration of our relationships to land. She holds a BS in Botany from SUNY ESF, an MS and PhD in Botany from the University of Wisconsin and is the author of numerous scientific papers on plant ecology, bryophyte ecology, traditional knowledge and restoration ecology. She lives on an old farm in upstate New York, tending gardens both cultivated and wild.

Ernestine Hayes
Ernestine Hayes belongs to the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Tlingit nation. Alaska Writer Laureate 2016-2018, Hayes is author of Blonde Indian: An Alaska Native Memoir and The Tao of Raven. Hayes has been the grateful recipient of a Rasmuson Distinguished Artist Award (2021), United States Artists Fellowship (2023), and Luce Indigenous Knowledge Fellowship (2024). University of Alaska professor emerita, Hayes makes her home in Juneau not far from the Juneau Indian Village where she was born.

Chris La Tray
Chris La Tray is a Métis storyteller, a descendent of the Pembina Band of the mighty Red River of the North and a citizen of the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians. His third book, Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, was published by Milkweed Editions on August 20, 2024 and was a winner of a 2025 Pacific Northwest Book Award and a 2025 Writing the West Award. His first book, One-Sentence Journal: Short Poems and Essays from the World at Large won the 2018 Montana Book Award and a 2019 High Plains Book Award. His book of haiku and haibun poetry, Descended from a Travel-worn Satchel, was published in 2021 by Foothills Publishing. Chris served as the 2025 Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer at the University of Montana and was awarded the 2025 Montana Heritage Keeper Award by the Montana Historical Society. Chris writes the weekly newsletter "An Irritable Métis" and lives near Frenchtown, Montana. He was the 11th Montana state poet laureate from 2023–2025.

Michelle Mitchell
Michelle Mitchell currently serves as the Acting Director of Tribal Member Services and Department Head for the Tribal Education Department of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. A proud tribal member residing on her tribe's permanent homelands, Michelle brings 30 years of experience in Indigenous
education to her leadership. She is a firm believer in the strength and beauty of her people and maintains that students thrive when empowered to focus on their unique gifts and passions.
Previously, Michelle led the American Indian Student Achievement division at the Montana Office of Public Instruction. Her extensive background in Great Falls, Montana, includes serving as the Indigenous Student Achievement Coach at Great Falls High School, where she supported over 200 students annually. Her teaching career spans 7th-grade ELA at East Middle School, the "Jobs for MT Graduates" program, and co-creating the Indigenous Immersion School at Paris Gibson High School. At the heart of her work is a commitment to building strong relationships. In her free time, Michelle enjoys reading, beading, and spending time with her family, including her parents, daughters, granddaughters, and her "grandpuppy."

Rebecca Nagle
Rebecca Nagle is an award winning journalist and citizen of Cherokee Nation. Nagle’s debut book, By The Fire We Carry: the Generations-long Fight for Justice on Native Land, was an instant national bestseller, a New Yorker Book of the Year and won the J. Anthony Lukas Prize and was a finalist for the Chautauqua Prize and numerous other awards. Nagle is also the writer and host of the podcast This Land which garnered millions of downloads worldwide, reached #2 on Apple’s Podcast charts, won two Webby awards, and was nominated for a Peabody. Her writing on Native representation, federal Indian law, and tribal sovereignty has been featured in the Atlantic, the Washington Post, The Guardian, and more. Nagle believes Indigenous communities deserve the same standard of journalism as the rest of the country, but rarely receive it. Nagle seeks to correct this. From the census, to COVID, to the Supreme Court, Nagle focuses on deeply and timely reporting that sheds light on issues of national importance. Nagle lives in Tahlequah, OK.

B. 'Toastie' Oaster
B. ‘Toastie’ Oaster is an award-winning Indigenous affairs journalist in the Pacific Northwest, writing for High Country News about Native issues across the West. They are a ProPublica Local Reporting Network fellow, a Renaissance Journalism LaunchPad fellow, and a National Magazine Awards finalist for feature writing, holding awards from the Indigenous Journalists Association, Covering Climate Now and the Society of Professional Journalists Oregon. Toastie's investigative reporting on green colonialism is featured in the documentary These Sacred Hills, and they have spoken on numerous panels and at universities about the impacts of renewable energy development on tribal cultural resources. Their reporting has also appeared in Foreign Policy, Street Roots, Underscore News, The Portland Mercury and elsewhere. They are a citizen of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma.

Waubgeshig Rice
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation on Georgian Bay. His breakthrough novel Moon of the Crusted Snow was published in 2018 to widespread critical acclaim. Its sequel, Moon of the Turning Leaves, was published in 2023 and became an instant bestseller. He is also the author of the short story collection Midnight Sweatlodge (2011) and the novel Legacy (2014). His books have been translated into French and German, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies.As a journalist, his reporting journey began in 1996 as an exchange student in northern Germany, writing articles about being an Anishinaabe youth in a foreign country for newspapers back in Canada. He graduated from the journalism program at Toronto Metropolitan University in 2002. He spent most of his journalism career with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation as a video journalist, web writer, producer, and radio host. In 2014, he received the Anishinabek Nation’s Debwewin Citation for excellence in First Nation Storytelling. His final role with CBC was host of Up North, the afternoon radio program for northern Ontario. He left daily journalism in 2020 to focus on his literary career.

James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw
James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw, a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Ojibwe, is a renowned international speaker, digital creator, and author of The Seven Generations and the Seven Grandfather Teachings and a picture book for children called Wisdom Weavers. His keen insights were developed through speaking with and recording elders and native language speakers across North America as part of the Ojibwe Language Dictionary Project. 

 James is a passionate advocate for sharing how to live a life of ‘mino-bimaadiziwin,’ the good life. 

 For over twenty years, he has facilitated community language tables, consulted with public and private organizations on language and cultural programs, and traveled internationally as a keynote speaker. He has been featured in numerous publications, podcasts, radio & television programs. 

James lives in the Twin Cities, Minnesota with his wife & son.

Market Director: Dre Castillo
Dre Castillo (They/Them/Theirs) is a Two Spirit Multicultural Díné (Navajo) artist, curator, educator and activist. They hold a B.A. in Native American Studies from the University of Montana. They have exhibited their work in local and regional juried shows and community markets. Dre has curated several large-scale exhibitions and helped create Indigenous arts & crafts vendor spaces at Zootown Arts Community Center (ZACC), Western Montana Fair and UM’s PARTV Repertory Theatre. They were on the Jeanette Rankin Peace Center’s Coordinating Council for 6 years, where Dre also continues to spearhead the JRPC Indigenous Arts and Education committee as a Program Coordinator for Indigen-Unity to continually produce 3 to 4 comprehensive programs per year as part of that effort. They are currently on the board of Directors at Zootown Arts Community Center (ZACC). While they tirelessly support and participate in non-profit work they work odd jobs and work rigorously on their own art to make ends meet.They sell their work under the banner Dre Castillo Creations (find them and follow on Facebook and Instagram: @drecastillocreations.)

Photographer: Whitney Snow
Whitney Snow (Blackfeet) is a documentary photographer who is dedicated to capturing stories that depict the emotional connection between people and their environment. She focuses on narratives about indigenous communities and their struggle to preserve their way of life, including efforts related to environmental and cultural conservation, as well as language revitalization.Her main focus is the Blackfeet Nation, where she works alongside local indigenous documentary filmmakers, environmental groups, community members, and state/national organizations to document the environmental and cultural preservation initiatives of the Blackfeet people. ​Whitney Snow Photography