Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas http://www.mny.ca is an artist who now lives on one of the Islands in the Salish Sea off Vancouver having spent almost fifty years living and working on social justice issues in his home islands of Haida Gwaii (aka QCI). MNY is a hybrid of Haida and Scot descent. His numerous roles whether as a haida singer, visual artist or forestry surveyor have all engaged him in a quest for social change. His artistic works are held in public and private collections in Canada and around the world, and he has produced numerous publications of his art work, typically around environmental and cultural justice issues. Greystone Books (Canada) published his 2008 title Flight of the Hummingbird which includes contributions by noble peace prize winners HH Dalai Lama and Wangari Maathii, and Douglas & McIntyre publishing house (Canada) is to publish his next graphic work, RED, in 2009. Furthermore in 2009 the University of British Columbia Book Press will publish an anthology including MNYs’ graphic exploration of Haida cosmology and a French film house will release a documentary animating this same work in 2010. As the creator of “Haida Manga” (working within what he calls the Haida “tradition of continual innovation”), MNY’s work is also used in Japan as a popular radio show narrative theme (Tokyo FM), a mark associated with the Japanese Slow movement, in the popular press (Kobunsha), and generally as a symbol by individuals committed to move from inaction into engagement in a variety of ecological issues. Michael was trained as a forester, and before leaving the world of industrial logging approached the CEO of one of the Provinces’ largest forestry corporations and negotiated establishment of the first forest archaeology programs in British Columbia, to recognize and protect historical and pre-contact canoe factories and Indigenous forestry management systems. He subsequently spent two decades in the struggle to conserve the temperate rain forests and associated marine environments of Haida Gwai in one of the most successful popular environmental struggles in North America that combined blockades and direct action with innovative legal, political and financial strategies that bridged indigenous and mainstream Canadian society. MNY has served as the elected chief of a Haida village and run wilderness experience cultural programs for Haida and settler youth. MNY is widely traveled and worked for many years on colonization issues affecting the South Pacific through serving as a Board member for the Pacific Concerns Resource Center, the administrative arm of the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, bringing home some of the strategies he experienced there.

Executive Director: Dr. Kenneth Wilson
Ken Wilson has served as Executive Director of TCF since August 2002.  Born in Malawi with a life spread rather across the world, Dr. Wilson studied zoology at the University of Oxford and anthropology at University College London where his doctorate focused on indigenous knowledge, health and human ecology in the agro-pastoral arid savannahs and woodlands of Southern Zimbabwe.  During those years as an ethno-biologist he was particularly interested in linking participatory research on ecological histories with community-based landscape management.  He then took a Research Officer position at the University of Oxford in the Refugee Studies Programme.  During four years of field studies of war, famine, persecution and refugee movements he became increasingly interested in history, in traditionalist socio-cultural movements and resilience.  Then followed nine years with the Ford Foundation.  During seven years as Program Officer for Mozambique in their Office for Eastern and Southern Africa he focused on supporting Mozambican efforts to strengthen their higher education system, secure their artistic and cultural heritage, and launch environment and development efforts rooted in indigenous culture and participatory management (including ecotourism).  Subsequently he came to New York as the deputy to the Vice President of the Education, Media, Arts and Culture Program, supporting Ford’s effort worldwide to become a “learning organization”.  During his term in New York he gave particular attention to such issues as threats to indigenous languages and sacred landscapes in the USA and worldwide, strategies for educational reform, the implications of new media technologies, and the links between contemporary and traditional artistic and cultural expression.  Dr. Wilson has personal interests in wilderness, photography, poetry and music; has published widely academically; and been involved in the production of several films.  He currently serves as Vice President of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples, on the Boards of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and the Seva Foundation in Berkeley, and as a member of the College Eight Provost's Council at the University of California at Santa Cruz.  He is also active in a number of grantmaking associations, including the Environmental Grantmakers Association, The Consultative Group on Biological Diversity, Grantmakers in the Arts, and the Northern California Grantmakers Association.

Director of Grantmaking: Jeff Campbell
Born in the Himalayas and raised in the Punjab, Jeff has spent most of his life in South Asia and comes to the Christensen Fund from a distinguished seventeen-year career at the Ford Foundation.  This included serving as Program Officer for environment and development programs in India and Nepal (1991-1996) and Indonesia (1997-2000), and then as Program Officer, Deputy Director and then Senior Program Officer in the New York Office (2000-2008).  In New York Jeff was both responsible for North American grantmaking around natural resource management and rural communities and for a global program of advocacy and learning in environment and development.  Known for his collegial and innovative approach to philanthropy, Jeff’s grantmaking experience in each of these positions focused particularly on partnering with indigenous and tribal communities in ways that combined their concerns with sustainable natural resource-based livelihoods with their cultural and spiritual values.  He has also played a lead role in Ford Foundation’s engagement with indigenous issues globally, including through co-chairing the Committee on Indigenous Peoples, and led such delegations as the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002.

