team
INDIGENOUS LED's origin story emerges from hundreds of Blackfoot community voices and the wisdom of our Elders who counseled that our work is to heal divides. In keeping with the Anishinaabe prophecy of the Seventh Fire and the Mi’kmaw understanding of Two-Eyed Seeing, we come together as a team of both Native and non-Native people dedicated to bridging worlds in order to facilitate the ecological and cultural healing urgently needed.
We are advised by a council of Knowledge Keepers, steered by a commitment to Indigenous leadership, and grounded by a deep love for our more-than-human relatives and their homelands. We continue to contemplate what it means to be a team that walks in many worlds, and we welcome conversation with people of all backgrounds who are curious about our approach.
The hearts and minds below are not the only ones that lift our work – our familial network of partnership is core to our collective power and the to natural world that we are devoted to protect, heal, and celebrate.
Meet the Team
Ervin Carlson
Co-Founder & Strategic Advisor
Blackfeet Nation
Ervin is the Co-Founder and a Strategic Advisor to INDIGENOUS LED. Ervin currently serves as the Director of the Blackfeet Nation’s Buffalo Program and President of the InterTribal Buffalo Council (ITBC). The Blackfeet herd is managed to a conservation and cultural vision. Ervin has worked for decades to bring into reality a vision of bison ranging freely once again across Blackfoot Traditional Territory. ITBC was formed in 1990 to coordinate and assist tribes in returning buffalo to Indian country and has grown to represent 79 Tribal Nations. Ervin holds intimate knowledge of bison restoration from an Indigenous perspective, is an active cattle rancher, and has previously served on the Blackfeet Tribal Council.
Cristina Mormorunni
Co-Founder & Executive Director
Metis/Sardo
Cristina is the Co-Founder of INDIGENOUS LED and currently serves as its Director, with responsibility for strategic leadership & creative direction. She has 30 years of applied experience from the Arctic to the Antarctic leading campaigns & designing biocultural conservation strategies for non-profits, foundations & individual donors. She also serves as the Founder & Principle of the TERRAMAR collective, which provides strategic advice to foundations and non-profits interested in Indigenous-led conservation and the protection of biocultural diversity. She is vaguely obsessed with restoring Buffalo and her dog, Oberon.
Sara Little bear
Development Coordinator
Blackfoot (Kainai)
Sara (she/her), Mai'soitsoowaa'kii ("Pretty Crow Woman") in Blackfoot, was born and raised on the Blood Reserve and has deep roots within the Blood people of the Kainai Nation. For INDIGENOUS LED, Sara advances fundraising and development research by identifying strategic funding opportunities, strengthening grant systems, and contributing to the organization's long-term funding strategy. Sara's professional experience includes more than eight years working across the Blackfoot Confederacy, leading youth and community initiatives in various public sector service environments. Her experience now spans grant research, strategic funding development, and INDIGENOUS LED initiatives. Her educational background is in Agricultural Management and AgriCommerce, providing a strong foundation in research, strategic planning, and organizational development. Grounded in her Blackfoot values and principles, Sara is committed to advancing INDIGENOUS LED initiatives through culturally informed and values-driven work.
Elias Gallegos
Project Story Lead
Elias (he/him) is a director, actor, producer, and storyteller whose work centers Indigenous-led narratives, cultural preservation, and community-driven storytelling. As Project Story Lead for INDIGENOUS LED, he works alongside tribal leaders, artists, and filmmakers to develop documentaries, immersive experiences, and impact campaigns that honor Indigenous knowledge and strengthen connections between people, culture, and place.
His recent projects include IINNIIWA: The Blackfeet Buffalo Story, the Chief Earl Old Person documentary, and Relative POV, an immersive storytelling initiative inspired by Indigenous perspectives and traditional knowledge. Based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Gallegos is committed to creating meaningful stories and experiences that amplify Indigenous voices, celebrate cultural resilience, and inspire future generations.
