TIP’s ADVISORY BOARD 2022
TIP’s journey with the Indigenous communities as stewards of biocultural diversity since 2010 has been enriched with learnings from our grassroot custodians. Its association with scientists and academicians of contemporary knowledge has also been very rewarding. From organizing the ITM 2015 in Shillong, North East India, cited by a well-known journalist as “the Woodstock of Agrobiodiversity” to inspiring FAO and Bioversity International’s award-winning publication: “Indigenous Peoples Food Systems – Insights on sustainability and resilience from the front lines of climate change”, from two cycles of training (2017 and 2019) of the Indigenous Youth Fellowship Programme that trained several Indigenous Youth to confidently share their communities voices on a global platform, TIP has silently left its mark. Then from mid-2020, TIP took part in the planning for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit.
With these strong interactions and established networks of thinking minds and Youth supporters, TIP feels confident they are ideal channels of understanding and steering our future work which should no longer be only about overcoming vulnerability and marginalisation. It should be a conversation about using traditional and contemporary knowledge to enhance the potential of Indigenous Peoples to
· be architects of their own future to secure and exercise their rights to their land, territories and resources, guided by their values and systems of governance.
· to spark and fuel a behavioural change through an inclusive and collaborative approach where indigenous Youths and Elders and outstanding non indigenous experts are part of a community that will work to nudge the acceptance of Indigenous Peoples Food Systems as game changers.
Hence our shaping of the new and enlarged Advisory Board of TIP comprises not just the experienced but also young progressive voices from the 7 indigenous Peoples socio cultural Regions, leaders of Indigenous Peoples Organisations, Human Rights activists, international experts in various fields. Our 2022 Advisory Board comprises 42% women (5), 42% of Youth and all from the 7 socio cultural regions to lay the foundations for TIP to expand its work.
ADVISORY BOARD MEMBERS
Francisco J. Rosado-May, Americas
Dr. Francisco J. Rosado-May is a member of the Yucatec Mayan community and has been the Founding President of the Universidad Intercultural Mayan de Quintana Roo, Mexico. As an agroecologist who graduated from the University of California, Santa Cruz, he has over 35 years of experience in research, higher education and outreach in Mexico and other countries including the Americas, Europe, Africa and Southeast Asia. Francisco’s research field and academic training focuses on Indigenous Peoples food systems, agroecology and indigenous education, aiming at developing concepts and methods towards intercultural/biocultural development by understanding the epistemology of indigenous knowledge, with emphasis on the Yucatec Maya. Francisco has been a member of the steering committee for the Agroecology Fund and for the Small Grant Program of the UN Development Program in Mexico for several years. Francisco’s academic publications are available at Research Gate and Google Scholar. Over the past years, he has been one of the main Advisers of TIP on agroecology, its foundational work in communities of North East India who remember him for highlighting the uniqueness of their traditional “gardens in the forest” and regularly representing TIP during the global discussions for the UN Food Systems Summit, 2021.
Harriet Kuhnlein, PhD, LLD (hon.), Americas
Dr. Harriet Kuhnlein is Emerita Professor from the School of Human Nutrition and Founding Director of the Centre for Indigenous Peoples’ Nutrition and Environment (CINE) at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. She is a member of several nutrition societies, and recipient of awards for distinguished research and service in nutrition. Harriet has been leading and conducting participatory research on food and nutrition with many cultures of Indigenous Peoples demonstrating that their biodiverse food systems foster food security and good health and are the foundation of their wellbeing. She has been an active supporter of TIP and its work and has been the inspiration of many of the works of international organizations such as FAO on Indigenous Peoples food systems.
Roba B. Jilo, Africa
Mr. Roba B. Jilo, was one of the Founding Fellows of TIP’s Indigenous Youth Fellowship Programme. He is from the Karrayyu-oromo tribe, an indigenous pastoralist community of Ethiopia. He is currently a Ph.D. Fellow at the Fletcher School of International Relation and Diplomacy, at Tufts University. Roba is a food activist, community organizer and member of the Indigenous Peoples Movement worldwide. He has been advocating for the Karrayyu people in particular, and Ethiopian pastoralists in general. He is the founder of the Nomad Diary, a social startup designed to address the challenges of land issues and how to mitigate climate change by specifically targeting youth through innovative social enterprises. He also actively participated in several high level meetings including the Seventeenth Session (April 2018) of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues. Roba is currently working on a documentary film called Milk Drop that narrates how camel’s milk will remain one of the last sustainable dairy practices in a time of climate crisis.
