Our Team
The Restoring Balance Collaborative is led by a team of Indigenous thought partners and practitioners who serve as the backbone of the organization. This coordinating body carries the work forward at the guidance of its international Advisory Council made up of regionally diverse Indigenous practitioners aligned in values and coordinated effort to strengthen ecosystem resiliency.
Aleena M. Kawe
Aleena believes a systems approach–one that considers worldview, relationships, leadership and the collective will–is the key to restoring balance for the wellbeing of humanity and environment. Aleena is a leader and advocate in Indigenous wellness with more than 25 years of experience working in partnership with communities to transform ideas into action. In 2018, she received national recognition for developing the first national public health institute in the U.S. to focus solely on Indigenous wellbeing.
For the last decade, Aleena has focused on the power of international Indigenous exchange to meaningfully address critical climate challenges and their impacts on health. Prior to the Collaborative, Aleena was the founder of Red Star International, Inc. and served as its CEO for 18 years. Before that, she served as the Pascua Yaqui Tribe Education Director, and as the Administrator of the American Indian Research Center for Health at the Inter Tribal Council of Arizona. Aleena is an enrolled member of the Texas Band of Yaqui Indians. She has a master’s degree in public health from The University of Arizona where she was awarded Alumna of the Year in 2006.
Theresa M. Cariño
Theresa is the Senior Project Coordinator for Red Star International, where she is honored to work with tribes and tribal organizations in the areas of commercial tobacco prevention/cessation and community wellness, including the relationship between the environment and our health. Theresa is the lead author of More than the 5A’s: Implementing a Commercial Tobacco Cessation Intervention in Tribal Communities resource developed for Indigenous programs. She has a Master’s degree in Multicultural Education and is a former high school administrator, teacher and public health educator.
Prior to working with Red Star, Theresa was the principal of a charter high school for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, in Tucson AZ. Her 20 years of work in educational leadership and public health serve as a foundation for her ongoing work in our tribal communities and beyond.
Danielle Lucero
Danielle is deeply committed to justice, Indigenous sovereignty, and community resilience. Holding both a Master of Social Work and a Master of Public Health, Danielle’s work is rooted in the belief that lasting change emerges from interconnectedness, adaptability, and the strength of community-led transformation. She has continuously advocated for integrating Indigenous knowledge systems into public health practices, focusing on equity and dismantling systemic barriers to health.
Her connection to the land and her community’s traditional knowledge systems shapes her environmental and health advocacy approach. She focuses on initiatives that are deeply responsive to community needs, advance food sovereignty, protect water resources, and strengthen health systems. Danielle has contributed to organizations such as Red Star International, Public Health Awakened, and Pueblo Resurgents. At Pueblo Resurgents, Danielle leads community-driven research, including developing the 2024 Isleta Food Sovereignty Community Report, which addresses food insecurity and revitalizes traditional food systems.
Hud Oberly
Hud is a marketer, entrepreneur, and art advocate who focuses on bridging the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Throughout his professional career, Hud has been a servant to the global Indigenous community, with work experience in youth nonprofits, film, sustainable fashion design, fine art, and through his board service in the higher education sector. He has worked in marketing and communications for 9 years, with highlights of his career including creating marketing campaigns for the Indigenous fashion brand Urban Native Era and serving as the board member co-lead for the rebrand and name change of Native Forward Scholars Fund, the largest direct scholarship provider to Native American higher education students in the United States. Hud was honored with the Native American 40 Under 40 award in 2024 for his dedication to fostering community and culture through creativity.
Frank Te Mihinui Kawe
As a waka exponent, Frank has dedicated nearly 30 years to relearning and revitalizing the traditional canoe arts, including tere (sailing outrigger canoes) waka taua (war canoes) and waka hourua (voyaging canoes). As a senior waka hourua captain Frank has been able to mentor others to become waka captains and crew, providing the opportunity to build leadership, develop water safety knowledge and skills, and promote traditional practices among people of diverse ages and backgrounds. Frank is currently using his matauranga (Knowledge) to train and equip future generations in the art form of matangirua (combined sailing and paddling) so it will thrive once more.
