2025 Women & Water Coming Together Symposium
Presentors

​Judy Da Silva, a Grassy Narrows community member, is a mother to 5 children.  They help her to have the positive energy to continue to look for justice and for the solution to the mercury poisoning of their river system in Grassy Narrows & Mother Earth.  She recently was awarded the Michael Sattler Peace Prize in Germany and Human Rights Watch Award in Toronto, Art Manuel environmental award & Wilfred Laurier honorary doctorate  in recognition of her lifelong work to advocate for her community members for environmental protection using peaceful, nonviolent direct actions.  
Chickadee Richard (Benais Quimiwin Ikwe) is a member of the Sandy Bay
First Nation. She is a proud Anishinaaba kwe who has dedicated
her life to the betterment of our land and water, and the safety of the
community. Chickadee has spent over three decades working with a variety of organizations and communities to support healing, to advocate for
Indigenous rights and to create awareness about the beauty of
Indigenous peoples and their culture. Chickadee is a member of the Indigenous Council of Grandmothers and Grandfathers. This Council supports teachers and students as they learn about Indigenous ways of knowing and being.
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Mark Denning
Marla Mahkimetas (Little Big Medicine Man) lives on the Menominee
Reservation in Wisconsin. She is a mother of two adult children and grandmother of 11 grandchildren. Marla is an Indigenous educator/learner, canoer, basket weaver, dancer, fashion
designer/maker, actress, world traveler, ancestral women ambassador, and moccasin maker.
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​Karen J. Breit is an enrolled member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Ojibwe, where she was born and raised.  Her career has included creative paths in business, justice, planning, and higher education. She rejoined the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe University in January 2016 as the Dean of Students and has worked in a wide range of areas for the LCOOU throughout her career, including financial aid, recruitment and enrollment management, student life, business development, and Chief of Staff. Karen is currently serving as the Interim President at the LCOOU.
 
Ms. Breit graduated from Northland College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Sociology and Social Justice and holds a Master of Arts degree in Servant Leadership from Viterbo University.
Gary Charwood, Niizhoo-anong, originally from Ponemah, MN, now located at Leech Lake. 
​Pat McCabe (Weyakpa Najin Win, Woman Stands Shining) is a Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She is a voice for global peace, and her paintings are created as tools for individual, earth and global healing. She draws upon the Indigenous sciences of Thriving Life to reframe questions about sustainability and balance, and she is devoted to supporting the next generations, Women’s Nation and Men’s Nation, in being functional members of the “Hoop of Life” and upholding the honor of being human.
Michael Waasegiizhig Price joins the GLIFWC team as traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) specialist. Waasegiizhig is Anishinaabe and an enrolled member of Wikwemikong First Nations. For the last 20 years, he has lived and worked in Anishinaabe Akiing in northern Minnesota.   During his tenure at LLTC, he worked to integrate Anishinaabe language and traditions into forestry curriculum to make the science more culturally relevant. 
Michael said his most valuable education has come from the teachings of Anishinaabe elders including Tobasanokwut Kinew-iban, Basil Johnston-iban, Leroy Littlebear (Blackfoot), Henrietta Mann (Cheyenne), Wallace Humphrey, Nancy Kingbird, Robert “Bob” Jourdain and Bob Shimek, as well as other traditional knowledge-keepers who have kept and preserved indigenous ways of life.