OJI:SDA’ Staff Team

  • Tahila Moss Yaqui Yoeme, OJI:SDA' Founder & Executive Director

    Tahila Moss (Yoeme), OJI:SDA' Founder & Executive Director

    Tahila Moss (aka Tahila Mintz) is an Indigenous Yoeme and ancestrally Jewish media maker, ancestral scribe, educator and community organizer. She works across multiple platforms to amplify the voices of Indigenous people and the natural world. She has a long history of working in Indigenous communities and between communities to weave sustainable, supportive systems of utility, visibility and guardianship. She has extensive knowledge of plant medicines and traditional healing practices and is a Moondancer and a Water Protector.

    Click here for Tahila’s full bio >>>

  • g'beda T. Lyles

    g'beda T. Lyles, Grant and Development Lead

    g'beda T. Lyles is a grant writer, independent audio producer, healing artist, herbalist, performing artist and musician. g'beda means earth medicine. They began grant writing as a performing and healing artist. Then g'beda, extended those skills to aligned nonprofit organizations and other artists. Lyles holds a Bachelors with a double major in Geography and Spanish, two Masters in Curriculum and Instruction and Traditional Chinese Medicine and a Doctorate in Chinese Medicine and Herbal Medicine. g'beda is a certified sound therapist and community based and trained birth companion. Lyles is a 2022 Texas Folklife Fellow and 2023 A.I.R Media Fellow.

  • Nicole Edin Sundown, Community Outreach Coordinator, Plant Care Program

    Nicole Edin Sundown (Seneca), Community Outreach Coordinator, Plant Care Program

    Nicole Edin Sundown is a member of the Seneca Turtle Clan and has been a resident of the Buffalo Creek territory her entire life. Nicole holds an Associate Degree in Occupational Studies with a focus on Business Management. With over 10 years of experience in the quality assurance and customer service sectors. Nicole has volunteered with Global Concepts Charter Schools, contributing to both their diversity and CEO committees. Additionally, she serves as an OJI:SDA’ Plant Care Fellow. She draws motivation from spending time in the garden and also takes joy in sharing the knowledge she carries with her sons, nieces, and nephews.

OJI:SDA’ Board of Directors

  • Jason Corwin (Seneca), OJI:SDA', President & Board Member

    Jason Corwin (Seneca), OJI:SDA', President & Board Member

    Jason Corwin Ph.D. is a citizen of the Seneca Nation and Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at University at Buffalo. Jason has an extensive background as a community-based media and environmental educator with a deep commitment to grassroots organizations.

  • Kayla Matos, OJI:SDA', Treasurer & Board Member

    Kayla Matos, OJI:SDA', Treasurer & Board Member

    Kayla Matos is dedicated to fighting against inequities that burden disadvantaged communities daily. With a firm commitment to calling out and interrupting oppressive systems, Kayla strives to empower and uplift our people. She proudly received the Kirby Edmonds Action award for Social Justice, and currently serves as the Deputy Director of Southside Community Center.

  • Dr. Brandy Brown (Saponi), OJI:SDA', Board Member

    Dr. Brandy Brown (Saponi), OJI:SDA', Board Member

    Dr. Brandy Brown is an experienced energy strategist with deep industry knowledge and demonstrated success in advancing decarbonization solutions from conception to implementation. Currently, she is Chief Innovation Officer at Walker-Miller Energy Services.

  • Diane Carruthers, OJI:SDA’ Board Member

    Diane Carruthers, OJI:SDA’, Board Member

    Diane taught social studies, served as a teacher leader and as principal of the Lehman Alternative Community School in Ithaca, NY, for 28 years. She has a Bachelor of Science degree in Rural Sociology from Cornell University, a Master of Arts Degree in Critical and Feminist Pedagogy from Goddard College and a Certificate in Educational Leadership from Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. She is passionate about democratic education and issues of social and restorative justice.

  • Troy Richardson (Saponi/Tuscarora), OJI:SDA', Board Member

    Troy Richardson (Saponi/Tuscarora), OJI:SDA', Board Member

    My professional career has been exclusively focused on extending the critical interventions of American Indian Education and American Indian and Indigenous Studies to disrupt and abolish those educational practices – curriculum and normative (philosophical) concepts – that distort the lives and worlds of Indigenous peoples.