José Giovanni Gomez
Communications & storytelling
Senior manager
Coahuiltecan/Lenca
José (he/they) is an Indigenous, two-spirit organizer, storyteller, and culture bearer with roots spanning the Rio Grande Delta to Honduras. He is a member of Mitotiliztli Yaoyollohtli and founder of Santuario Xōchipilli. His work was shaped in part by the movement at Standing Rock, where he joined thousands in defense of Indigenous rights, water, and land. José holds a Bachelor of Science and Arts in Mathematics from The University of Texas at Austin. He has worked across grassroots and nonprofit organizations including the Indigenous Cultures Institute, the Center for Story-Based Strategy, and the Indigenous Peoples' Power Project (IP3), where he is a trainer in kayaktivism and climbing. He has also served as SXSW tour manager for acclaimed Indigenous artist Mato Wayuhi. His work centers storytelling, movement building, and Indigenous-led solutions for collective liberation and ecological renewal.
Michele McDonnell
Finance & Operations Lead
Michele (she/her) supports INDIGENOUS LED as a Finance and Operations Lead. Most of her career was spent in financial services, until a few years ago when she began to learn more about climate and sustainability and started looking for ways to bring her finance skills to nonprofits. Michele lives in spreadsheets and loves to develop financial tools and simplified processes to help organizations to deliver on their missions. Based in Charles Town, West Virginia, Michele enjoys hiking and exploring with her wife, Evelyn.
Gavin Noyes
Utah Program lead
Gavin (he/him) is the Arts, Advocacy, and Healing Program Coordinator with INDIGENOUS LED. Gavin has been celebrating lands, water, and wildlife on U.S. public lands while running nonprofits and programs at Save Our Canyons, Round River Conservation Studies, Utah Diné Bikéyah, and the Conservation Lands Foundation since 1999. With INDIGENOUS LED, Gavin supports community organizers who weave arts, local foods, language, culture, and spiritual practices into campaign strategies to strengthen community relationships and the engagement of all beings across Native American ancestral lands. Gavin was raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, lands of Ute, Goshute, Paiute, and Shoshone People. He holds degrees in natural resources, Japanese language and culture, and public policy.
Ishmael Medina
Braided Science Researcher, Utah
Chickasaw Nation
Ishmael (he/him) is broadly interested in understanding human-environment interactions. He is currently a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, with the primary goal of integrating data from the archaeological record and contemporary Indigenous ecological knowledge with novel artificial intelligence models to restore Indigenous landscapes and develop effective and inclusive management plans. Ishmael received his Bachelor of Science (2021) and Master of Science (2023) in Anthropology from the University of Utah, where he partnered with local Tribes to help restore fragile riparian ecosystems. He is now a PhD student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, focusing on supporting Indigenous-led restoration efforts and on modeling potential beaver habitats for beaver reintroduction programs to support sustainable watershed restoration.
Kelsey Pazera
Operations & EvEnts MANAGER
Kelsey (she/her) provides core support to INDIGENOUS LED through her administrative, operational, and logistical skills. She leads event planning and gatherings and also coordinates ideas, insights, and collaborative efforts across our team and partners. Kelsey has a depth of experience working in the Rocky Mountains and has focused much of her energy and talents over the course of the last decade to the protection and promotion of bio-cultural diversity in the Rockies through social science and land-based projects. Before INDIGENOUS LED, she recently served as the Program Manager for WCS Rockies.
Chantal Raguin
CONSULTING STRATEGIST
Chantal (she/her) is interested in the intersections of story, law, and policy. After two years of collaboration with INDIGENOUS LED on writing and design, Chantal became interested in the ways in which narratives shape systems of governance. Chantal is now a J.D. candidate at University of Colorado School of Law. She draws on her legal studies to contribute to INDIGENOUS LED’s advocacy and justice strategies. Chantal loves to cook, hike, and learn. When she’s not reading or writing, she can often be found outside.
