Ecotrust Expert Bios
Elizabeth Woody
Director, Indigenous Leadership Program
Ecotrust, Portland, Oregon
503-467-0751
Ecotrust initiatives and partners of special interest:
Ecotrust Award for Indigenous Leadership, The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians NW Indian Policy Committee, The Klamath Tribes, The Elakha Alliance, Western Indigenous Artist Network with the Evergreen State College Longhouse, Ecotrust Consulting Initiative, ShoreBank Pacific and The Willapa Alliance.
Areas of professional expertise:
Communications, essayist, lecturer, program development and design, leadership enhancement and cultivation, strategic planning, marketing, collaboration, information analysis, technical reporting and writing.
Elizabeth Woody is the Director of Ecotrust's Indigenous Leadership Program. In this role, Woody supports a growing network of Native American and First Nations leaders. Through the generous endowment from the families of Howard and Peter Buffett, Ecotrust sponsors the annual Ecotrust Award for Indigenous Leadership — one of the most important resources for supporting tribal leaders within the lands and waters of Salmon Nation. Woody designed the program, which recognizes five tribal leaders each year for their catalytic efforts for stronger communities. The annual ceremony brings together current and prior honorees, tying in with an array of Portland-based community events, speakers, and networking opportunities. Woody inaugurated the first award in 2001 and continues to drive the Ecotrust Award process as a way of honoring hard work, relationship building, and, finally, celebration. In this position, Woody also works to expand the press coverage of the relationships built around the leadership of the Indigenous peoples of Salmon Nation and establishes connections with several Native run organizations. The program networks the recipients who possess clarity of vision, incredible spirit, and extraordinary will in areas of intersecting interests towards a critical mass of 100 leaders in 2020.
Since 2001, Woody has maintained outreach in the field and cooperative work with the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission to protect the treaty-reserved rights and responsibilities and sacred salmon heritage of Warm Springs, Yakama, Umatilla, and Nez Perce tribal fishers. In support of their communications and fisheries marketing efforts, Woody helped tribal fishers bring a centuries-old tradition to new markets, such as the Portland Farmers Market, where they could earn more for their catch; and reach new outreach venues, such as the Wy-Kan-Ush-Pum Village at Oxbow Park, where new audiences can learn about the tribes' efforts to restore salmon runs.
Woody's work with Ecotrust both reaffirms tribal values and creates new possibilities for applications of tribal knowledge — "the wisdoms and teachings of the earth" within the Pacific Northwest and throughout the United States. In 1999–2000, she formed the Western Indigenous Artist Network feasibility and business plan with The Evergreen State College Longhouse. During this time she also planned the Sitka Roundtable Dialogue with First Nations and Native peoples in Alaska. In 2001, Woody organized the "Just Transactions, Just Transitions" gathering of philanthropists and First Nations and Native communities in Tofino, B.C. That year, Woody conducted research and communications work with the Klamath Tribes of southern Oregon, participated in several national speaker series, and served as a jurist on various granting committees. She also co-founded the Elakha Alliance, an informal association of tribes, universities, agencies, organizations and individuals committed to restoring sea otters to Oregon's coastal waters.
Woody became a special advisor to the President of Ecotrust in 1998 and a principal of Ecotrust Consulting Initiatives. With a strong family background and connection to a network of influential Native leaders, Woody initiated integral protocol discussions regarding entrée into native communities. She has worked for over twenty five years on the boards and as an advisor of National and regional Native run organizations and educational programs lending contacts to the organization through her professional associations. She defined the challenges in Indian country and provided guidance about engaging with a power structure that includes grassroots/radical, traditional/spiritual, and contemporary governing bodies. Woody also worked on a number of Ecotrust's ancillary programs.
