Grants Manager
Mashpee Wampanoag Education Department

Talia Landry, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribal citizen, is a culture/history educator and independent videographer who holds several positions in her community. She is: Grants Manager in the Mashpee Wampanoag Education Department (implementing cultural and academic programs for tribal youth); the Youth Advisor for the newly-formed rights-of-nature youth group, Mashpee NEA; and President of the Wampanoag Community Development Corporation, working on issues including: preserving homelands, land-back initiatives, cultural revitalization, and tribal sovereignty.

Jacelle Steiding, 16, is a junior in high school in Medway, Massachusetts.

Member
Mashpee NEA

Amaya Balbuena, 15, a sophomore at Falmouth High School in Massachusetts, is a member of an activist group of her tribe’s youth, Mashpee NEA (Mashpee Wampanoag Native Environmental Ambassadors) dedicated to pursuing "rights of nature for all natural beings.” The group has been successful in its first major initiative to protect herring by having the tribal council confer rights on the species, a key one in the tribe’s history and economy. Amaya is also a basketball player.

Carpenter and Indigenous Environmental Activist

Ciara Oakley-Robbins, a Mashpee Wampanoag tribal citizen, is a carpenter by day and an Indigenous environmental activist by night. Drawing on her backgrounds in business management, construction and cabinet making and sharp entrepreneurial skills, Ciara, who grew up in the coastal area of Cape Cod and learned about the land and all its creatures from local elders, has become a youth advisor for the Mashpee Wampanoag Native Environmental Ambassadors, sharing traditional ecological knowledge with young people to help save her people’s ancestral lands.

Community Organizer, Author

Britt Gondolfi, born and raised in Southeast Louisiana, is a children's book author, community organizer, and mother. Since 2017, Britt has worked with the Bioneers Intercultural Conversation Program, facilitating programming for students from Atlanta, Bogalusa, and Houma. While in law school, Britt supported the Bioneers Rights of Nature initiative by researching the intersection of tribal sovereignty and Federal Indian law facilitating workshops on the Rights of Nature at the Ho-Chunk and Mashpee Wampanoag nations. She recently took a stand for women's rights, running a fierce campaign for State Senate in Louisiana. Her first Children's book, "Look Up! Fontaine the Pigeon Starts a Revolution," is a hilarious social commentary on digital distraction and Nature's fight to save us from ourselves.