Keynote Speaker

Photo of Dina Gilio-Whitaker. She is sitting on a white bench in front of trees and pink and white flowers.     

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, “Identifying Challenges and Celebrating Impact in California Indian Coastal Conservation Spaces”

 

Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes descendant) is a lecturer of American Indian Studies at California State University San Marcos, and an independent educator in American Indian environmental policy and other issues.  At CSUSM she teaches courses on environmentalism and American Indians, traditional ecological knowledge, religion and philosophy, Native women’s activism, American Indians and sports, and decolonization. She also works within the field of critical sports studies, examining the intersections of indigeneity and the sport of surfing. As a public intellectual, Dina brings her scholarship into focus as an award-winning journalist, with her work appearing at Indian Country Today, the Los Angeles Times, High Country News, Time.com, Slate, History.com, Bioneers, Truthout, the Pacifica Network, Grist, CSPAN Booktalk, The Boston Globe, and many more. Dina is the author of two books; the most recent award-winning As Long As Grass Grows: The Indigenous Fight for Environmental Justice from Colonization to Standing Rock. She is currently under contract with Beacon Press for two new books under the working titles Illegitimate Nation: Privilege, Race, and Belonging in the U.S. Settler State, and Claiming Native: Authenticity, Ethnic Fraud, and the Messy Ambiguity of American Indian Identity. She is also a co-editor of a new collection from Cambridge University Press’s Elements Series on Indigenous Environmental Research.