Beginning in 1996, Woody worked with then Vice President, Alana Probst, to promote more reliably prosperous communities in the Willapa Bay area of Washington State. She joined the ShoreBank Team — a joint project of Shorebank Enterprise, ShoreBank Corporation and Ecotrust now known as Shorebank Enterprise Cascadia — as Program Associate for Economic Development. In this role, she managed the team meetings and office operations and kept track of grants applications, reporting, and documentation during the formation and capitalization of ShoreBank Pacific, the first commercial bank in the United States with a commitment to environmentally sustainable community development. As an information specialist, Woody helped foster partnerships and implement groundbreaking community development programs. From 1996–1998, she worked with then Vice President, Arthur Dye, Jr., who co-founded the Willapa Alliance with on-the-ground leadership, and Shorebank Enterprise Cascadia to enhance the productivity and health of the unique watershed of Willapa Bay by building community capacity to boost the health of the ecosystem and create sustainable economic opportunity.
Prior to joining Ecotrust, Woody was a Professor of Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She also worked for many years as the Studio Manager of Lillian Pitt Masks and as an independent contractor, writer, and artist. Woody is an accomplished artist who has exhibited regionally, nationally and internationally, and is a renowned author who has won numerous accolades for her poetry and essays. Her awards include the 1990 American Book Award for Hand Into Stone, Hedgebrook's J. T. Stewart Award for transformational work, and the William Stafford Memorial Poetry Award for the best book of poetry of 1994 for Luminaries of the Humble. Her book Seven Hands Seven Hearts is listed in the Hundred Books of Literary Oregon, 1800–2000. Woody also received a "Medicine Pathways for the Future" Fellowship/Kellogg Fellowship in 1993 from the American Indian Ambassadors Program of the Americans for Indian Opportunity and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. In 2007, Woody was nominated by area non-profits and historians to be represented in the Women Making History in Portland Mural for having made a significant impact on Portland from the grass roots level. She has worked in various programs teaching workshops, mentoring, as a consultant and giving lectures and presentations throughout the country.
Woody serves on the Board of Directors of Soapstone, a Women Writer's Retreat, the Editorial Advisory Board of the Oregon Encyclopedia for the Oregon Council for the Humanities, the Advisory Board for the Lewis & Clark College Graduate School of Education and Counseling Indigenous Ways of Knowing Project, the Willamette University Advisory Council for Native Programs, and served as a leadership circle advisor for the Ford Foundation's feasibility study on a national Native American arts and culture fund. She is currently serving as secretary for the incorporating Board of the Native American Arts and Culture Fund. During 2005–2006, Woody was part of the steering committee for the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians proposed NW Indian Policy Center. She also advises the Native Arts Council of Evergreen State College's Longhouse Education and Cultural Center.
Woody is working toward a Masters of Public Administration with an emphasis in environmental policy and natural resources management at the Hatfield School of Government at Portland State University. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities from The Evergreen State College and studied Creative Writing and Two-Dimensional Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Woody is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs in Oregon, is of Yakama Nation descent, and is born for the Tódích'íinii (Bitter Water clan) of the Navajo Nation.
Related Web links:
The Ecotrust Award for Indigenous Leadership: www.ecotrust.org/buffettaward
The Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission: www.critfc.org
Western Indigenous Artists Network: www.ecotrust.org/wian/
Just Transactions, Just Transitions: www.ecotrust.org/nativeprograms/Just_Transactions_Just_Transitions.pdf
ShoreBank Pacific: www.eco-bank.com
Indigenous Ways of Knowing Project: www.lclark.edu/~iwok
Longhouse Cultural & Educational Center: www.evergreen.edu/longhouse
Hitéemlkiliiksix "Within the Circle of the Rim": Nations Gathering on Common Ground: http://academic.evergreen.edu/c/carom/imagine/travel.htm
Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians: www.atnitribes.org
Oregon Encyclopedia of History and Culture: http://oep.research.pdx.edu
Americans for Indian Opportunity: www.aio.org
Artist and Writer Biography: www.nativewiki.org/Elizabeth_Woody
