About

This one-of-a-kind conference promises to be a highly engaging, interactive and motivating event.  Attendees will learn new and exciting ways to enhance their youth and community’s health and fitness. Network with and learn from Native experts, organizations and communities working to improve the health and physical activity of Native American children.  See what they are doing. Take home tips, knowledge and inspiration for your work. Together we will ensure Healthy Kids! Healthy Futures! 

Sponsors

Hotel Information

<p style="text-align:center"><img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/addmi-cf673.appspot.com/o/droppedImages%2F-LcH_z2FNtnFf5I0dOli.jpg?alt=media&amp;token=81aee2ad-68fd-49ba-acd2-b6a98cb83620" style="width:550px" /><br /></p><p style="text-align:center">Conference Attendees, book your room early! Click on the link to reserve your room</p><p style="text-align:center"><span style="font-family:Verdana"></span><a href="https://book.b4checkin.com/chameleon/sandia/rlp/HealthyKidsHealthyFuturesNationalConf">https://book.b4checkin.com/chameleon/sandia/rlp/HealthyKidsHealthyFuturesNationalConf</a></p><p style="text-align:center">Deadline to book rooms is Wednesday, Aug. 28</p><p style="text-align:center">Book by phone (800) 526-9366</p><p style="text-align:center">Use booking ID 5602</p>

