2026 Women & Water Indigenous
International Clean Water Summit
Presenters
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Chief Arvol Looking Horse is recognized for his commitment to working towards religious freedom, cultural survival, and revival. Chief Looking Horse’s leadership calls people to unify, to protect sacred places, the planet, and our human and non-human relatives.
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Wanda Baxter is from Marten Falls, Ogoki Post, Canada. She is passionate
about language, culture, and has served as an elder for many years. She believes strongly in balance using the medicine wheel concept. |
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Mildred A. Schuman, Migizikwe, is a free verse poet whose work is established in Native American heritage, but is related and relevant to all walks of life - the pathways of travel on Mother Earth. She is a creative writing graduate (AFA degree) from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Mildred is a graduate from the University of Wisconsin Eau Claire: Elementary Teaching Degree License Wisconsin/Indian Language. She is an Ojibwe elder in the Lac Du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa of Northern Wisconsin. She is deeply respected within the Ojiwe Nation as a Woman Pipe Carrier, Sweat Lodge Leader, Jingle Dress Dancer, ceremonial Sundancer, and Moon Dancer, as well as healer, poet, and artist. Schuman is also a water walker. In recent years, she organized the “Water Ways Walk” to raise awareness of Mother Earth’s Blood - the water, both for the Lac Du Flambeau community and for the surrounding communities of Vilas County, Wisconsin, a region with the highest density of lakes in the world. Tinker is the published co-author of The Healing Blanket (1989) and author of the poetry collection Ba Bii Dwe Win – Sounds of Living (2021). She is also the composer of Ninagamo, a collection of spirit-inspired |
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Dr. Carol Hopkins is the Chief Executive Officer of the Thunderbird Partnership Foundation and is of the Lenape Nation, Canada. Carol was appointed as an Officer in the Order of Canada, 2018. In 2019, she received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Western University.Carol has spent 30 years in the field of First Nations substance use and mental health. She holds both a Master of Social Work Degree from the University of Toronto and a degree in sacred Indigenous Knowledge from Midewiwin, equivalent to a PhD in western based education systems.
Carol has throughout her career, made use of Indigenous knowledge and culture in the areas of research, policy, practice-based evidence, teaching, education, and in facilitating processes of decolonization specific to epistemic racism. |
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Dr. Lyla June is an Indigenous musician, scholar, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages. Her multi-genre presentation style has engaged audiences across the globe towards personal, collective, and ecological healing. She blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions. She recently finished her PhD on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.
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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.
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Michelle Schenandoah, JD, LL.M., & MS, is a writer, speaker, thought leader, and traditional member of the Oneida Nation Wolf Clan of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy.
She and her husband, Neal Powless, also operate Indigenous Concepts Consulting with the goal of incorporating Indigenous perspectives into the mainstream, and in existing business and media paradigms. |
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James Vukelich Kaagegaabaw is the creator of Ojibwe Word of the Day. He has been recognized as a leading voice in Native Language revitalization efforts and spiritual teachings for two decades. His keen insights on the interconnectedness of language and culture were developed in the field speaking with and recording elders and native speakers of the language (many of whom have since passed on) in Canada, Michigan and Minnesota as part of the Ojibwe Language Dictionary Project.
James has consulted with multiple school districts to develop and teach language and cultural programs at all levels from pre-K through college. It's not uncommon to find him working with young children one afternoon and the next mentoring teachers on how to incorporate language into their classrooms. |
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