Laverne Beech, Shoshone-Bannock

Laverne Beech has been a member of White Bison’s (the Wellbriety Movement) Board of Directors for more than 10 years. Her involvement with White Bison began in 1996 when she and 27 other members of her community formed “Healing Rains” on the Fort Hall Reservation in Idaho. With guidance from White Bison, Healing Rains members made a two-year commitment to become servant leaders in their community by meeting in regular talking circles, attending trainings, providing public service in their community and working on their personal development. During that time, there was a substantial drop in crime rates on the reservation and lasting bonds were forged with members of the group. Healing Rains disbanded when members became discouraged by a lack of interest by the tribal government and unwillingness to strengthen the law and order code to address child abuse and domestic violence. While the group disbanded, many – including Beech – have continued to work on their personal development and are convinced from the Healing Rains experience that true and lasting community change must first occur in the unseen world before it manifests in the seen world.

Ms. Beech is also former executive director for the Native American Journalists Association and former editor for the award-winning weekly newspaper, The Sho-Ban News. She is also a licensed massage therapist, with an interest in both personal and community healing. Besides her interest in community development, Beech has a 10-year background in human resources management. She has a Bachelor’s degree in journalism, a Master’s in business administration (MBA) and has received her certification as a Senior Professional of Human Resources (SPHR).

Carlyle Begay, Navajo

Carlyle Begay is Vice President and Development Officer for American Indian Health Management Policy, a company whose policy is: “Improving healthcare in Indian country.” He has focused the majority of his efforts on services related to Indian health and Indian health program development. He has experience in the management of health care organizations, managed care, health care market structure, and health care delivery. In addition to an understanding of how public policy actions affect costs, quality, and access, in the Indian health and public health care sectors.

While completing his bachelors, he was a student researcher for the Native American Cancer Partnership (NACRP) investigating and examining the carcinogenic effects of uranium on the Navajo Reservation. Throughout his academic career, Carlyle has served in diverse capacities such as an elementary and high school student teacher, a student researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, a recruiter for job placement of women and minorities in the sports, health and fitness industries and as a Morris K. Udall Foundation Scholarship and Excellence Scholar.

He also served in the nation’s capital as a health policy congressional fellow in Washington D.C. for the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. In that capacity he worked closely with Federal and state policymakers, agencies, by tracking and researching legislative and regulatory developments.

Robert Bryan Cook, Oglala Lakota

Robert Cook works as the education outreach expert at the Crazy Horse Memorial in Crazy Horse, South Dakota. He has been a board member of the National Indian Education Association and recently became the 40th president.

Mr. Cook attended Brigham Young University and graduated from Black Hills State University in South Dakota with a degree in Secondary Education. He is proud to be a tribal college graduate and received his Master’s Degree in education administration from Oglala Lakota College. Robert has eighteen years of teaching and administrative experience in American Indian education.

Mr. Cook has been the recipient of many education awards and honors that include: Little Wound School Educator of the Year in 1998 and 1999; Lower Brule Teacher of the Year 2000-2001, South Dakota’s Milken National Educator in 2005, Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation Teacher of the Year 2006 and NIEA’s Teacher of the Year 2006 and in 2008 was named one of Black Hills State University’s 125 Most Accomplish Alumni.

Mr. Cook is a member of the Technical Review Panel of the National Indian Education Study, a member of the South Dakota Indian Education Advisory Council, Rapid City School District PAC, South Dakota Charter School Advocacy Group, Stern Foundation Board of Directors, Kiwanis Member and his sons’ Little League baseball coach.

Ray Daw, MA, Navajo

Ray Daw is a member of the Navajo Nation, bilingual in Navajo and English. Formerly the Executive Director of Na’nizhoozhi Center, Inc. (NCI), he managed, for 15 years, a 150-bed voluntary/involuntary residential program that provided behavioral health outpatient, residential, prevention, and technical assistance to Gallup, McKinley County, the Navajo Nation, and a number of tribal communities in Arizona and New Mexico. NCI is a model and innovative program, which is included in the Clinical Trials Network with the National Institute of Drug Abuse, through the University of New Mexico.

He is a former member of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of American Advisory Committee (CADCA), and the Board of Directors for the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2). He currently is on the Board of Directors for the Takini Network (which developed the historical trauma model), a member of the Advisory Committee for the SAMHSA Co-Occurring Disorders Center for Excellence (COCE), the Co-chair of the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s Native American Workgroup, a member of the New Mexico DWI Grant Council and Native American DWI Taskforce, and participates in several Native American planning groups in New Mexico.

In addition, he now serves on the National Native American Methamphetamine Workgroup, the SAMHSA/CSAT Native American Co-Occurring Disorders Policy Academy Workgroup, and the NIMH New Generations Research Workgroup.

