Indigenous Environmental Network
PO Box 485
Bemidji, MN 56619
Office: (218) 751-4967
Team Contacts
Tom Goldtooth
Executive Director, Leadership Team
(Dine’ and Dakota) Tom is the Executive Director of the Indigenous Environmental Network. Tom has been awarded with recognition of his achievements throughout the past 40 years as a change maker within the environmental, economic, energy and climate justice movement. From the strength of his community organizing and leadership he brought the local issues of the rights of Indigenous Peoples related to the environmental protection of land, water, air and health to the national and international levels. From his participation and leadership in the First National People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit in 1991 in Washington D.C., to the 2010 World Peoples’ Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and to the recent co-formation of the United Frontline Table and its People’s Orientation to a Regenerative Economy, and its Indigenous Plank, he has been on the forefront of key moments fighting for systemic change. He co-produced an award-winning documentary film in 1999, Drumbeat for Mother Earth, addressing the effects of the bio-accumulation and biomagnification of toxic chemicals in the natural food web and bodies of Indigenous Peoples. In 2007, Tom co-founded of the Indigenous World Forum on Water and Peace lifting up the spiritual-cultural values and ethics of water policy. Tom initiated the first international Indigenous conference on the rights of Mother Earth in 2012 at the Haskell Indian Nations University and serves as a member of the Global Alliance of the Rights of Nature. Tom wrote the IEN Indigenous Principles of Just Transition as an organizing tool of using Indigenous Original Instructions as the foundation for building sustainable and healthy Indigenous communities. Tom is a recipient of numerous awards including the 2015 Gandhi Award and in 2016 was presented Sierra Club’s highest recognition, the John Muir award. Tom is a Sun Dance leader and active in his ceremonial responsibilities and is a father, grandfather and great grandfather.
Email: ien@igc.org Tel: (218) 751-4967
Simone Senogles
Food Sovereignty Program Coordinator, Leadership Team
Simone is the Food Sovereignty Program Coordinator, Mining Affected Communities Mini-grants Administrator, and IEN Office Manager. She is dedicated to bringing people together across boundaries by building strong connections around food, community, health, and well-being.
Her program work in food sovereignty is based upon the understanding that food systems are one of the many interconnected spheres of indigenous life that have been disrupted by genocide, colonization, capitalism, historical trauma, sexism and racism; recognizing that the decolonization of our lifeways rooted in the revitalization of traditional food systems go hand-in-hand with health and vitality in all aspects of life.
Email: simone@ienearth.org Tel: (218) 751-4967
Ozawa Bineshi Albert
Movement Building Coordinator/Feminist Organizing, Leadership Team
(Yuchi and Annishinaabe) Bineshi’s work has primarily been in environmental justice and Native rights. She was the founding member of the Native American Voters Alliance and a lobbyist for Strong Families NM. While in NM also served as a Co-Director for the Southwest Organizing Project. She was also Regional Director (West) for the Center for Community Change. She serves on the Advisory Council of the Native Organizers Alliance, and she was a founding Board Member of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN). Bineshi is now IEN’s Movement Building coordinators work with It Takes Roots and with a global collaboration on Strengthening Grassroots Feminist Movements, along with Grassroots International, Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, and the World March of Women. She also holds a degree in Indigenous Liberal Studies with minors in Performing Arts and Creative Writing. She is the proud mother of three, a daughter and two sons. Bineshi lives in rural Oklahoma.
Email: bineshi@ienearth.org
Kandi White
Native Energy & Climate Campaign Coordinator, Leadership Team
(Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara) Kandi has emerged as a leading voice in the fight to bring visibility to the impacts that climate change and environmental injustice are having on Indigenous communities across North America. Upon completion of her Master’s Degree in Environmental Management, Kandi began her work with the Indigenous Environmental Network as the Tribal Campus Climate Challenge Coordinator, engaging with more than 30 tribal colleges to instate community based environmental programs, discuss issues of socio-ecologic injustice, and connect indigenous youth with green jobs. She is currently IEN’s Lead Organizer on the Extreme Energy & Just Transition Campaign, focusing at present on creating awareness about the environmentally & socially devastating effects of hydraulic fracturing on tribal lands and working towards a Just Transition away from the fossil fuel industry. Her local work is complemented by international advocacy work, including participation in several United Nation Forums and a testimony before the U.S. Congress on the climate issue and its links to issues of health, identity, and well being on tribal lands.
