Deana Dartt, PhD (Director) is Coastal Chumash and Mestiza, descending from the indigenous people of the Californias. Her scholarly and professional work strives to address the incongruities between public understanding, representation and true acknowledgement of Native peoples, their cultures, histories and contemporary lives. She earned her MA and PhD from the University of Oregon and has held curatorial positions at the Burke Museum of Natural and Cultural History and the Portland Art Museum as well as teaching appointments at the University of Oregon, University of Washington, and Northwest Indian College. Her book manuscript titled, “Subverting the Master Narrative: Museums, Power and Native Life in California” is currently in prep. Deana serves on the boards of the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History Advisory Council and the Native Coast Action Network, as well as the non-profit organization she recently established, the Live Oak Center for Applied Decolonization (LOCAD). 

Heron Brae (Facilitator) holds a B.S. in Botany and Ecology from the Evergreen State College. She has taught programs in botany, ecology, herbalism, ethical wildcrafting, Indigenous history/context of the land, and wild food tending for over two decades. At an essential level, Heron’s work is to connect humans to each other and the land. She believes that decolonizing requires deep personal and community work as the foundation that will allow for the systemic changes needed. Her experience reckoning with her European heritage, and yearning to belong to the land and a people, has led her through a personal process of facing systems of power and working to heal ancestral trauma around leaving homelands, participating in colonization, and assimilation. Listening deeply and emotional empathy are key tools she practices and brings to her work.

As part of the Live Oak team, she develops and facilitates trainings and consults with clients in the environmental field.