Ana-Maurine Lara (Ana Nanichi Tlahuicoatl), PhD, M.S. (Caribbean Afro-Taino) is a national award-winning novelist, poet and scholar. Her creative and scholarly work focuses on questions of Black and Indigenous women and queer people’s freedom. In her role as Associate Professor at the University of Oregon, she teaches courses on Decolonial, Indigenous and Black feminisms, among other subjects. Ana-Maurine is also Behike of the Arakuyo Taino nation since 2011, and is responsible for the spiritual-cultural well-being of her people. As Behike, she co-leads Bohio Cibanani, an organization devoted to the preservation and recuperation of Caribbean Indigenous and Afro-Diasporic ancestral knowledges, traditions and practices. She is also recognized by the Mexica people as an Abuela and is responsible for retaining and passing on ancestral knowledge, carrying out ceremonies, and deepening solidarity with the Mexica people. As an Abuela, she leads the Xinachtli Meztli Moon Dance, and served on the Huitzilmeztli Moon Dance Council. In 2022, Ana and Alai were received by the Chinook Nation Canoe Family as a Caribbean delegation in service to their work of reviving Caribbean Canoe ceremonies.

Victor Jose Santana holds a Masters in Arts specializing in Restorative Justice through Youth Leadership Development and Trauma Awareness. His long-term academic goals include entering a doctoral program to further his research on restorative justice, racial equity, healing, and the neurology of trauma.

Currently, Victor is working with Boston Public Schools on a restorative justice and racial equity project. The responsibilities for this initiative include training, facilitation, data evaluation, and policy recommendations. As Chief Program Officer at Trinity Boston Connects/Trinity Boston Foundation, he oversees a portfolio of five programs centered on healing the traumatic impact of systemic racism on young people, those who serve them, and the institutions that impact their lives.

Juli Yokoxkayotl Santoyo (they/them), M.Ed is a mixed, nonbinary femme born amongst the sacred mountains and rivers of the Northern Andes Mountains, so-called Colombia. A deep feeler, lover, and systems thinker, their path has involved serving community as a 10+ year public school educator & facilitator, healing justice artist, transformative justice practitioner, meditation and yoga instructor, and certified Life, Leadership, and Executive Coach. Juli’s work draws from a combination of ancestral healing practices, liberatory facilitation, and emergent systems design. In 2016 they founded a Contemplative Peacebuilding program for ex-combatants reintegrating from armed conflict in Colombia, working to explore the personal, interpersonal and systemic practices needed to cultivate peace and liberation on a collective and socio-political level. Drawing on these same life-fueling explorations, Juli also co-founded the Black Lotus Collective, a contemplative arts healing space for QTBIPOC across Turtle Island. Most recently they designed and directed the stewardship of Hearth: A Liberation Lab– a cohort and experimental home for movement leaders in the Northeast region to come together and cultivate greater coherence and integrity in their personal and collective practice. Lastly, as a priestess-in-training and song keeper in the Mexica Moondance tradition, Juli’s liberation practice is rooted in the integration of our bodies as the roadmaps to liberation, collaborating with the wisdom of the land, the elements, and our ancestral traditions towards the cultivation of worlds rooted in reciprocity and interdependence.