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.
Jason Baldes
Jason Baldes is a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe from the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming. He received his undergraduate and graduate degrees in land resources and environmental sciences from Montana State University, Bozeman. Jason works for the National Wildlife Federation as the senior buffalo program manager, and founder and executive director of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative. He serves as vice president of the InterTribal Buffalo Council, and an adjunct professor at the Haub School of Environment and Natural Resources, University of Wyoming. Jason joined the explorers club of National Geographic as a recipient of the 2024 Wayfinder Award.
Jason Cummins
Awaachiiiákaaté (Dr. Jason Cummins) is an enrolled member of the Apsáalooke Nation and serves as an assistant professor of Educational Leadership at Montana State University (MSU).
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.
Giizh (Sarah) Agaton Howes
Giizh (Sarah) Agaton Howes is an Anishinaabe-Ojibwe creator, artist, organizer, and founder of Heart Berry from Fond du Lac Nation in Northern Minnesota. Her lifestyle brand, centered around the Ode’imin “heart berry” (strawberry) brings together cultural art and stories into contemporary design. Her community work around moccasin revitalization focuses on the building a community of makers in the moccasin tradition. She collaborates with artists and organizations to create design from logos to large scale art installations. Heart Berry is a proud Inspired Natives Collaborator with Eighth Generation taking back Native entrepreneurship, production, and most notably the wool blanket. Her work to build the Anishinaabe Canoe Migration focuses on reconnection, skill building, and community with Indigenous folx relationship to water and canoeing.
Jordann Lankford
Jordann (Bright Trail Woman) Lankford is an educator and Indigenous Education for All instructional coach with Great Falls Public Schools in Montana. She teaches American Indian Studies and Native American Literature at the high school level and assists educators throughout the country with infusing Indigenous content into their classrooms and learning spaces. Jordann serves on the Montana Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights and is Chairwoman of the Montana Advisory Council on Indian Education (MACIE). She has been recognized as Montana History Teacher of the Year and Montana Indian Teacher of the Year, and is a 2025 Lowell Milken Center Fellow.
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.
Nora Mabie
Nora Mabie has established the Indigenous affairs beat at several Montana news outlets. She currently covers Indigenous affairs at Montana Free Press. She previously covered Indigenous communities at the five Lee Montana newspapers: the Missoulian, Billings Gazette, Independent Record (Helena), Ravalli Republic and Montana Standard (Butte). Prior to that, she covered tribal affairs for the Great Falls Tribune. Mabie prioritizes building trust with sources, and her reporting is community driven.
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.
Haley Omeasoo
Haley Omeasoo is an enrolled member of the Hopi tribe and a descendant of the AmskapiPikuni (Blackfeet) Tribe. She is a recent Ph.D. graduate of the University of Montana (UM) in the Forensic and Molecular Anthropology Program. Dr. Omeasoo has been studying in the field of forensics for the past ten years and received her undergraduate degrees at UM in Forensic Anthropology and Human Biology (2020), a Certificate in Forensic Science (2020), and a Master’s Degree in Forensic Anthropology (2022). Her research focuses on assisting Tribal agencies in cases regarding Indigenous people's injustices, such as NAGPRA cases and repatriation of unidentified Indigenous skeletal remains placed in museums, teaching, and private collections, and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous People (MMIP) crisis. Haley’s motivation for such studies stems from real-life cases in and around her home community on the Blackfeet Reservation. Founding the nonprofit organization, Ohkomi Forensics, in 2023, Dr. Omeasoo strives to provide forensic expertise and services to assist in resolving cold cases in Indian Country and the return of ancestral remains in the search for truth and reconciliation. Outside of academia and work, she is a wife and mother to two boys, and enjoys beading and fitness
Jill Falcon Ramaker
Jill Falcon Ramaker is Assistant Professor of Community Nutrition and Sustainable Food Systems and Director of the Buffalo Nations Food System Initiative at Montana State University. She notably studies food systems in Indigenous communities. Her research lies in the restoration of balance in human-natural systems; Indigenous land practices; Native American food systems; intertribal food sovereignty initiatives; heirloom seed propagation and stewardship; the buffalo culture seasonal round; cultural identity, Indigenous wellness, and biocultural diversity.
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.
Chyana Marie Sage
Chyana Marie Sage is a Cree and Métis memoirist, journalist, essayist, poet, model, screenwriter, and public speaker from amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton). Her debut essay “Soar” won first place in the Edna Staebler Essay Contest, and earned a Silver Medal at the National Magazine Awards. She holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia University—where she was the first Indigenous graduate—and later taught as an adjunct professor. After living in New York City, she returned to Canada and now lives in Toronto, working as Storyteller and Content Writer for Indspire. Her work has appeared in HuffPost, The New Quarterly, Electric Lit, The Toronto Star, and Matriarch Movement. Her debut memoir, Soft as Bones (House of Anansi, May 2025), became an instant national bestseller. Chyana is also a model and advocate for Indigenous representation in fashion, having worked with designers such as Lesley Hampton, Lindsay King, Dene Couture by Tishna Marlowe, and Ocean Kiana. She is the founder of the Soft as Bones Storytelling Foundation, alongside her sister Chayla Delaney Rain, dedicated to healing through the arts. Its flagship event in 2026, the Woven Skies Storytelling Festival, celebrates all-Indigenous storytelling. Her writing and creative work honour Indigenous knowledge, resilience, and the power of story. When she’s not creating, she’s traveling—always seeking new experiences, stories, and ways of being.
Claudia Serrato
Dr. Claudia Serrato, of P’urhépecha and Zacateca cultural heritage roots, is a Xicana culinary anthropologist, chef, and educator whose work centers on ancestral taste memory and the cultural power of food. Holding a Ph.D. in sociocultural anthropology from the University of Washington, she activates memory through cooking, teaching, and storytelling, reconnecting Native and Mesoamerican communities to ancestral ingredients and foodways. Her vision blends scholarship with practice to reveal how taste carries history, identity, and survival—whether in classrooms, kitchens, or community spaces. For Dr. Serrato, food is not only nourishment but ceremony and remembrance, a way flavors connect generations across time and space. Based in Los Angeles, Dr. Serrato shares her expertise through workshops, cooking classes, and public speaking, elevating Indigenous culinary traditions as vessels of memory and cultural continuity. She has been featured in The New York Times and New York Times Cooking, Telemundo, NPR’s Good Food, ABC Primetime, HULU, TASTEMADE, Smithsonian’s Indigenous Voices of the Americas, the Natural History Museum, and more. While she strongly advocates for food justice and sovereignty, her work is distinguished by its focus on taste as knowledge and on the ways ancestral memory nourishes identity and resilience.
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