PROJECT - SEED Change Forum

I am an environmental justice activist, acequia farmer, author, teacher, and philanthropist. My current academic appointment is Professor of Anthropology and American Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington where I am affiliated with an interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Environmental Anthropology.  I am also Adjunct Professor in Women Studies, the Center for Water and Watershed Studies, Latin American Studies, Program on the Environment, and the Institute for Public Health Genetics. 

For several decades, I have been a public policy advocate and environmental justice activist in Latina/o and other communities of color. I am committed to community-based collaborative research and my own activist work is focused on issues related to biocultural diversity, resilience, and place-based self-governance. I am especially concerned with the acequia institution as a water democracy and its survival as an institution for collective action based on mutual reliance.

I work to support grassroots bottom-up alterNatives to neoliberal green governmentality, the top-down environmental managerialism championed by the state, corporations, and too many transnational NGOs. Some of my current intellectual work involves a critique of the individualistic actor models of rational choice theory favored by neolibeal thinkers of all stripes in the field of environmental management. The invisible hand of the market reigns as the undisputed and unacknowledged elephant in the conservation biology living room; my work is a critique of this underlying empire of capital in conservation theory and practice.

I was a delegate to the first Environmental Justice Summit in 1991 and participated in the drafting of the Principles of Environmental Justice and served on the Executive Committee for the second Environmental Justice Summit in 2002. From 1990 to 2002, I was on the Board of Directors of the Council for Responsible Genetics and involved in the Council's programs on commercial agricultural biotechnology, environmental risk assessment and human genomics, and trade-related intellectual property and biopiracy (a.k.a. the “No Patents on Life” campaign).

During the irrigation season (May-September), I live and work at our family's acequia farm, Rancho Dos Acequias, in Colorado's Rio Culebra watershed in the southeastern San Luis Valley. I produce heirloom land race maizes (e.g., chicos) and other organic and biodynamic crops as well as hay. On the farm, I am currently focusing on ecological restoration through biomimicry. I am also working on a bioregional heirloom seed-savers' exchange and projects to strengthen acequia watershed management.

I am a founding member of a new non-profit foundation, The Acequia Institute which is based at our family’s acequia farm. The mission of The Acequia Institute is to support and promote resilient agriculture and environmental justice in rural and urban Latina/o communities. We are a small organization of dedicated farmers, activists, and scholars; our current grant-making and research fellowship priorities focus on supporting community-based, women-led food sovereignty projects in Washington, California, and Colorado. Please visit our website: www.acequiainstitute.org.