  • Justin Schapp (Onondawaga' Agegwaiyoh - Deer Clan Seneca)

    Justin Schapp (Onondawaga' Agegwaiyoh - Deer Clan Seneca), OJI:SDA' Board Member

    Justin is from the Seneca Nation's Ohi:yo' (beautiful river) Territory and is a father to two amazingly wonderful young Indigenous women, Zygs and Zora. An Indigenous centered activist, he was instrumental in the Seneca resistance movements against NYS economic oppression in 1992 through 1997, and has actively participated in every activist movement since. A graduate of Syracuse University and Oklahoma University's College of Law, he has used his experience, passion, knowledge, and education to make tremendous positive impacts for Indigenous Peoples and communities.

OJI:SDA’ Advisory Council

  • Yvonne Wakim Dennis (Cherokee/Sand Hill/Syrian) - OJI:SDA' - Indigenous Sustainable Futures

    Yvonne Wakim Dennis (Cherokee/Sand Hill/Syrian), OJI:SDA' Advisor

    Yvonne Wakim Dennis is an educator, social worker and award winning author of non-fiction books for children and adults. For over a decade, Yvonne was the Resource Director for the Native American Education Program, NYC Board of Education, where she also developed curriculum and trained teachers. She serves on several boards and is a mentor for the Highlights Foundation Diversity Fellowship in Children's Literature. Dennis is the recipient of several awards including the Tomaquag Lifetime Achievement Award, the Drums Along the Hudson and NYC Parks Dept. Community Service Award, the National David Chow Humanitarian Award and was featured on the NYC TV series on community activists, "Neighborhood Slice, Upper Upper West Side."

  • Geraldine Standup (Mohawk, Bear Clan) , OJI:SDA' Advisor

    Geraldine Standup (Mohawk, Bear Clan) , OJI:SDA' Advisor

    Geraldine Standup (Mohawk, Bear Clan) is a Mohawk first language speaker. She is a mother and grandmother living in Kahnawake Reserve in Canada. She is a respected teacher and healer.

    Geraldine has served her community as well as the Anishinaabe people of Toronto for 20 years. She also served in Hamilton, Brantford, and London Ontario.

    She also spent time with the Maliseet people in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Geraldine is currently an Elder in Residence at McGill University as well as Elder for TRC training of teachers.

  • Mike DeMunn (Daha'danya:h), OJI:SDA' Advisor

    Michael De Munn (Kahada’ Nyah: Seneca/French), OJI:SDA' Advisor

    Michael De Munn is a Seneca author, artist and forest ecologist, who has lived and worked in the Finger Lakes region most of his life. He believes it is his spiritual and cultural duty to honor and care for the Earth for future generations. Michael is the author of several major award winning children’s books and he is currently writing and illustrating a book of forestry and ecology from a Native perspective for landowners and students. As a conservationist, Michael has been a leader in helping to establish many nature preserves and he is a founder of the Finger Lakes Land Trust and serves as their forestry advisor. Michael carries on the teaches passed down to him about the use and care for different plants important to Indian culture and the spiritual duties that come with our relationship to the Earth, including the plants, animals, soil, air and water.

  • F. Bruce Coles, D.O (retired), OJI:SDA' Advisor

    F. Bruce Coles, D.O (retired), OJI:SDA' Advisor

    Dr. Coles has over 30 years of experience in public health practice and has been a fully licensed physician for 42 years. Dr. Coles retired from the Department of Health in 2016 but remains actively engaged in issues of community health and well-being principally serving in an advisory capacity to non-profit organizations. These organizations include Native American Community Services of Erie and Niagara Counties, Inc.’s Gathering of Good Minds initiative and as a consultant to Sewakwatho, a community-based sobriety maintenance program located on the Akwasasne territory of the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe.

Equality, Diversity and Inclusion

OJI:SDA’ is a collective of indigenous, arrivant and critical settler peoples engaged in a range of activities supporting indigenous health, well-being and self determination.

We are acutely aware of the complexities of the ways enrollment (several of us are enrolled) and the politics of Indigenous identity have become both weaponized by an ongoing colonial administration in the United States and appropriated and exploited by non-native individuals.

We clearly support the right of Native nations as a people to determine their members. Yet kinship and relationships are also not always so easily recognizable, especially to those outside of the very specific historical and political contexts of particular Native nations/communities.

We are proud of the work that we are doing and trust that it is that work and the respect and love from which it stems that is of most importance.