Philip J. Deloria, PhD, Dakota

Dr. Deloria received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1994 in American Studies and is professor of history, the program in American Culture, and the Native American Studies program at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Indians in Unexpected Places (2004) and Playing Indian (1998), and the co-editor (with Neal Salisbury) of the Blackwell Companion to American Indian History (2002). Deloria is the president of the American Studies Association (May 2008-May 2009) and a member of the governing council of the Organization of American Historians. He is the winner of the John C. Ewers Prize in Ethnohistory, Western History Association, 2006 (for Indians in Unexpected Places) and a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, Gustavus Myers Program for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America, 1999 (for Playing Indian). (Jung and the Sioux Traditions), based on studies done by, Vine Deloria, Jr, and co-edited by Philip Deloria, PhD and Jungian analyst and author, Jerome Bernstein, MA, NCPsyA (Publication date: May 2009).

Deloria is a member of the Society of American Historians, the American Antiquarian Society, and the Michigan Society of Fellows. His specific interests in United States cultural history include American Indians, environmental and western and Midwestern regionalisms.

Sam Deloria, Standing Rock Sioux

Mr. Deloria after successfully directing the American Indian Law Center, has assumed the directorship of the American Indian Graduate Center. He will discuss the severe budget cuts by the federal government for American Indian students to attend graduate school. He will speak to the importance of Indians being trained to work with Indians in managing their tribal concerns.

Mr. Deloria attended both undergraduate and law school at Yale University and, for the previous 35 years, served as Director of the American Indian Law Center, Inc. Under Mr. Deloria's direction, the American Indian Law Center performed groundbreaking work in the analysis of Federal Indian Policy, including helping to define the role of tribes in the federal system. The Law Center has also taken the lead in strengthening tribal government institutions. He will remain active as one of the premier analysts of Indian policy in the nation. Mr. Deloria was the founder and first Secretary-General of the World Council of Indigenous People and, in 1976, was one of the founders of the Commission on State-Tribal Relations. He is also a member of the National Institutional Review Board for the protection of human subjects of research, established by the Indian Health Service.

Gayle Dine-Chacon, MD, Navajo

Associate Professor, Family and Community Medicine Director, Center for Native American Health and Associate Vice President for Native American Health University of New Mexico, Health Sciences Center Albuquerque, New Mexico. She is the founder and director of CNAH and continues to develop the center to meet the health priority needs of New Mexico’s 22 tribes and off-reservation Indian population. Dr. Dine’ Chacon specifically meets with New Mexico’s tribal leaders, councils, health boards and health departments to identify the critical issues that tribes request in assistance from UNM/CNAH. Thus, the CNAH has established it's infrastructure to respond to tribal technical assistance, capacity building, research, health policy and behavioral/mental needs.

Dr. Dine’ Chacon is also Medical Director of the Bernalillo County Juvenile Detention Center (BCJDC). Dr. Dine’ Chacon serves as the US Department of Human Health and Services, Office of Minority Health, Secretary's Advisory Committee on Minority Health.

Donald L. Fixico, PhD, Shawnee, Sauk & Fox, Creek, Seminole

Dr. Fixico is Distinguished Foundation Professor in the Department of History of Arizona State University. He has served on the Advisory Council for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the upcoming PBS Series, We Shall Remain, and his books include The American Indian Mind in a Linear World: American Indian Studies and Traditional Knowledge (2003), and The Urban Indian Experience in America (2000). Dr Fixico has participated in 16 documentaries on Indian issues.

Camara P. Jones, MD, MPH, PhD

Camara P. Jones, MD, MPH, PhD is Research Director on Social Determinants of Health at the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Jones received an MD degree from Stanford University (1981), completed residencies in General Preventive Medicine (Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health) and Family Medicine (Residency Program in Social Medicine, Montefiore Hospital), and earned a masters degree in public health and a doctoral degree in epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, finishing in 1995. She has received numerous awards, most recently spent nine months in New Zealand as an Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy. She has held numerous leadership and advisory positions, including several in the American Public Health Association, and has served as President of the Society for Analysis of African-American Public Health Issues since 1997. She is also a member of the Board of Directors of theAmerican College of Epidemiology.

As a social epidemiologist, her work on "race"-associated differences in health outcomes goes beyond documenting those differences to vigorously investigating the structural causes of the differences. As a teacher, her allegories on "race" and racism illuminate topics that are otherwise difficult for many Americans to understand or discuss. She hopes through her work to initiate a national conversation on racism that will eventually lead to a National Campaign Against Racism.