Danny Hunter, Pacific
Dr Danny Hunter is currently Senior Scientist with the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT with over 25 years’ international development experience in more than 30 countries, including 12 years living in the Maldives, Samoa and Fiji. Within the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, Danny has been one of the strongest supporters of TIP and the interests of young researchers from Indigenous Peoples especially from the Pacific. His work and interests focus on the role of agroecology, agrobiodiversity and Indigenous Peoples’ food systems as nature-positive solutions for healthy, just, sustainable food systems and climate resilient futures. He was a contributor to the book, Indigenous Peoples’ Food Systems: Insights on Sustainability and Resilience from the Front Line of Climate Change (2021) and was part of the Technical Editorial Committee for The White/Wiphala Paper on Indigenous Peoples’ food systems (2021). He has worked closely with the CBD, IUCN Commissions and Specialist Groups, FAO, WHO, ASEAN ACB and Secretariat of the Pacific Community.
Mai Thin Yu Mon, Asia
Mai Thin Yu Mon is a young Indigenous rights activist from Chin Community in Myanmar. She is a Program Director of Indigenous Peoples Development Program of the Chin Human Rights Organization. She is also serving as an Asia focal person for Global Indigenous Youth Caucus since 2016. She has been working with Indigenous communities in Myanmar and Asia for the past several years, being a part of strengthening platforms for indigenous youths and indigenous women across Asia. For the past several years, she has been an active advocate of the climate change. She is serving as a food security Champion of FSS2021 and was a Youth Vice-Chair of Action Track-4, along the UN Secretary General’s Food Systems Summit 2021 process.
Rathindra Nath Roy, Asia
Rathin offers a multidisciplinary world view with an academic background in electrical engineering, public health and political science at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras and the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida. As a researcher and development practitioner he worked with the Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad and the Shri A. M. M. Murugappa Chettiar Research Centre, Chennai, advised the Swedish International Development Agency in its social and community forestry efforts in India and spent almost a decade and a half working on facilitating management of small-scale fisheries as a senior professional with the Fisheries Department of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN. Rathin became an independent consultant and facilitator in the year 2000 working primarily with the FAO, WFP and IFAD of UN. Rathin was on the Board of the not-for-profit Villgro Innovation Foundation for 12 years and chaired it for 10 years before stepping down. Villgro, helps social entrepreneurs take innovative products and services to the market to benefit the rural poor. Rathin has mentored the formation and the journey of TIP, Rome and the North East Sustainable Food and Agrobiodiversity Society (NESFAS), Shillong whose missions are to connect indigenous people to their ‘countries’, landscapes and cultures through the portal of food, flavour and celebration.
Galina Angarova, Eastern Europe, Central Asia, Russian Federation, Transcaucasia
Galina Angarova is a member of the Buryat indigenous community of Russia and has fought for the rights of indigenous peoples in the Altai Region of Siberia and in the areas around Lake Baikal. She is the Executive Director of Cultural Survival that advances Indigenous Peoples rights and Culture worldwide. Before that she served as program officer at the Swift Foundation, and prior to that as policy and communications advisor for Tebtebba. She has represented the Indigenous Peoples’ Major Group at the UN on issues such as the Sustainable Development Goals and the Post-2015 Development Agenda, and has led Indigenous experts to review safeguards for Indigenous Peoples for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Green Climate Fund. Galina holds a Master’s degree in Public Administration from the University of New Mexico and served on the board of International Funders for Indigenous Peoples for seven years.
Pius Ranee, Asia
Mr. Pius Ranee maintains very deep and strong connections with his Indigenous community and is guided by his rural upbringing. He brings to the Advisory Board his unique knowledge of the sustainable benefits of shifting cultivation as part of the food system of his people. His first interaction other Indigenous Peoples was in 2011 when he visited Jokmokk in the Artic area of Sweden, his first trip outside India. He was amongst the first four young staff members of NESFAS when it was established in 2012 and is today its Executive Director. He has represented NESFAS in meetings in Italy, The Philippines, Kenya and Northern Thailand and was amongst the first 4 Fellows of TIP’s 2017 Fellowship Programme. He brings to the management of NESFAS a youthful background of indigenous heritage, post graduate studies in Social work and nearly a decade of global exposure and mentoring by the Advisers, Consultants and networks members of NESFAS and the Rome based Indigenous Partnership for Agrobiodiversity and Food Sovereignty (TIP). He played a critical role in establishing the Agroecology Learning Circles, an innovation of NESFAS, which promote traditional knowledge and contemporary agroecology practices. As one of the bricklayers of NESFAS, Pius Ranee played a steering role in the very successful ITM 2015 Conference and Food Festival, hosted by NESFAS in Shillong.