Through sharing his skills and experience he hopes to encourage more people to participate in this traditional art form. Frank has captained voyages across the pacific, such as Te Mana O Te Moana Voyage, an 18-month voyage where seven waka hourua sailed from Aotearoa across the Pacific, as for north as Hawai’i and San Francisco, and as far east as the Galapagos Islands. Frank has since served as crew and support for Hokulea’s 4-year Mālama Honua Worldwide Voyage. He serves as the Tairawhiti Regional Representative for Te Hau Kōmaru National Waka Hourua Trust.
Advisory Council
Our international Indigenous advisory council guides the Collaborative, representing Indigenous Nations, organizations, networks and other organizational entities in the U.S., New Zealand and Canada.
Julia Fay Bernal
Julia Fay Bernal (she/they) is the Director of the Pueblo Action Alliance. She is pursuing dual master's degrees in Water Resources and Community and Regional Planning. Julia advocates for the reclamation of water rights and ancestral lands, as well as the decommodification of all that is sacred. Her work emphasizes the rematriation of stolen water resources and lands, central to which is the principle of Water Back and Land Back.
Julia serves on the Natural Resources Committee for the All Pueblo Council of Governors and is a board member of the Middle Rio Grande Water Advocates and the NAVA Education Project. Through her leadership, she continues to work toward dismantling colonial frameworks and promoting environmental justice for Indigenous communities.
Turama Hawira
Turama is one of the two leaders who jointly perform as Te Pou Tupua, a singular role to act and speak on behalf of Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River), and to promote and protect its health and wellbeing. Te Pou Tupua was established under the Whanganui River Treaty Settlement with the New Zealand Government.
Turama is a highly experienced advisor and educator. He has performed numerous advisory roles with local and central government and private sector organizations, including providing tikanga and cultural advice, and preparing cultural value reports. He has provided advised and presented research on behalf of hapū and iwi claimants of the wider Whanganui-Ruapehu district, including before the Whanganui District Inquiry of the Waitangi Tribunal, WAI 903.
Mr. Hawira has been a trustee and director of several hapū and iwi trusts and organizations including chairing the Ngā Rauru Iwi post settlement governance entity. He also has been a director of the Morikaunui Incorporation which farms large tracts of Māori pwned land in the Whanganui catchment.
Fluent in Whanganui diallect, Mr. Hawira brings vast cultural knowledge and practical experience of the Whanganui River district to the role of Te Pou Tupua.
Judith LaBlanc
Judith is the director of the Native Organizers Alliance (NOA), a national Native training and organizing network. NOA works with tribes, traditional societies and grassroots community groups in key Native communities and reservations.
At the core of her work is the belief that organizing a grassroots, durable ecosystem of Native leaders and organizers who share a common theory of change rooted in traditional values and sacred practices is necessary to achieve tribal sovereignty and racial equity for all.
Since 2017 she has partnered with the Brave Heart Society, a traditional Dakota women’s society and the Yankton Sioux Tribe on a project to reestablish the inherent, and legal right of the Yankton and other tribes in the Missouri River Basin to regain co-management of the bio-region.
This year, Judith has been working on several campaigns including the Indigenous Futures Survey (IFS). IFS is a Native-led, multi-year research initiative to strengthen Native peoples’ voice and leadership capacity in shaping our collective future. This survey is designed to illuminate the experiences, systemic challenges, and priority issues of Native peoples today.
The protection of sacred sites is one of those priorities for NOA. Together, with the Native ecosystem of grassroots organizers, building our political power, the Red Road to DC, a cross-country totem pole journey was born. This Spring, the totem pole will travel across the county-- with in-person and online events that will highlight--in the media and with federal decision-makers-- to twenty community-led campaigns where sacred lands, waters, and species are endangered by extractive industries, dams, and other infrastructure. This is a catalyst to implement policies to protect, restore, and renew sacred places, lands, and waterways; and redefine the principles that shape the land and water management on the basis of tribal sovereignty and Nation to Nation relations (redroadtodc.org).
Judith is a board member of IllumiNative, and chair of the board of the NDN Collective. She is a 2019 Roddenberry Fellow.
Ken Paul
Ken Paul is a member of the Wolastoqey Nation at Neqotkuk, located in the community of Tobique First Nation on the East Coast of Canada.
Ken currently serves as the Lead Fisheries Negotiator for the Wolastoqey Nation of New Brunswick and is a strategic advisor for Miawpukek Horizon for Indigenous-led Ocean Science Expeditions on the Atlantic coast on board the Oqwatnukewey Eleke'wi'ji'jit (Polar Prince). He has served as the National Fisheries Director for the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) and continues this work on the AFN’s National Fisheries Committee.
