WHO WE ARE

On-the-Ground Collaborations

Where We Work →

Karanki People, San Clemente, La Esperanza, Ibarra, Ecuador — Karanki People, **San Clemente**, La Esperanza, Ibarra, Ecuador

Awá People, Guadualito, San Lorenzo, Esmeraldas, Ecuador — Awá People, **Guadualito**, San Lorenzo, Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Afro-descendant Community of La Chiquita, San Lorenzo, Ecuador — Afro-descendant Community of **La Chiquita**, San Lorenzo, Ecuador

Screen Shot 2019-06-20 at 1.03.39 PM.png — Hawaii (future)

Board of Directors

Renee Pualani Louis, Ph.D.
board President

Hilo, Hawaii, USA

Dr. Renee Pualani Louis is a Kanaka Hawaiʻi cartographer passionate about Hawaiʻi storied place names, cross cultural ethical research principles, and advocating the proper use and acknowledgement of Indigenous spatial knowledge systems. She has long believed Indigenous wisdom has held steadfast in the margins of society and it is time to bring not just Indigenous voices front and center but also Indigenous leadership. Although she recognizes that many Indigenous peoples carry generations of ancestral trauma, she also knows those ancestors were resilient and adaptive survivors. As such, she believes it is possible to move beyond the trauma with pro-active culturally appropriate healing practices and the restoration of our ecologically principled leadership to our communities. This shift begins by acting on the belief that our ancestral knowledge can still sustain us.

edwin magaña-lopez
Board secretary & yvc representative

East Palo Alto, CA, USA

Edwin Magaña-Lopez is from East Palo Alto, California. He recently graduated with an environmental studies major with a concentration in Global Environmental Justice. He is very involved with his community, uncovering and teaching the history and environmental injustices of the community. He is the YVC intern who has been with us the longest. For three seasons, Edwin led grant writing and critical Spanish translation work on our Rights of Nature Team. He has now stepped up by co-facilitating our Steering Committee! Recently, Edwin was also invited to join the Roots & Routes IC Board as our YVC representative, assuring that the youth have a voice in the organization’s strategizing and decision-making.

barbara campbell
Board TREASURER

Gold River, California

Barbara brings the CFO experience to your small business. She translates your financial statements into your business success story well beyond simple profit and loss. She comes with 20 years experience working with large and small family businesses. She saves her clients time, money, and bring a fresh perspective to the process. Outside of simply “doing the books,” she looks at your business as a whole. Operationally, are things truly running in the most efficient manner? Is there some small tweak we can make to help everyone work a little smarter? Barbara works with every department to make sure you are in sync.

https://bcounts4you.com

JUli A. Hazlewood, PH.D.
Board Member

Santa Cruz, CA, USA

Dr. Juli Hazlewood, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Roots & Routes IC, is an activist, researcher, writer, and educator from Indiana (USA). For over two decades she has lived and walked with the Chachi, Awá, and Afro-descendant communities of Ecuador’s Pacific Northwestern Chocó rainforests (Esmeraldas Province) to defend and protect their ancestral territories and cultures. She earned a Ph.D. in Geography at University of Kentucky, a MA in Native American Studies from UC Davis, a MA in Latin American Studies (with a concentration in Tropical Conservation and Development) from University of Florida, and a BA in Community Studies from UC Santa Cruz. Her research, writing, and teaching focus on Geographies of Hope, decoloniality and diverse cultural ways of knowing, Collaborative Activist Geographical Methodologies (CAGM), and Indigenous, Human, and Nature’s Rights.

olindo nastacuaz
BOARD member

San Lorenzo, Esmeraldas, Ecuador

Olindo Nastacuaz, Awá, was president of the Awá Peoples’ Federation (FCAE) for 3 periods. He also served as President of CONAICE, the federation of all the Coastal Indigenous nationalities (Awá, Chachi, Epera, T’sachila, Montubio, Manta, and Wancavilca). Additionally, he acted as Coordinator of the Gran Familia Awá Bi-national Organization, helping to spread the word in Ecuador about the ethnocide of Awá people in Colombia. Recently, Olindo is working to organize the six Awá communities by helping them implement their life plans to “live well”, cultivating leadership and coordinating solidarity among the six communities. Their goal is to strengthen the organizational processes to defend Nature. He is also currently working with the communities of La Chiquita and Guadualito on their Rights of Nature case. Olindo is also a teacher. In two years he will complete his bachelors in Education.

Inti Sandoval
Board Member

San Clemente, Ecuador

Inti Sandoval is a Kichwa indigenous from the San Clemente community belonging to the Kichwa Karanki people of the Andes of Ecuador. He has been involved in and supported in organizational-community processes. It also continues to carry out and organize different activities to strengthen and defend identity, territory and care for the environment (Pachamama) with children, adolescents, youth and leaders of the communities of the Kichwa Karanki people, FICI and other community organizations. In recent years he has been a member of the Council of the Cabildo and the Water Board of the San Clemente community. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in research on Climate Change, Development and sustainability in Ecuador.

luis fernando sarango macas
Board member

Saraguro, Loja, Ecuador

Saraguro Lawyer. Pushak [President] and Co-Founder of Pluriversidad Amawtay Wasi. Luis Fernando Sarango is Kichwa Saraguro from Ecuador. Greatly in line with the central objectives of Roots & Routes IC, the Pluriverisdad Amawtay Wasi’s goals are especially centered on how humans can strengthen Indigenous cultures to better take care of Mother Nature while also recreating communities that emphasize learning from one another in an intercultural society. Pluriversities are created to celebrate many ways of knowing and ancestral cultural sciences that the world so badly needs, especially as we face the climate crisis. These cultural sciences do not have to be reinterpreted into Western frameworks to be valid; they already are! In pluriversities all peoples’ sciences can co-exist, learn from one another, and strengthen the whole.

Marsha small
Board member

Northern Cheyenne, MT, USA

Ota'taveenova'e (Blue Tipi Woman) American name is Marsha Small. She is Northern Cheyenne, and leads the Indigenous Peoples' Day Montana movement and her work with the preservation and conservation of sacred sites and places using GPR, GPS, and GIS, specifically in boarding school cemeteries is internationally known. Marsha has been conducting work at the Chemawa Indian Boarding School cemetery, to establish protocols to document boarding school cemeteries. She uses ground-penetrating radar to locate unmarked graves, including at the Chemawa Indian School cemetery in Salem, Oregon. Marsha has a master’s degree in Native American Studies from Montana State University and is currently working on a PhD.

Staff

Juli A. Hazlewood, PH.D.
Co-Founder & Executive Director

Santa Cruz, California

Dr. Juli Hazlewood, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Roots & Routes. For over two decades she has lived and walked with the Chachi, Awá, and Afro-descendant communities of Ecuador’s Pacific Northwestern Chocó rainforests (Esmeraldas Province) to defend and protect their ancestral territories and cultures. Her research, writing, and teaching focus on Geographies of Hope, decoloniality and diverse cultural ways of knowing, Collaborative Activist Geographical Methodologies (CAGM), and Indigenous, Human, and Nature’s Rights

(Please see her Board Member description above for more details.)

BARBARA CAMPBELL
BOOKKEEPER

Gold River, California

I bring the CFO experience to your small business. I translate your Financial statements into your business success story well beyond simple profit and loss. I come with 20 years experience working with large and small family businesses. I save my clients time, money, and bring a fresh perspective to the process. Outside of simply “doing the books,” I look at your business as a whole. Operationally, are things truly running in the most efficient manner? Is there some small tweak we can make to help everyone work a little smarter? I work with every department to make sure you are in sync.

https://bcounts4you.com