Previously, and among other things, Jeff worked eight years in the ecotourism sector in the Himalaya and Karnataka, as an extension forester in the USA, and as a high school teacher in New Delhi.  He has served on numerous international and national forestry review bodies, including with FAO. 

With a BA in Ethnomusicology from Wesleyan and a Masters in Forestry from Yale, Jeff is known for having always remained a humbled student of earth and its communities.  He has published widely on community forestry and non-timber forest product issues.  An accomplished musician and multi-instrumentalist in classical and vernacular South Asian traditions as well as in contemporary improvisational forms, Jeff currently records with the band Orchestra naïF.  Recent albums include Auf Garde, Les Bonbons and Over an Hour.  A keen naturalist and birdwatcher, and a speaker of five Asian as well as several European languages, Jeff has also had numerous poems published in IndiaKavya Bharati) and elsewhere under the penname: jhaffur khan azad darakth.  His videos include Bogs of Connecticut with Eric Siy (which is apparently considered educational).

Program Officer Bios

Ms. Erjen Khamaganova (Program Officer for Central Asia and Turkey)
Born in the Buryat Republic of Khongoodor clan from her mother’s side and Sagaan clan from her father’s, Ms Khamaganova was raised in a yurt and schooled in Mongolia, Russia, Germany and the US to become a specialist on environmental and cultural heritage, with experience in academia, government service, international institutions, and cultural work at community level.  She comes to TCF from two posts: as the Dean of International Affairs at Buryat State University, and as the Chair of the Baikal Buryat Center for Indigenous Cultures. She has previously served as the Executive Secretary of the Russian-Mongolian Intergovernmental Commission on Protection and Use of Trans-Boundary Waters and also for the Committee for Lake Baikal Water Resources Management, working on the interface between development, environment and cultural issues. She has also worked as the Program coordinator of a network of Indigenous peoples of Siberia and the Russian Far East called Light of the Ancient Lands (LAL). Her work with elders and youth in the Baikal, Buryat and Altai regions has involved the arts, music and shamanic traditions.  In these various capacities, and through her national and international committee work, she has been deeply engaged in indigenous, environmental and sacred place issues with UNESCO, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues; and has managed a long established exchange program between Native Americans and indigenous communities of Siberia.  Erjen started her career as a teacher in a school for nomad children and in youth work.

Erjen received the equivalent of her MA from the Buryat Dorzhi Banzarov Pedagogical Institute of the Russian Federation and also holds an MSc in Environmental Studies from the University of Montana where her thesis was a comparative study of inter-generational transmission of indigenous environmental knowledge in Navajo and Buryat communities.  From 2001-2006 she studied in the Public Affairs Program of Indiana University where she is currently ABD in her doctoral program, focusing research on traditional institutions and resource management systems in local communities of Buryat people. Her writings include “Sacred Sites: our pain, hope and strength” in the inaugural issue of Pachamama, the Traditional Knowledge Newsletter of the Convention on Biological Diversity http://www.cbd.int/doc/newsletters/news-8j-01-low-en.pdf.  

Henrietta Marrie (Program Officer for Northern Australia)
Born and raised in the Aboriginal community of Yarrabah southeast of Cairns in Queensland (Australia), Ms. Marrie has held academic posts at a number of Australian universities, including at the Centre for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Participation, Research and Development at the James Cook University of North Queensland, and the Centre for Indigenous History and the Arts at the University of Western Australia. Since the mid 1980s, through her research and work in legislation and policy development, she has supported the Aboriginal movements in the arena of arts and cultural heritage, and in the recognition of Aboriginal rights to land and for the protection and recognition of traditional knowledge. Ms. Marrie has served on a number of government committees and inquiries, and acted as a consultant to government bodies including Environment Australia, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and the Wet Tropics Management Agency. Prior to joining TCF, she worked at the United Nations Environment Programme Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, where from 1997 to 2003 (with a short break) she was the Programme Officer responsible for Article 8(j) of the Convention. In this capacity she was responsible for supporting Parties to the Convention in their initiatives to respect, maintain and preserve the traditional biodiversity-related knowledge of indigenous peoples and local communities, promote its wider application with the approval of its holders, and ensure the equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of their knowledge.      

Ms. Marrie holds a Diploma of Teaching (South Australian College of Advanced Education), a Graduate Diploma of Arts (University of South Australia) and a Masters of Environmental and Local Government Law (Macquarie University) with a thesis entitled The Convention on Biological Diversity, Intellectual Property Rights, and the Protection of Traditional Ecological Knowledge. She has published widely on Aboriginal cultural heritage, the arts and natural resource management, including "Possession is Nine Tenths of the Law - and don't Aboriginal people know it!", Conference of Museum Anthropologists Bulletin, No. 23, 1990.