Marleen Villanueva
Consulting Strategist
Pame Chichimeca
Marleen (she/her) supports INDIGENOUS LED as a Narrative Strategy Consultant for Buffalo restoration. Marleen is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Social Justice Education Department at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, and a former Elementary school teacher. By bringing together Indigenous Studies, Environmental Education, and Social Justice Education, her work adds to discussions around water protection with a specific focus on the waters of Central Texas, Yana Wana. She has worked in various roles at cultural and social justice organizations including the Center for Story-Based Strategy and the Indigenous Cultures Institute.
Brent was an exceptional wildlife biologist and landscape ecologist with a laugh that could make a stone statue smile. Brent produced landmark work applying GIS & spatial analytics to conservation science, and he continued to do so through his very last days in this realm. Brent was beautifully devoted to Buffalo, working lands, and the people that cared for them. He was humble, thoughtful, and wildly funny, and he tended to his collection of carnivorous plants with a passion that awed our entire team. We are committed to carrying forward the many gifts that Brent gave to our movement, and we dedicate our work this year to him. Brent, we love and miss you more than words can express.
In Memoriam: Brent Brock, Landscape Ecologist
Interns
INDIGENOUS LED has partnered with the University of Calgary to support undergraduate research and involvement in Indigenous-led conservation with Drs. Craig Ginn and Adela Kincaid supervising the student work. This project, titled Transdisciplinary Efforts Toward Bison Restoration, will support the work of up to ten students over the next four years, and is co-funded by Mitacs and INDIGENOUS LED. This summer there are three student interns working on the first year of the project. In addition to posing their own individual research questions, the students will also complete an ethics review for the larger collaboration, and develop educational resources, literature reviews and/or continuity plans for subsequent projects.
Mitchell McGinnis
University of Calgary
(Metís)
Mitchell is a Métis student at the University of Calgary studying Biology, concentrated in Conservation and Biodiversity with a minor in Indigenous Studies. His work focuses on exploring biodiversity through bridging scientific perspectives with Indigenous ways of knowing to form a more holistic understanding of the more-than-human world. Currently in partnership with the U of C and INDIGENOUS LED, he is an intern focusing on a research project that examines how people conceptualize biodiversity, with a particular emphasis on the role of buffalo in shaping these perspectives, and how these understandings may influence future approaches to conservation. He is also working on connecting his work to corridors by examining the literature on habitat connectivity and overcoming the barriers to large-scale landscape conservation.
Isabella Frey
University of Calgary
Isabella is in her sixth year of Undergraduate studies at the University of Calgary. She has mixed Dutch, German, and Irish ancestry, but was born and raised on Treaty 7 territory. Isabella is studying Natural Science and International Indigenous Studies, and her research interests include communication and storytelling in science, Indigenous-informed science curriculum development, and knowledge transmission through textile practices.
Isabella is currently working with Buffalo Beyond Borders on a project called “Narratives on Wallowing Behaviour”. Through this project, she hopes to better understand perceptions of wallowing behaviour, and develop educational resources to communicate these perceptions back to different audiences. The project aims to consider what there is to learn about wallowing from the current literature, from each other, and directly from the buffalo.
Jordanna Young
University of Calgary
(Dënesųłiné, Métis)
Jordanna Young (she/her) is an Indigenous woman of Dënesųłiné, Métis, and mixed European ancestry from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She is working with INDIGENOUS LED and Buffalo Beyond Borders this summer as a student research intern, looking at how specific management practices impact parasitism in Buffalo herds. Her interests include wildlife ecology, parasite ecology, braided knowledges and conservation, and the relationships between people, animals, and the land. Jordanna is a recent graduate of the University of Calgary with a major in Ecology and a minor in International Indigenous Studies, and is excited to incorporate the skills she has learned over the course of her degree to help the Buffalo and the people and communities that steward them.