Speakers & Facilitators

WarīNkwī Flores (we/our), a Kara & Kichwa researcher, kultural lawyer, and transnational leader, works on Indigenous biocomplexity systems through innovative governance frameworks that honor Indigenous embassy wisdom to engage with contemporary collective action challenges. As the LandB2 Trustee for Kara & Kichwa Nation-Ecuador and pursuing a PhD at the University of Arizona, WarīNkwī intersects praxes from ecological jurisprudence, biology, earth sciences, business, technology, and economics with BioKulture Design pracademics in over 50 Indigenous communities through Kinray Hub. Our research focuses on creating constitutional innovations for the protection of biocultural heritage. We operate within frameworks of Indigenous data sovereignty, ensuring equitable participation in environmental markets while protecting Indigenous big data. WarīNkwī has developed a BioKulture Design framework for an Indigenous IRB and R&D Governance Council model by bridging theories from the Indigenous governance system and embassy praxis with the Bloomington, Austrian, and Virginia schools of political economy. This model aims to ensure communities retain 51% voting rights in transnational partnerships. Our multilingual abilities (Spanish, Portuguese, Quechua, Kichwa) strengthen our transnational advocacy at COP16, the UN Human Rights Council, and UNDP FI. We negotiate Indigenous shareholdership in nature/climate finance and promote the Global Indigenous Soil Health Accord, part of Biocultural Heritage Agroecosystems (FAO-GIAHS), as an alternative to Eurocentric sustainability metrics. WarīNkwī shows how polycentric governance can rematriate intellectual property and create accountability frameworks through its Carbon Justice Pooled Fund and Indigenous Nature Finance & Tech initiatives, promoting BioKulture Regionality Systems and resilient social-ecological futures.

Starting in 1976, David Haenke founded and organized the Ozark Area Community Congress (OACC) — the first bioregional congress – first convened in October, 1980. (OACC has convened every year since, and the 46^th annual Congress is now being organized, with David as one of 3 co-coordinators) He conceptualized and coordinated the first and second North American Bioregional Congresses (NABC I & II; 1984, 1986). As well, through the Bioregional Project of New Life Farm he coordinated the office of the continental bioregional congress movement (Turtle Island Office/TIO) from 1984 through 1987, helping to initiate a number of bioregional congresses and organizations. For NABC III (held in the Cascadia Bioregion/British Columbia, Canada, fall 1988), he invited and fundraised for bringing the first attendees from the Global South (Mexico). 79 years on, he remains dedicated to Bioregionalism, ecological economics, and all-encompassing ecological/regenerative  design for the Ozarks, North America, and Planet Earth.

Penny Heiple has a passion for serving life and our beautiful planet Earth. ​A native of Boulder, Colorado, Penny now lives in Barichara, Colombia with her life partner and partner in the earth regeneration work, Joe Brewer. She and Joe co-founded the Design School for Regenerating Earth where she leads operations, strategic planning, and community development. She also hosts the Inner Space where members of the school are cultivating the ‘inner’ capacities needed to do the ‘outer’ earth regeneration work with integrity, sovereignty, and devotion. In addition to stewarding the online activities of the school, Penny and Joe travel to bioregions around the world helping to support and activate organizing on-the-ground at the bioregional scale. At home in Barichara, Penny and Joe are focused on catalyzing bioregional regeneration where they live and across the Northern Andes, including work on bringing land back into the commons, ecosystem and watershed restoration, flow funding and regenerative finance, regenerative education, and more.

Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is a poet, singer-songwriter, hip-hop artist, human ecologist, public speaker 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. Her messages focus on Indigenous issues and solutions, supporting youth, inter-cultural healing, historical trauma, and traditional land stewardship practices. 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. Her doctoral research focused 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. Her internationally acclaimed live performances are conveyed through the medium of speech, hip-hop, poetry, and acoustic music. Her personal goal is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper.

Kyra Kristof is founder of Forest Kitchen, a nine-year art project arcing toward a massive bioregionally-sourced Forest Feast on the Fall Equinox of 2030. Forest Kitchen is growing a Forest Pantry, stretching culinary curiosity in pop-up Forest Kitchens, and cooking up feasts of forested places as they are & are becoming. Kyra’s life is full of art projects at the confluence of art and social change: you might find her cooking up stories in one of several kitchens {apothecary kitchen, curiosity kitchen, forest kitchen, wunderland.kitchen}, bridging food and medicine through ice cream sundays {ice cream apothecary}, co-working while honoring her full dynamic emotional range {hysterical society}, vocalizing with cultural sirens {siren school}, being exuberantly in love {alphabet of embarrassing love letters}, or exploring how animism in a kinship paradigm can be legible in modern food systems {kinship conversations}. Her creative home is with the reality rearchitecture firm, Imaginal Studio.

Laura Valdés Kuri is a facilitator of participatory processes, an environmental leader, a cultural and environmental project manager, and a change agent. She has 40 years of experience working with groups with an ecological focus. She is the compiler of the books Welcome Home, Bioregional Thought and Experience, published by the Chamber of Deputies (2003), and Ecohabitat, Experiences Toward Sustainability, published by CECADESU and SEMARNAT (Spain), 2006. Since 1985, her leadership, organizational skills, and passion for a more sustainable world have been invested in civil society organizations such as Founder and coordinator of the Bioregional Movement in Mexico and the Americas; Representative of the Mesoamerican Ecovillage Network (REM) and the Ecovillage Network of the Americas (1996-2008); and an Ashoka Associate since 2001.

Magenta is the founder of Bloom Network, a global infrastructure for sharing grassroots knowledge and funding community-led solutions across six continents. Bloom makes innovation in areas like food sovereignty, watershed care, and community development visible, replicable, and fundable. Its quarterly grants pool and cooperative governance model demonstrate how decentralized networks can scale trust, care, and capital more effectively than traditional systems. With over 18 years of research and development behind the model, she has lectured at institutions like Harvard and Yale on decentralized financial management as a strategy for regional regeneration. She now invites philanthropic partners, mentors, and movement leaders to help grow this living ecosystem of shared leadership and regenerative impact.

Paul Winter’s musical odyssey has long embraced the traditions of the world’s cultures, as well as the wildlife voices of what he refers to as “the greater symphony of the Earth.” From the early days of his college jazz sextet, which toured 23 countries of Latin America for the State Department and performed the first-ever jazz concert at the White House for the Kennedys in 1962, to his later ensemble, the Paul Winter Consort, his concert tours and recording expeditions have taken him to 52 countries and to wilderness areas on six continents, where he has traveled on rafts, dog sleds, mules, kayaks, tug-boats and Land Rovers. He has recorded over 50 albums, of which seven have been honored with Grammy® Awards.

Rashad Young is Director of Language for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation, working towards personal and community fluency in the Tribe’s ancient language. As well, he supports the development of Research and Curriculum Development Skills for Pequot and closely related Southern New England Algonquian (SNEA) Languages, He is also a tribal cultural teacher and craftsman, focusing on traditional life ways and material culture of his Tribal Nation.