Speakers

Chef Sean Sherman
Chef Sean Sherman
Founder/CEO The Sioux Chef, co-founder of NATIFS
The Sioux Chef
Chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota, born in Pine Ridge, SD, has been cooking across the US and Mexico over the past 30 years, and has become renowned nationally and internationally in the culinary movement of indigenous foods. His main focus has been on the revitalization and evolution of indigenous foods systems throughout North America. Chef Sean has studied on his own extensively to determine the foundations of these food systems to gain a full understanding of bringing back a sense of Native American cuisine to today’s world. In 2014, he opened the business titled, The Sioux Chef as a caterer and food educator in the Minneapolis/Saint Paul area. He and his business partner Dana Thompson also designed and opened the Tatanka Truck, which featured pre-contact foods of the Dakota and Minnesota territories. In October 2017, Sean was able to perform the first decolonized dinner at the James Beard House in Manhattan along with his team. His first book, The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen was awarded the James Beard medal for Best American Cookbook for 2018 and was chosen one of the top ten cookbooks of 2017 by the LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle as well as the Smithsonian Magazine. This year, Chef Sean was selected as a Bush Fellow, as well as receiving the 2019 Leadership Award by the James Beard Foundation. The Sioux Chef team of twelve people continues with their mission to help educate and make indigenous foods more accessible to as many communities as possible through the recently founded nonprofit North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems (NATIFS). Learn more at www.natifs.org.
Trisha Moquino
Trisha Moquino
Co-Founder
Kere's Children's Learning Center
From the villages of Cochiti, Ohkay Owhingeh, and Santo Domingo, Trisha Moquino did her schooling in her villages’ local public schools, earned her bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Stanford University, her Master’s degree in Bilingual Education from the University of New Mexico, and completed her Montessori certification at the Montessori Education Center of the Rockies. Her master’s thesis laid out the vision for what would eventually become the Keres Children's Learning Center (KCLC). Trisha has taught in public, private, and BIA schools. As a public school teacher in 2006, Trisha realized she was perpetuating an educational system that didn’t work for many Indigenous children, that she wouldn’t put her own daughters in her classroom, and that she wanted a different education for her own and other Pueblo children. Moquino envisioned an education that would support Keres language and cultural learning as well as academic development. With those goals in mind and her background in bilingual and Montessori education, she co-founded KCLC, which opened in 2012 as a Keres-immersion early childhood classroom using Montessori pedagogy. It has since expanded to include a Montessori dual-language Elementary classroom, a Mentor-Apprentice program for children’s parents and community elders, an Outdoor Classroom for the Cochiti community at large, and the Indigenous Montessori Institute, a Montessori training program based in Albuquerque that centers the Philosophy of Indigenous Education.
Thosh Collins
Thosh Collins
Co-Founder
Well For Culture
Onk-akimel o'odham + Wa-zha-zhi + Haudenosaunee THOSH COLLINS is a community organizer from the Salt River reservation in Arizona. He is a board member and senior trainer for the Native Wellness Institute. Thosh is the visual editor of WELL FOR CULTURE
Andres De La Peza
Andres De La Peza
National Director of Training
UP2US Sports
Andres De La Peza is the Up2Us Sports Director of Training. In this role, he leads a national team of trainers in designing and delivering trauma-informed sports-based youth development content to coaches and programs across the country. Andres is a Los Angeles native with over 10 years of community-based youth development experience. Prior to joining Up2Us Sports, he worked with the education non-profit City Year and America SCORES LA, a non-profit after-school program that uses soccer, poetry, and service learning to help youth become engaged in their health, education, and community. Andres is a graduate of Santa Clara University and a proud AmeriCorps Vista alumnus.
Daanis Chosa
Daanis Chosa
Prevention & Policy Coordinator
American Indian Cancer Foundation
Daanis Chosa is employed with the American Indian Cancer Foundation (AICAF) as a Prevention & Policy Coordinator. At AICAF, she works to support strategies that improve health outcomes in American Indian communities with a focus on policy, systems and environmental change specifically around physical activity, tobacco and healthy eating. Daanis is originally from the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in Michigan and is currently a member of the Bois Forte Band of Chippewa in Minnesota. She holds an Associate of Science degree in Community Development and is currently pursuing her Bachelor’s of Science Degree in Sociology with a policy analysis focus.
Laura Vollmer
Laura Vollmer
Policy Analyst
University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute
Laura Vollmer is a Policy Analyst at the University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute, where she helps to coordinate the National Drinking Water Alliance, a national network of allies working to ensure that all children in the US can drink water in the places where they live, learn, and play. In addition to contributing to NPI's work on drinking water, Laura also contributes to research on food security and the charitable food assistance system, and the impact of community nutrition and physical activity on children's health. Laura is a registered dietitian and holds a BA in English from Wesleyan University and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley.
Christina Hecht, PhD
Christina Hecht, PhD
Senior Policy Advisor
University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute
Christina Hecht is Senior Policy Advisor at University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute. She leads NPI’s work in drinking water access and consumption, including NPI’s role as the hub for the National Drinking Water Alliance, a network of individuals and organizations across the United States working to ensure that all children in the U.S. can drink water in the places where they live, learn and play. She is a co-investigator in current research on drinking water, and is active in multiple collaborative projects. Dr. Hecht graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Human Biology, and from the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health with a Ph.D. in Population Dynamics.