Ken has accepted a role with UNESCO Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission as a Senior Expert in Indigenous and Local Knowledge (ILK) in the UN Decade for Ocean Science (2021-2030) and is a past keynote speaker at the 2024 Ocean Decade Conference in Barcelona.
Ken is an active board member of Marine Renewables Canada, the Foundation for Conservation of Atlantic Salmon, Carbon Removal Canada, and a past board member the Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy (FORCE) on tidal energy.
Ken has an MBA with St Mary’s University and a BSc from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and is an adjunct professor at Dalhousie’s Marine Affairs program.
Ken is dedicated to working for First Nations and Indigenous Peoples regionally, nationally and internationally on all aspects relating to fisheries, aquaculture, ocean protection, economic prosperity, ocean technology and science development, and Indigenous governance as they relate to inherent aboriginal and treaty-protected rights, legislation, and policy.
Shannon Seneca
Shannon Seneca, PhD, REHS/RS, EIT is a Haudenosaunee environmental engineer. She completed a bachelor of science in physics and then moved into civil engineering for her graduate studies. Seneca's master’s work was focused on drinking water treatment, while she gained expertise in geochemistry, contaminant hydrology and groundwater remediation during her doctoral studies. Graduating in 2012, she was the first female Native American to earn her PhD in engineering at UB. Seneca obtained ecosystem restoration training and experience through the University at Buffalo’s National Science Foundation IGERT Ecosystem Restoration through Interdisciplinary Exchange (ERIE) program.
For almost a decade, she worked with the Seneca Nation and served as the Seneca Nation Health System's environmental health director. She briefly worked with the Center for Indigenous Cancer Research at Roswell Park Cancer Institute as an assistant faculty member to respond to Indigenous community desires to see more active environmental health cancer research. She brings in diversity as an Indigenous person and as an environmental engineer delving into environmental health to tackle the impact of environmental contaminants on human health. As a research assistant professor with the Department of Indigenous Studies, she strives to be a part of many interdisciplinary teams as each individual brings unique backgrounds to the table to solve large scale problems together.
Kelley Lehuakeaopuna Uyeoka
Kelley Lehuakeaopuna Uyeoka was born and raised in Kailua, Oʻahu and traces her ohana (family) lineage to the ‘āina (lands) of Puna and Kohala, Hawai‘i Island and Kīpahulu and Haneo‘o, Maui. She now resides in Hakalau, Hilo Palikū with her husband and three children. Kelley holds a Masters in Applied Archaeology and a Graduate Certificate in Historic Preservation from University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. She is the founder and Executive Director of Huliauapaʻa, a non-profit organization whose mission is to grow Hawaiʻi’s communities through culturally based innovative learning, leadership development and collaborative networking in wahi kupuna (ancestral places) stewardship. Kelley is also a founding partner of Nohopapa Hawaiʻi, a Hawaiian owned and operated Cultural Resource Management social enterprise. She also was integral in creating the Kaliʻuokapaʻaka Collective, a community of practice of advocates and leaders who care for Hawai‘i’s wahi kūpuna, and currently serves on the Collective's steering committee.
Raukura “Naani” Waitai
Raukura Waitai is of Ngā Rauru Kītahi and Whanganui Awa descent. She has served on Te Pūwaha since 2020 and currently sits alongside the Whanganui Land Settlement Negotiation Trust as a tribal historian and mandated leader for the hapū of Tamareheroto.
As a teenager she began learning within her tribal institutions under the mentorship of lwi leaders – all of whom have now past. She has cumulative expertise in the revitalisation of tribal knowledge, language and custom. Together with her husband, she is a co-director of Indigidigm Ltd which specialises in these areas.
She has a strong passion in environmental issues and has been involved in the restoration and protection of the wetlands; the prevention of deep-sea mining within her tribal area; the protection of freshwater; and an advocate for decision making based on indigenous values. Since the 1990s, Raukura has also emerged as one of the many Whanganui Māori tribal artists in Aotearoa. Working across a range of media including oil, acrylic. earth pigments and traditional fibre – her art offers a dramatic and dynamic commentary on Māori history and identity. Raukura translates traditional indigenous concepts and narratives from a Whanganui Iwi perspective, examining issues of colonialism, gender, language, place, the physical and metaphysical.