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2025 Speakers

Keynote Speaker

Judy Skelton

Judy Bluehorse Skelton | Associate Professor (Ret.), Indigenous Nations Studies, Portland State University ▾

Judy Bluehorse Skelton has worked with federal and state Indian Education programs throughout the Northwest for 18 years, creating cultural activities focusing on traditional and contemporary uses of native plants for food, medicine, ceremony, and healthy lifeways. Judy is author of six collections of essays for teachers, including Native America: A Sustainable Culture (1999), and Lewis & Clark Through Native American Eyes (2003); she wrote and recorded 24 segments on Health & Healing and Sacred Landscapes for Wisdom of the Elders radio programs, airing on Public Broadcasting and AIROS (American Indian Radio on Satellite). As Senior Instructor, Judy is full-time faculty in Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University, teaching Intro to Native American Studies, Environmental Sustainability – Indigenous Practices, Indigenous Gardens & Food Justice, and Indigenous Women Leaders.

She received the Oregon Indian Education Association’s award for Outstanding Indian Educator in 2006 and serves on the boards of the Urban Greenspaces Institute, Portland Parks, and the Native American Community Advisory Council. Judy received an MA in Educational Leadership and Policy’s, Leadership in Ecology, Culture and Learning program at Portland State University. Collaborative work includes the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde, the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, the Native American Youth and Family Center (NAYA) and Wisdom of the Elders, Inc., integrating permaculture principles with traditional ecological knowledge to address Food Sovereignty/Justice and reclaim the urban forest.

Plenary Speakers

Thea Prieto

Thea Prieto | Author, From the Caves

Thea Prieto is the author of From the Caves, which won the Red Hen Press Novella Award, the First Horizon Award, and the INDIES Book of the Year Award for Literature. Her writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, The Kenyon Review, Longreads, Seneca Review, CRAFT Literary Magazine, and New Orleans Review, among other journals, and she edited Stranged Writing: A Literary Taxonomy, which is a multimedia anthology of defamiliarized creative writing. She teaches creative writing and publishing at Portland State University and Portland Community College, and she also prunes orchards seasonally in Northern California.

Speakers

Sarah Stoeckl

Sarah Stoeckl, PhD | Director, Office of Sustainability, University of Oregon

Sarah Stoeckl, PhD, is program manager in the Office of Sustainability at the University of Oregon. Her work at the UO focuses on campus and community outreach, including support for sustainability in research, curriculum, co-curricular activities and student programming, and community engagements. She also supports the office's communications strategy and content creation that tells the university's sustainability story, and development of sustainability policy and plans. Before starting this position in 2018, she worked in technology and education. Sarah earned her PhD in literature from the UO in 2012.