Joseph Claunch, PhD
Joseph Claunch, PhD
Director
Zuni Youth Enrichment Project
Joseph Claunch, PhD., is a member of the Puyallup Tribe in Tacoma, Washington and currently services as the Director of the Zuni Youth Enrichment Project (ZYEP), a small grassroots non-profit on the Zuni Pueblo in western New Mexico. Joseph’s research and professional pursuits have focused on optimizing the motivation and well-being of Native American youth.
LeAnn Littlewolf
LeAnn Littlewolf
Economic Development Director
American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO)
LeAnn Littlewolf (Anishinaabe/Gaa-zagaskwaajimekaag Band of Ojibwe) is the Economic Development Director at the American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO), a American Indian-focused nonprofit based in Duluth, Minnesota. LeAnn has worked in the nonprofit and policy advocacy sectors for over 25 years and carries a deep commitment to community leadership. With over 25 years of nonprofit experience, which includes direct services, development and executive director roles, LeAnn designed and developed a start-up nonprofit organization focused on American Indian youth leadership and assisted in a nonprofit startup focused on Indigenous and rural women's leadership. She is on a leadership team at AICHO for a Food Sovereignty initiative and development of Indigenous social enterprises. She holds a Bachelor degree in Education, a Master degree in Advocacy and Political Leadership, and a Master degree in Education.
Marleah Makpiaq LaBelle
Marleah Makpiaq LaBelle
Project Manager
National Tribal Water Center
Marleah Makpiaq LaBelle is Sugpiaq and Iñupiaq and is a tribal member of the Native Village of Port Graham. Marleah is a project manager with the National Tribal Water Center, a program of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. Working with Alaska Native and American Indian communities, she helps develop programs, provides technical assistance on water and sanitation related issues, and works to ensure that Tribes have a voice in project planning. Marleah has a Master of Arts in Rural Development from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Marleah has more than 10 years of public relations and communications experience serving Alaska Native organizations.
Thomas Ghost Dog Jr.
Thomas Ghost Dog Jr.
Project Coordinator
We R Native
Thomas Lee Ghost Dog Jr., BS, (Burns Paiute, Oglala Lakota), Northwest Portland Area Indian Health Board. Thomas is the Project Coordinator for We R Native at the NPAIHB, in Portland, Oregon. He assists with several adolescent health promotion projects, including: Native VOICES, Native It’s Your Game (IYG), and We R Native. He manages We R Native’s monthly contests, community service mini-grants, and gear requests for the website: www.WeRNative.org, as well as, shepherds 130 We R Native Youth Ambassadors. Tommy blends NPAIHB’s resources with his own life experiences growing up on the Burns Paiute reservation.
Tyler Hill
Tyler Hill
4 By Hill
Tyler Hill has played lacrosse his whole life. He was born into the game and has a bloodline of lacrosse players before him that reaches back to the beginning. He is Kanien'keha:ka (Mohawk), but grew up playing lacrosse in Onondaga near Syracuse, New York. Throughout his career he has won five championships at the national and international levels in Canada and the United States. He plays both the box lacrosse and field lacrosse versions of the game. The highest honor that he has attained was when he captured the league title for leading scorer, and also won the championship in 2010. Lacrosse has given him many opportunities and one of the best was being able to act in the movie, "Crooked Arrows" where he played a lacrosse player named Jimmy Silverfoot. Recently he has been involved in coaching and designing lacrosse sticks.
Michelle Gutiérrez
Michelle Gutiérrez
Director of Strategy and Grantmaking
Notah Begay III Foundation
Michelle Gutiérrez, Director of Strategy and Grantmaking for the Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation, is a Chicana mother and wife who was born and raised along the beautiful Rio Grande in New Mexico. She has dedicated twenty years of her life to social justice, working abroad for over 10 years in Italy and then Sri Lanka as a Country Director for an Italian NGO implementing post-Tsunami work. The last decade has been spent in philanthropy as a program officer, advocating for and identifying resources and investments for communities of color focused on racial and health equity. At the NB3 Foundation, her team has articulated an indigenous health model and indigenous evaluation framework that emphasizes relationships and interconnectedness to the world we live in and to each other. She graduated with a Bachelors from Smith College in Government and Italian Language and Literature and a Masters from the European School of Advanced Studies at the University of Pavia, Italy in International Cooperation and Development. However, her most significant education comes from the ancestral knowledge passed on by her family and community.
Autumn Quiver
Autumn Quiver
NB3FIT Program Coordinator
Notah Begay III Foundation
Autumn Quiver was born in Gallup, N.M. and later moved to San Felipe Pueblo where she was raised. She comes from a family of nine, with six brothers and two sisters and a two-year-old son. She is Lakota Sioux, Navajo, and San Felipe. Autumn Quiver is a rarity at the Notah Begay III (NB3) Foundation. She holds the distinct position of being the only person to participate in, volunteer for, and work for the NB3 Soccer Program. In fact, based off experience alone, she would rank as one of the senior-most employees at the Foundation. She is currently the NB3FIT Program Coordinator and oversees the nutrition program, leadership program and soccer program.
Danielyn Hardy
Danielyn Hardy
Fitness Specialist
Kewa Fitness Center
My name Danielyn J. Hardy and I work for the Pueblo of Santo Domingo at the Kewa Fitness Center as a Fitness Specialist. I enjoy working and interacting with all community members, as they considered “my” people. I will do what I can to improve the health of each respected tribal member. I enjoy being outdoors, trying to stay healthy and active. I love to play different sports, hiking, and what ever gets me moving. The initiative that I had taken on with a grant was to help promote water, and its health benefits. It was such a rewarding time and to see that initiatives can be done with the help and support of the community.

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