Email: kandi@ienearth.org Tel: 701.214.1389
Dallas Goldtooth
Keep it in the Ground Campaign Organizer
(Mdewakanton Dakota and Dine) Dallas travels extensively across Turtle Island to help fossil fuel and hard rock mining impacted communities tell their stories thru social media, video, and other forms of communication. Dallas is an IEN media team lead, working with IEN staff, board, and organizational partners from a diverse group of climate justice networks. Along with his many tasks and duties with IEN, he is also a Dakota cultural/language teacher, non-violent direct action trainer, and was one of the outstanding Water Protectors at Standing Rock/Oceti Sakowin Camp fighting the Dakota Access Pipeline. In addition, he is a co-founder of the Indigenous comedy group, The 1491s, a poet, journalist, traditional artist, powwow emcee, and comedian.
Email: dallas@ienearth.org
Jennifer K. Falcon
Communications Coordinator
Jennifer is a member of the Fort Peck Assiniboine Sioux Nation. Jennifer has a strong background in communications and organizing work. Jennifer rejoined the non-profit world after two and a half years as the Chief of Staff to a local San Antonio Councilwoman when she became Communications Director for RAICES in the summer of 2018, fighting against Trump’s family separation policies. Jennifer has a background of inter-sectional, multi-strategy organizing and was vital to the passage of the San Antonio non-discrimination ordinance in 2013.
Email: jennifer@ienearth.org
BJ McManama
Save Our Roots Campaign Organizer
(Seneca/Welsh) Brenda Jo has been involved with Indigenous and environmental issues for over 25 years. Beginning in the early 1990s working with WV State agencies on NAGPRA, opposition to mountaintop/strip coal mining & public education. For the past 14+ years she has contributed to IEN’s mission in different capacities ranging from graphic design/ web administration to media coordinator and campaign organizer. BJ was a member of two Indigenous cultural delegations who traveled to the jungles of Peru and central Mexico to meet with Indigenous community leaders. The focus of these exchanges was to share cultural information and current shared mitigation, restoration, and subsistence challenges centered on forest and aquatic regions. BJ is a member of the Campaign to Stop GE Trees steering committee and works closely with both Indigenous and Front Line community organizations on forest protection, climate justice, and subsistence rights. When not working on national and global environmental issues, BJ participates with local organizations whose focuses include maintaining food security and safety, and protecting water resources and forests from encroaching extractive industries.
Alberto Saldamando
IEN Counsel on Climate Change and Indigenous and Human Rights
(Xicano/Zapoteca) is an internationally acknowledged expert on human and Indigenous rights representing Indigenous Peoples, organizations and communities from various countries from many regions of the world, before UN and other international human rights bodies including: International Labor Organization; Interamerican Commission on Human Rights; and Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Alberto began his climate change work with IEN in 2009 at the UNFCCC COP15 and currently serves as IEN’s head of delegation to UNFCCC Conferences of Parties and related fora. Alberto served as General Counsel of International Indian Treaty Council (IITC) for 18 years, and is very proud of his very active participation in the negotiations leading to the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), the establishment of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, and the initial mandate of the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples.
Alberto was accredited as an Expert by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples (2014) and elected by UN accredited Non-governmental Organizations as their representative to the International Steering Committee of the World Conference Against Racism (1998-2001). Alberto is a member of the California Bar Association, a retired member of the Arizona Bar Association, serves on the Board of the Rainforest Action Network and is bilingual in Spanish and English.
