Advisory Council
Viki Blackgoat
Viki Blackgoat was born and raised on the land disputed area of Big Mountain on the Dinét’ah land, Her mother, Roberta Blackgoat, was one of the integral, traditional women elders who resisted forced relocation.
Viki gained admission to and received her bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College, NH. She went on to secure her masters from Northern Arizona University (NAU). Much of her work experience was in the private education sector doing admissions work, personal and college advising, dorm parenting, and working as house director, volleyball coach, and she consulted on the recruitment and retention of native students at preparatory high schools and colleges.
Viki served as interim director of the Dartmouth College Native American Program, Directed the Follow-Up Program for the Native American Preparatory School (NAPS / Cushing Academy), and established the Academics & Counseling program at Navajo Preparatory School (Farmington, NM) where she served as the academic counseling director. Outside of the education sector, Viki has worked as a car salesman, and she sold sales products to small businesses.
Currently, she is one of three elders working with NAU students at the Native Center for the Advancement of Indigenous Futures (NCAIF). Viki serves as a board member with the Indigenous Circle of Flagstaff (ICF).
She continues to speak on behalf of our sacred mountain, Dooko’osłiid, Mother Earth, and the whole of the natural world. She works to help ensure that the yet unborn 7th generation inherits the future that we dream of and fight to secure, protect for them.
Her interests include issues of accessibility, clean water/air/soil resources, food security, care & preservation of traditional heirloom seeds, sustainable agriculture, sharing knowledge through stories and grounding actions.
Viki moved back to the Southwest over twenty years ago and devotes much of her time to mentoring young people, gardening, foraging and preserving foods, identifying medicinal plants, baking, upcycling, storytelling, and dabbling in her love of quilting & textile arts.
Finally, she does keep a bucket list, and atop that list is her number one aspiration of writing children’s books someday.
Lyla June
Dr. Lyla June Johnston (aka Lyla June) is an Indigenous musician, author, and community organizer of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages.
Lyla June helped to rename Kit Carson Park in Taos, New Mexico to Red Willow Park. She also worked with the Oceti Sakowin to organize the Black Hills Unity Concert to garner support for the return of the Black Hills to their original stewards.
She founded ReHuman School, an online school that has enrolled over 4,000 students in classes toward bio-cultural restoration, including the “Building Solidarity with Indigenous Communities” course.
Lyla June blends her study of Human Ecology at Stanford, graduate work in Indigenous Pedagogy, and the traditional worldview she grew up with to inform her music, perspectives and solutions.
Her doctoral research focused on the ways in which pre-colonial Indigenous Nations shaped large regions of Turtle Island (aka the Americas) to produce abundant food systems for humans and non-humans.
Annette McGivney
Annette McGivney is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of six nonfiction books. Her forthcoming book, Plastic Shaman, explores appropriation of Indigenous cultures by the wellness industry.
Annette’s previous book, Pure Land, about the murder of Tomomi Hanamure in Grand Canyon, won the National Outdoor Book Award in 2018. Pure Land was the debut selection for Outside magazine’s book club in 2017 and named by the magazine on a list of “outdoor books that shaped the last decade.”
Annette is a frequent contributor to the Guardian, Outside and Arizona Highways. Her articles focus on Southwest culture, the environment and Indigenous issues. Topics she has covered include harms caused by snowmaking on the San Francisco Peaks, threats to Oak Flat by multinational mining companies, the Land Back movement seeking return of the Black Hills, and programs supporting food sovereignty on the Apache and Navajo nations.
Annette is a professor emeritus in Journalism at Northern Arizona University and lives in Cortez, Colorado.