Dr. Jones was Assistant Professor at the Harvard School of Public Health in the Department of Health and Social Behavior, the Department of Epidemiology, and the Division of Public Health Practice from 1994 - 2000. From January through September, 1999 she was also an Ian Axford Fellow in Public Policy, working in the Maori Health Branch of the New Zealand Ministry of Health in Wellington, New Zealand on the question, "Maori-Pakeha Health Disparities: Can Treaty Settlements Reverse the Impacts of Racism?".

Henrietta Mann, PhD, Cheyenne

In 1991, Rolling Stone Magazine named Dr. Henrietta Mann as one of the ten leading professors in the nation. She brings to the film her vast educational experience and erudition regarding the real history of Native Americans in this country, as well as her insights and experience regarding the significance of the Tribal college system and how it is profoundly helping to save the culture and languages of Indian Nations while promoting a huge sense of pride, understanding, and good will among all Indian peoples.

Dr. Henrietta Mann is a full-blood Cheyenne enrolled with the Cheyenne-Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Dr. Mann received her bachelor’s degree from Southwestern Oklahoma State University, her Master’s Degree from Oklahoma State University, and her Doctoral Degree from the University of Albuquerque. She was one of seven recipients of the Governor’s Humanities Award in 2001 and the first individual to occupy the Endowed Chair in Native American Studies at Montana State University, Bozeman, MT, where she is now Professor Emeritus and Special Assistant to the President. For the greater part of twenty-eight years, Dr. Mann was employed at the University of Montana, Missoula where she was Director/Professor of Native American Studies. She also has taught at the University of California, Berkeley; Graduate School of Education at Harvard University; and Haskell Indian Nations University located in Lawrence, Kansas. In addition, Dr. Mann has served as the Director of the Office of Indian Education Programs/Deputy to the Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Coalition for the Association on American Indian Affairs. Dr. Mann is the president of the Cheyenne Arapaho College in Oklahoma.

Dr. Mann has lectured throughout the United States including Hawaii, and in Mexico, Canada, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Spain, and in The Netherlands. Dr. Mann has recently become the president of the Cheyenne Arapaho Tribal College in Oklahoma.

Evon Peter, Neetsaii Gwich'in

Evon Peter is the Executive Director of Native Movement and former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in from Arctic Village in northeastern Alaska. He has served as the Co-Chair of the Gwich’in Council International and on the Executive Board of the Alaska Inter-Tribal Council. He currently sits on the Board of Directors for YES!, the Seeds of Justice Fund, and the Funders Collaborative on Youth Organizing. Evon is a well-recognized advocate of Indigenous Peoples rights, youth, and a balanced world, active as a speaker, strategist, writer, and organizer. His experience includes work within the United Nations and Arctic Council forum representing Indigenous and environmental interests. He dedicates a significant portion of his time to youth leadership development, movement and coalition building, and gathering facilitation.

Mr. Peter holds a bachelors degree in Alaska Native studies with a minor in Political Science and is completing a Masters Degree in Rural Development from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. Evon is featured in the 2005 award winning feature film “Homeland: Four Portraits of Native Action,” that follows the work of four Indigenous people who are working on issues of Environmental Justice in North America. For more information: evonpeter.net

Manuel F. Pino, Acoma

Manuel Pino was born in the Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico and is currently a professor of sociology and Director of American Indian Studies at Scottsdale Community College in Scottsdale, Arizona. Prior to this, he was an assistant professor in the School of Justice Studies at Arizona State University.

Mr. Pino’s research orientation is environmental issues and their impact on American Indians. He has published several book chapters and articles in academic journals, environmental publications, and Indigenous publications in both the U.S. and Canada. His most specific area of concern is working with American Indians in the uranium and nuclear fuel cycle and the impacts throughout North America. This work includes 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.

He served as a delegate of Indigenous Peoples at the 2001 United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa and the 2002 United Nations World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa and numerous other international forums involving Indigenous Peoples including the Working Group on Indigenous Peoples and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Most recently, he is currently on the Board of Directors for the Indigenous Environmental Network, Southwest Research and Information Center, Red Rock Foundation, Project Underground and the Laguna Acoma Coalition For A Safe Environment of which he is a founding member. He also is a member of the American Sociological Association, the American Indian Studies Consortium and the American Indian Professors Association.

James Riding In, PhD, Pawnee

Dr. Riding In is a citizen of the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma and an associate professor of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University. He received a Master’s degree in American Indian studies and a PhD in history from the University of California, Los Angeles. He has played a prominent role in the development of American Indian Studies at Arizona State University and is the editor of Wicazo Sa Review: A Journal of Native American Studies. His research about repatriation, as well as historical and contemporary Indian issues, has appeared in various books and scholarly journals.

