Associate Professor Fabri Blacklock is a Nucoorilma, Ngarabal and Biripi woman from New South Wales, Australia. She also has English and Scottish ancestry. She is a Scientia Research Fellow at UNSW Art and Design, Sydney. As an artist, historian, curator and educator she is passionate about improving equity in education for Aboriginal people. Her research utilizes Aboriginal Research Methodologies of yarning, art making and deep listening, working in partnership with Aboriginal people to create tangible benefits and outcomes. She is a textile artist who encompasses environmentally friendly arts practices utilizing natural dyes from Australian native plants to hand dye natural materials. Her practice involves the revival and teaching of NSW Aboriginal women’s artistic practices like possum skin cloak making, dyeing and weaving. She is particularly interested in the combination of traditional Aboriginal art practices with modern technologies and materials as a continued way of sharing knowledge and culture, as well as the important role art plays in wellbeing in Aboriginal communities. She is a member of the Myall Creek Memorial Committee, which acknowledges and raises awareness of massacres of Aboriginal people across Australia and the continued impact of colonization on Aboriginal people.

Kat Griefen is Faculty Member and Program Coordinator for the Gallery and Museum Studies program at Queensborough Community College, City University of New York (CUNY). She is also on the Faculty for the MA in Museum Studies with the CUNY School of Professional Studies. From 2018 to 2020 Griefen held the rotating position of Curator-in-Residence at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center where she continues to serve as a curatorial and program consultant. In 2017 she received the President’s Award for Art and Activism from the Women’s Caucus for the Arts, College Art Association. Ms. Griefen is a Board Member of Arttable; a member of the Council for Feminist Art at the Brooklyn Museum and a National Committee Member of the Feminist Art Project.

Danyelle Means currently serves as the first Indigenous Executive Director of the Center for Contemporary Arts (CCA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, a position she has held since 2021. She has previously held leadership roles at the Institute of American Indian Arts and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian. Means was raised on the Rosebud Reservation and is a proud member of the Oglala Lakota tribe in South Dakota. Throughout her career, she has centered advancement and support for BIPOC professionals and artists.

Dr. Joshua Frank Cárdenas (Kanien’keha:ka-Onkwehonwe/White) was born in Hutuukgna/Anaheim and raised in the Yarborough of Lake Elsinore or Paayaxchi Nive’wuna, California. He has an Irish Studies Certificate from the University of College, Cork Ireland (2008), and a B.A. in History and American Indian Studies from UCLA (2009). He earned his M.A. in Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies (LLSS) with a concentration in American Indian Education from the University of New Mexico in 2012 and his doctorate in Educational Thought & Sociocultural Studies in 2019 also from UNM. His doctoral research focused on the decolonizing philosophy of education of D-Q University and UC Davis NAS founder Jack D. Forbes. He has worked in education since 2004, with an emphasis on the teaching and learning of American Indian Studies, Education and History at tribal and non-tribal k-12 schools, colleges and universities throughout California and New Mexico. Dr. Cardenas is currently a Visiting Lecturer in the American Indian Education program of the department of Language, Literacy & Sociocultural Studies at the University of New Mexico.

Candy Martínez has a Ph.D. in Latin American and Latina/o Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and is a first-generation college student who grew up in Tongva and Chumash lands (the West San Fernando Valley). Though she did not live in a Zapotec community in Oaxaca, Mexico she identifies with her Zapotec roots and relations to Zapotec communities in Los Angeles. She is currently a UC President’s Postdoc at UCLA in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Her research interests include cultural memory, Indigenous epistemologies, emotional healing, cine comunitario, and decoloniality. Her research stems from a commitment to expanding the language of emotional wellness beyond pathologies and incorporating the value of Indigenous knowledge to rethink healing and emotional distress.