Indigenous Peoples' Day 2023
Speaker Bios
Eva Blake, a Citizen of the Assonet Band of the Wampanoag Nation, works as the Managing Director of Philanthropic Partnerships for Grassroots International. She received her degree in Community Studies from the University of California Santa Cruz with a concentration in environmental justice in Indian Country. Eva is an active Member of the Advisory Council of the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness. She has also been engaged with the Wôpanâak Language Reclamation Project for 22 years as a student, teacher, and board member.
As the daughter of a traditional chief and environmental activist, she has participated in social and environmental justice as well as community organizing all her life.
Dawn Duncan is the President of the Grant Connection where she has helped raise more than $40 million in grant funding over the past 30 years. She holds a Master of Science Degree in Maternal and Child Health from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and a master’s degree in social work from Boston University.
She is part Cherokee and Powhatan and has been a Member of the board of the directors of the Massachusetts Center for Native American Awareness since 2002. She is passionate about public health, racial justice, indigenous culture, cannabis equity and singing.
Evangelina Macias (Amskapi Pikuni Blackfeet & A'aninin GrosVentre) is a scholar, dance/movement facilitator, and Helaine B. Allen and Cynthia L. Berenson Distinguished Visiting Professor through the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Brandeis University. Macias' research focuses on the Native American Fancy Shawl Dance as a site of gender expansion in its emergence and contemporary practice by women, Two Spirit, and gender diverse dancers.
Macias' research interests include Native American Indigenous Dance, Critical Dance Studies, Indigenous Studies. Macias holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts with a Modern Emphasis from Utah Valley University, and a PhD in Critical Dance Studies from the University of California, Riverside.