Henrietta serves as the co-chair the Indigenous Affinity Group of Philanthropy Australia and serves on the boards of UMI Arts and the Australian Environmental Grantmakers Network. 

Dr. Monti first trained in public health practitioner and holds a masters in Community Health from St Louis University (with a thesis on women’s empowerment), later earning her PhD from the University of Arizona in Arid Land Resource Sciences with a thesis entitled Seri Indian adaptive strategies in a desert and sea environment; Three case studies: a navigational song map in the Sea of Cortés; The ironwood tree as habitat for medicinal plants; Sonoran Desert plants adapted to treat diabetes.  Her publications include contributions to NAU’s Sacred Lands and Gathering Grounds: A Toolkit for Access, Protection, Restoration and Co-Management; and a report Documenting and Incorporating Navajo Traditional Land Management and Ecological Restoration Practices in Pine and Fir Uplands of the Asaayi Watershed of the Chuska Mountains, for the Ecological Restoration Institute Southwest Fire Initiative.  Dr. Monti has also recorded traditional songs associated with landscapes and livelihoods in Central Asia as well as in the Americas, and directed a film Songs of Survival: Seri Indians and Sea Turtle Protection in the Sea of Cortez (Echo Productions, 2006).      

Catherine Sparks (Program Officer for Melanesia)
Catherine Sparks is a Canadian born gender and community development specialist who has spent seventeen years working with peoples’ organizations in Melanesia and the South Pacific tackling the linkages between land, environment, culture and development.  She started with The South Pacific Peoples Foundation (now Pacific Peoples Partnership) of Canada where she compiled materials around militarism and colonialism in the South Pacific, and then worked as the Associate Director of the Indonesia-Canada Research Project collaborating with Indonesian indigenous environmental groups (WALHI and YPMD) to assess the impact of Canadian aid and corporate involvement on the environment and indigenous people of West Papua, producing a video and contributing to a monograph on the issue.  She then moved to Papua New Guinea as a CUSO Cooperant where she first worked with a women’s group called the Gembogl District Women’s Council in the highlands, and then with the Melanesian Environment Foundation (on such things as a campaign around the proposed Forest Act amendments) and the Melanesian Trust (putting together a critical literacy training manual).  Meanwhile she started working as an editor and publishing manager of Papua New Guinea’s National Research Institute in Port Moresby.  In 1996 she moved to Lou Island in Manus Province to live as a subsistence farmer, during which time she also supported LICDAT, a local community development organization. Following a period of further study at the University of Victoria in Canada, during which she also served as Board Secretary to the Pacific Peoples Partnership, she relocated to Ambrym Island in Vanuatu in 2002 to undertake community-based field research and then to Port Vila.

Prior to joining TCF Ms. Sparks served for four years as the Country Representative for CUSO in Vanuatu partnering and posting volunteers with a wide variety of government, civil society, community and international development agencies, focusing particularly on the revival of Melanesian culture particularly with respect to land, sea and traditional economies.  Ms. Sparks holds a BA in Pacific and Asian Studies from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada and an M.A. in Dispute Resolution from the same institution with a thesis entitled Rural Women and Everyday Resistance to Structural Adjustment in Melanesia, based on field research in Vanuatu.

Dr. Wolde Gossa Tadesse (Program Officer for the African Rift Valley)
Born and raised in the Gamo Highlands of Southwest Ethiopia, Dr. Tadesse spent many years there as a lexicographer of the local Omotic languages, an NGO official working with various agricultural communities, as a teacher and with the Ministry of Culture attending to such things as documenting oral tradition, archiving local religious manuscripts, creating the first local museum to curate local artistic expression, and helping to re-establish traditional local authority in such areas as Konso and Gamo. In the last decade his research as an anthropologist focused on the close and complex ritual, institutional and economic relationships of the many peoples across the highly diverse environments of this region, particularly the pastoral peoples of the lowlands. Dr Tadesse enjoys mountain trekking, cycling and playing tennis. He has taken part in a number of expeditions including the Blue Nile Expedition and the Sobek Expedition. Prior to joining TCF he held a research position at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany.      

Dr. Tadesse holds a BA in Ethiopian Languages and Literature from Addis Ababa University and an MSc and PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics, with a thesis entitled Warfare and Fertility: A Study of the Hor (Arbore) of Southern Ethiopia. He has published a number of important articles including "Evading the Revolutionary State" in Re-Mapping Ethiopia: The Socialist State and After (Eds. W. James, D. Donham, Eisei Kurimoto and A. Trulzi, James Currey, Oxford, 2002) and "Kalashnikovs and Cowrie Belts" in Ethiopia in Broader Perspective: Papers of the X111th International Conference of Ethiopian Studies (Eds. K. Fukui, E. Kurimoto and M. Shigeta, Shokado Booksellers, Kyoto, 1997). He has also been involved in the production of two films about Konso.