Phillip Lee Smith, MD, MPH, Navajo

Phillip L. Smith, MD, MPH, began his career with the Public Health Service in 1978. His first assignment was working as a volunteer medical officer with the Migrant Camps in Utah. After his Family Practice Residency training, he worked for the Health Resources and Services Administration in the National Health Service Corp as the Clinical Director and Family Practitioner for three rural clinics in Southeastern Utah. In 1982, he transferred to the Indian Health Service starting work as a Service Unit Director and Family Practice clinical provider at the Tuba City Indian Hospital in Arizona.

In 1988, Dr. Smith transferred to the position of staff medical officer in the Office of Health Programs (OHP) at the IHS headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. Concurrently, he held the post of Senior Medical Advisor for the IHS Alcohol and Substance Abuse Program. Dr Smith returned to the Navajo Area, IHS in 1990, serving as the Director of Clinical and Preventive Services at the Area Office in Window Rock, Arizona and clinician at the Fort Defiance Service Unit. In 1992, he was named as the Chief Medical Officer and Associate Director, Office of Health Programs, IHS returning to IHS Headquarters in Rockville, Maryland. In 1996, he served as the acting Chief Medical Officer for the Bemidji Area, IHS before being detailed in 1998 as the MCH principal consultant in the Division of Clinical and Preventive Services, Office of Public Health, IHS, He also served as the Director, IHS Headstart program and Medical consultant to the Head Start Program during this time. In 2001 he was reassigned as the Director of Public Health Program Support working directly with the Statistics, Epidemiology and Planning and Evaluation Divisions of the IHS. Concurrently he served as the acting Director of the IHS Research Program, and for a time as the Director, Division of Planning and Evaluations. In 2004 he was re-asssigned as Director, Office of Medical Affairs before taking his new position of Director, Planning and Evaluation. He is currently the Director of Planning, Evaluation and Research, OPHS.

Dr. Smith completed his undergraduate education at the University of Colorado and Brigham Young University. He obtained his Medical Degree at the University of Utah School of Medicine. After joining IHS, he was awarded a Clinical-Administration fellowship to study at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda Maryland, where he earned a Masters of Public Health degree.

Dr. Smith is Board Certified by the American Board of Family Practice and by the American Board of Preventive Medicine in Public Health and Preventive Medicine. He has been the recipient of numerous public services awards and honors, including the HHS Secretary’s Distinguished Service Award, PHS Outstanding Service Medal, several PHS Citations, Achievement Medal as well as the IHS Administrators award. He is a three time recipient of the Isolated Hardship Ribbon. He is recognized as a Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine and as a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Practice.

Dr. Smith is a member of Navajo tribe and comes from a family of Traditional healers and was raised on the Navajo Reservation. He currently lives in Maryland with his family.

Jilann Spitzmiller

Jilann enjoys exploring the mysteries of life through documentary filmmaking. Together with her husband, Hank Rogerson, they created Philomath Films, and produced the award-winning Shakespeare Behind Bars which premiered at The Sundance Film Festival in 2005. They also directed and produced several documentaries including the award-winning Homeland which aired on National PBS in 2000 and Circle of Stories, a multi-media documentary website hosted by PBS. Jilann directed and shot two seasons on the documentary series Medical Diary for The Discovery Health Channel and worked as a producer/director for the NBC series Life Moments. Her work for the Indigo Girls is included in Watershed, a one-hour biographical video released by Sony Music. Jilann recently produced and directed two segments on the PBS, POV series, October 2008, Critical Condition. Her segments featured Carlos and Hector.

Jilann is an adjunct professor of Film at the University of Redlands in California, and at Studio Art Centers International, as well as the Santa Fe Community College. Ms. Spitzmiller attended Dartmouth College where she earned a degree in film.

David Tonemah, MBA, Kiowa

David Tonemah, MBA, has 25 years experience in all aspects of delivery of Indian health including, the Indian Health Services, a tribal health program and an urban health program.

Mr. Tonemah holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Health Care Administration from Oklahoma Baptist University and Masters in Business Administration from the University of Phoenix.

He has worked for the Fort Yates IHS facility, the Aberdeen Area Tribal Health Office, the Wagner Service Unit, the Redlake Service Unit and the Phoenix Indian Medical Center in managerial and administrative positions before resigning and establishing American Indian Health Management & Policy, Inc. in 2003, a company who works with tribes nationwide to insure better healthcare delivery.

Mr. Tonemah also served on the board of directors for Native American Community Health Center as treasurer in 2000 and is a member of the A.T. Still University American Indian Health Professionals advisory council.

Beverly Warne, RN, MS, Oglala Lakota

Beverly Warne was born into a lineage of Traditional Lakota Healers on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. She holds a Bachelors and Masters degree in nursing from Arizona State University where she is project director of American Indian Students United for Nursing (ASUN) and a professor of nursing.