Email: alberto@ienearth.org
Joye Braun, Wanbli Wiyan Ka’win
Frontline Community Organizer
Eagle Feather Woman is a member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. Joye was was one of the first campers at Sacred Stone Camp, moved to Oceti Sakowin Camp, and was at Blackhoop or Seven Generations Camp during eviction of the camps. Joye’s history of community activism includes the long fought campaign against the Keystone XL the project resurrected at the same time DAPL was renewed and continues to threaten her homelands. She is also making stands to protect the Sacred Black Hills, her Ancestral sacred lands against Fracking, Uranium and Gold mining. Joye travels extensively and speaks throughout the northern plains and participates in Indigenous gatherings in the U.S. and Canada speaking about the negative impacts the extractive economy has on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, the abuses taking place in the oil patch, pipeline work, and communities where man-camps bring drugs, human trafficking, and increase crime rates wherever they are located. She is a wife, mother and grandmother.
Email: joye@ienearth.org
Eva Blake
Philanthropic Relationships Manager
(Assonet Wampanoag) Eva is the Philanthropic Relations Manager providing overall strategic and operational fundraising and donor relations support to the IEN leadership team. Eva has over 20 years of experience in nonprofit fundraising, management, and program leadership. In 2005, she founded and led YouthBuild USA’s National Green Initiative to prepare disconnected and low-income urban, rural, and native youth for green jobs and teach them to build green affordable housing in their neighborhoods. Eva graduated from the University of California Santa Cruz in 1999 with a B.A. in Community Studies following an internship with IEN. Born and raised in her native territory she continues to learn and practice the cultural and spiritual traditions of her people with a passion for protecting Mother Earth and cultivating an Indigenous Just Transition. Mother of two, Eva serves her community as a language instructor for the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project and an advisory council member of the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness. Eva is also a founding board member of All in Energy.
Email: eva@ienearth.org
Tamra Gilbertson
Carbon Pricing Education Coordinator
Tamra is an activist-scholar, researcher and writer. She is currently the Project Coordinator of the Carbon Pricing Education Program at IEN. She was a founder and director of Carbon Trade Watch and has worked with IEN an various projects for over 15 years. She is the author of Carbon Pricing: A Critical Perspective for Community Resistance (2017), and Carbon Pricing: Building Resistance through Popular Education (2019) among many other articles, book chapters and publications. She is a Lecturer at the University of Tennessee, Department of Sociology. She speaks Spanish, English and Portuguese.
Email: tamra@ienearth.org
IEN Board Members
Manuel F. Pino
IEN Board of Directors
Manuel Pino, is a professor of sociology and Director of American Indian Studies at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, Arizona. Along with his contributions to IEN, he also serves on the boards of the Southwest Research and Information Center, Red Rock Foundation, as well as the Laguna Acoma Coalition For A Safe Environment, of which he is a founding member. He has served as a delegate of Indigenous Peoples at United Nations conferences, forums, and summits to include the Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Manuel received the 2008 Nuclear Free Future Award for activism in Munich Germany. He has published several book chapters, and articles in academic, environmental, and Indigenous publications in both the U.S. and Canada during his thirty eight plus years of work. Manuel is currently working with former American Indian uranium miners in New Mexico, Arizona, Washington and South Dakota on health issues related to radiation exposure and in Indigenous communities opposing nuclear waste storage and mining on their lands.
Email: manny.pino@scottsdalecc.edu
Sayokla (It Snows Again) D. Williams
IEN Board of Directors
Sayokla is a member of the Turtle Clan and practices the traditional ways of her people called Tsyi Niyukwali:hota (Our Ways). As a lifelong activist, Sayokla, from a very early age, spoke out against alcoholism, child and sexual abuse, and represented her community’s youth as Jr. Miss Oneida and Miss Oneida, twice. She received an academic scholarship from Mount Holyoke College, an ivy-league women’s college in Massachusetts and graduated with a B.A. in Sociology. While completing her degree at Holyoke, Sayokla led a campaign and organized direct actions demanding that the new school administration maintain current and sustainable scholarship funding levels for women of color and not be reduced as was planned at the time. Soon after graduation, she was hired by IEN as the Mining Campaign Coordinator working with frontline communities through education, training, direct action, media support, and international work through the United Nations. Sayokla has worked as a Native American Sexual Assault Advocate and continues to educate on the connections between gender violence and the destruction of Mother Earth. She is currently the Indigenous Caucus Coordinator for the Western Mining Action Network.
Email: sayokla@gmail.com
