Featured Speakers

The only effort since the 1930s to photograph people from all Native American Tribal Nations, and the
only such endeavor by a Native artist: PROJECT 562 is a photographic and narrative celebration of
contemporary Native American life and cultures, alongside an in-depth examination of issues that
Native people face, by celebrated photographer and storyteller Matika Wilbur of the Swinomish and
Tulalip Tribes.

In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded
pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized
Native American Tribal Nations. Over the next decade, she traveled six hundred thousand miles across
fifty states—from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)—to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people. The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indian Country. The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, Project 562 is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people—all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. Their narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more.

A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, Project 562 inspires, educates, and truly changes the
way we see Native America.

–Ten Speed Press

Syren Nagakyrie (They/Them)

Founder and Director, Disabled Hikers

Disabled Hikers is an entirely Disabled-led organization, celebrating disabled people’s experiences in the outdoors -- committed advocates for justice, access, and inclusion by working with parks, organizations, brands, and more. It strives to build disability community and justice in the outdoors through an outdoors culture transformed by representation, access, and justice for Disabled and all other marginalized people.

Lydia Parker

Founder / Executive Director, Hunters of Color

Hunters of Color is the “only nationwide hunting nonprofit led by BIPOC, for BIPOC. Its goal is to create accessible, equitable opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and All People of Color (BIPOC) in conservation and hunting by dismantling barriers to entry through educational opportunities, mentorship, and providing educational resources, “for the sake of conservation, food sovereignty, and to preserve our ancestral traditions.”

Hitesh Tolani

LGBTQ+ activist, @GaysofNationalParks

The LGBTQ+ community's diversity in terms of income, age, race, urbanism, gender, sexual orientation, and skills has an impact on the spectrum of outdoor experiences. Therefore, many outdoor groups struggle with how to engage and embrace the LGBTQ+ population in the outdoors due to misconceptions, a lack of knowledge, or overall unease with how to respectfully approach such a diverse community of individuals. Hitesh Tolani’s story recounts how, in a matter of months, his desire to meet other outdoor-loving LGBTQ+ people led to thousands of people within the community to share their personal outdoor stories and his vision of how America’s Public Lands can help rewrite the narrative for LGBTQ+ acceptance in the outdoors.

Rosie Rios was designated as the chair for the United States Semiquincentennial Commission in July 2022, following her prior appointment by Congress as one of the Commission’s 16 private citizens. From 2009 to 2016, Rios served as the 43rd Treasurer of the United States and just completed her term as a Visiting Scholar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. She is most recently known for initiating and leading the efforts to place a portrait of a woman on the front of U.S. currency for the first time in over a century. Upon her resignation in 2016, she received the Hamilton Award, the highest honor bestowed in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Rosie was the longest serving Senate-confirmed Treasury official beginning with her time on the Treasury/Federal Reserve Transition Team in November 2008 at the height of the financial crisis..

Rios is a graduate of Harvard University and was selected as the first Latina in Harvard’s 384-year history to have a portrait commissioned in her honor. She currently serves on the board of American Family Insurance, Fidelity Charitable Trust, the Schlesinger Council at Harvard, the Advisory Committee for Artemis Real Estate Partners and was previously a Trustee with the Alameda County Employees Retirement Association (ACERA). Her personal passion includes EMPOWERMENT 2020, an initiative that facilitates the physical recognition of historical American women and recently launched Notable Women, a project with some folks at Google’s Creative Lab that uses Augmented Reality to teach kids about historic American women. She remains active in real estate finance and is consulting on several transformational projects in the Bay Area under her “RESCUE” initiative: Real Estate for Socially Conscious Urban Empowerment.