Mr. Daniel. M. Kobei, Africa
The association of Mr. Daniel M. Kobei with TIP dates back to 2013 when we conducted a Pollination Training for his community in Kenya. He is the Founder and Executive Director of Ogiek Peoples’ Development Program (OPDP), an NGO based in Kenya, with ECOSOC Status since 2019, that promotes the human and land rights of indigenous Ogiek Community and other Indigenous Peoples (IPs) of Kenya and Africa. He is the focal point on IPs matters in the International Indigenous Forum for Biodiversity (IIFB) under the Collaborative Partnership for Wildlife Management (CPW) established by Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD). As a staunch IPs human rights defender, he has featured in diverse high-level discussions on IPs issues. One of his key achievements is leading the Ogiek into winning a landmark case against the Government of Kenya at the African Court on Human and Peoples' Rights based in Arusha, Tanzania on May 26, 2017 which won the Ogiek the rights to living in their ancestral Mau Forest. Through OPDP, Kobei is leading his hunting gathering community in protecting the forest against further destruction. While participating in CBD process and SBSSTA, he has been active in given talks on Community Protocols as envisaged in Nagoya Protocol, Role of IPs in Sustainable Wildlife Management, issues of Nature and Culture and in Drafting IPLC’s roadmap to Post 2020 Biodiversity Framework among others. His work is felt in Africa among IPs on land related issues and in Conservation of Natural resources. He has Master degree in Strategic Management (MBA, Strategic Mgt.), Egerton University, Kenya and Post Graduate Diploma in Project Appraisal and Management from Maastricht School Management (MSM) in the Netherlands, among others.
Tania Eulalia Martinez-Cruz, Americas
Tania Eulalia Martinez-Cruz is an interdisciplinary researcher and indigenous Ëyuujk woman. She holds a B.Sc. in Irrigation Engineering from Chapingo Autonomous University, a MSc. in Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in social sciences from Wageningen University in the Netherlands. Currently, she works as a consultant for the Indigenous Peoples´ Unit at FAO at the Indigenous Peoples´ Unit and she is an associate researcher at the Free University of Brussels collaborating on the ‘SeedsValues’ project. Tania has collaborated in international development for more than 10 years and has engaged in projects on sanitary engineering, biofuels production, water management and irrigation, agricultural research and development, climate justice, gender and social inclusion, nutrition, and food security/sovereignty. As an Ëyuujk Indigenous woman from Mexico and researcher, Tania also promotes the conservation of indigenous knowledge as key to the biocultural diversity of Indigenous Peoples and specially in relation to food and nutrition security and sovereignty. She combines her research and advocacy and has spoken about those issues at many national and international levels, such as her involvement in the UNFSS2021 Summit and several events linked to COP26. She also does advocacy on Indigenous and Women´ access to education in the world.
Sean Sherman, Americas
Sean Sherman was born on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota and is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Sioux Tribe. He founded his company The Sioux Chef in 2014 in response to the complete invisibility of Indigenous representation in the culinary industry across the US. He released his cookbook in 2017, “The Sioux Chef’s Indigenous Kitchen “, winning the prestigious James Bears award for Best American cookbook, and a second James Beard award for Leadership in 2019 for the creation of his nonprofit vision NATIFS.org (North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems), which is designed to create access, develop and support more Indigenous Food production, businesses, and education through their nonprofit kitchen under NATIFS, the Indigenous Food Lab. In 2021, he and his team opened their first decolonized restaurant concept, “Owamni by The Sioux Chef”, becoming one of the most popular and important restaurants across America according to the New York Times and Chicago Tribune, and Sean was named Esquire Magazine’s Chef of the Year in 2021, becoming the first Native American to hold that title. He has been associated with TIP since 2014. He was the key Chef in the Taste Workshops of ITM 2015 held in Shillong, North East India. In 2016, he also supported TIP to serve indigenous food during a Side Event of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues Session.
Qivioq Nivi Løvstrøm, Arctic
Ms. Qivioq Nivi Løvstrøm is an Inuk anthropologist and Indigenous Peoples rights activist from Greenland. Qivioq Løvstrøm has a candidata magisterii in Cultural- & Social history and lectures at the University of Greenland. As an Indigenous Peoples rights activist she has experience working for the Human Rights Council of Greenland and for the Foreign Ministry of Greenland where she has been the Head of Section for the areas of Asia, Climate, Trade, Human Rights, and Indigenous Peoples' Rights. She is a former focal point, and later co-chair of Global Indigenous Youth Caucus and is currently an Advisor. She is also the Chair of the Human Rights Council of Greenland.