Beyond the Bars Conference 2023 Speaker Bios
Saturday Morning Plenaries
Indigenous Peacemaking and Indigenous Worldviews
Abby Abinanti, Yurok Chief Judge is an enrolled Yurok Tribal member, she holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence from the University of New Mexico School of Law, and was the first California tribal woman to be admitted to the State Bar of California. She was a State Judicial Officer (Commissioner) for the San Francisco Superior Court for over 17 years assigned to the Unified Family Court (Family/Dependency/Delinquency). She retired from the Superior Court in September 2011 and on July 31, 2014 was reappointed as a part-time Commissioner for San Francisco assigned to Dependency, and Duty Judge for that Court where she served until 2015. She has been a Yurok Tribal Court Judge since 1997 and was appointed Chief Tribal Court Judge in 2007, a position she held in conjunction with her Superior Court assignment until 2015.
Fania E. Davis is a civil rights trial attorney, author and public speaker with a PhD in Indigenous Knowledge. She is a leading voice on the intersections of racial and restorative justice. Coming of age in Birmingham, Alabama during the civil rights era, the murder of two friends in the 1963 church bombing led to a lifelong commitment to justice.
Co-founder of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth and National Association of Community and Restorative Justice, Fania's numerous honors include the Dennis Maloney Award for excellence in Youth Restorative Justice and the Ebony POWER 100 award. The Los Angeles Times named her a New Civil Rights Leader of the 21st Century. Among her publications is the Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice.
Dr. Manulani Aluli Meyer is the fifth daughter of Emma Aluli and Harry Meyer. She comes from a long line of cultural practitioners and activists dedicated to Hawaiian nationhood, land reclamation, food sovereignty, music, philosophy, arts, circular economics, transformative education and hoʻoponopono - a Hawaiian healing practice through ritualized communication. Her work amplifies Indigenous epistemology within world-wide awakening spaces. Here is one such space.
Rae Nell Vaughn is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and the former Chief Justice of the Choctaw Supreme Court
Cheryl Demmert Fairbanks, Esq. works in the area of Indian law as an attorney and tribal court of appeals justice. She is a Peacemaker and founder of Sovereignty 360, a peacemaking entity. She served as the Co-Executive Director and Sr. Policy Advisor to the UNM Native American Budget and Policy Institute. She recently was in Oregon serving as the Walter R. Echo-Hawk Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law at Lewis and Clark; and also, she was a visiting Professor of Law at the University of New Mexico’s Southwest Indian Law Clinic. Formerly a Partner at Cuddy McCarthy LLP, she had a general practice in Indian law, including tribal-state relations, personnel, tribal courts, peacemaking and family conferencing, mediation, family, school, education, and indigenous law.
Ms. Fairbanks is Tlingit-Tsimshian and was born in Ketchikan, Alaska and grew up on Prince of Wales Island. She obtained her BA from Fort Lewis College in 1969 and her JD in 1987 from the University of New Mexico. Prior to her law career, she served as a teacher for the Albuquerque Public Schools, Zia Day School, and Administrator for Acomita Day School and the Albuquerque/Santa Fe Indian Schools
Learning the Lineages: Indigenous Peacemaking, Restorative, Transformative, and Healing Justice
Cara Page is a Black Queer Feminist cultural/memory worker, curator, and organizer. For the past 30+ years, she has organized with Black, Indigenous and People of Color, Queer/Trans/Lesbian/Gay/Bi/Intersex/Gender Non-Conforming liberation movements in the US & Global South at the intersections of racial, gender & economic justice, reproductive justice, healing justice and transformative justice. She is leading a new project, Changing Frequencies, an archival/memory and cultural organizing project building power with communities who want to confront, heal from & transform the historical and contemporary exploitative practices and abuses of the Medical Industrial Complex (MIC). She is also co-founder of the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collective and the Healing Histories Project; and the co-author of Healing Justice Lineages Dreaming at the Crossroads of Liberation, Collective Care & Safety (North Atlantic Books).
Christy S. Chapman (Pueblo of Zuni), holds a bachelor’s degree in nursing and juris doctor from the University of New Mexico. Currently, she is working with Pegasus Legal Services for Children, serving as a Guardian ad Litem, representing Native American children from Pueblos and Tribes, including those living in urban communities. Christy assisted in the development of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA) court in the Second Judicial District Children’s Court, Bernalillo County in New Mexico. As a Peacemaker, she uses indigenous values grounded in the cultural teachings of her people, the A:shiwi, as essential to resolving issues and disputes. She served as an Interim Co-Director for the Native American Budget and Policy Institute (“NABPI”) housed within the University of New Mexico’s Center for Social Policy.
Christy’s career goal is to continue to honor the inherent rights of individuals and to protect the sovereignty of tribal communities. Her faith and trust in the Creator, provides the foundation for balance, good health, and wellness.
Mike Milton is a formerly incarcerated healer, storyteller, and organizer based in St. Louis MO. He is the founder and Executive Director of Freedom Community Center (FCC). FCC is a transformative justice hub that responds to serious violence with peacemaking strategies and by organizing survivors of violence toward The Beloved Community.
For the past 10 years, he’s advanced Black liberation by organizing against the prison industrial complex using nonviolence, somatics healing practices, community accountability, and restorative justice to cultivate healing for Black communities and families. His work as The Statewide Policy Director for The Bail Project led to 4,000 people being freed from pretrial detention, and led a successful abolitionist campaign to closed a medium security jail in St. Louis called #CloseTheWorkhouse. In 2021, the city of St. Louis voted unanimously to close The Workhouse and invest its operating funds to North St. Louis most divested neighborhoods.
Mike is the awardee of the 2021 JM Kaplan social innovator prize.
Armand Coleman has over ten years of experience developing and leading Restorative Justice (RJ) programming. He was introduced to RJ while incarcerated as a youthful offender. While incarcerated, Armand co-founded the Youthful Offender Coalition for those who committed their crime under the age of 18 and Men Exploring Their Own Obstacles which addresses toxic masculinity, rape culture, and sexism. In addition to being the executive director, lead facilitator and circle keeper at The Transformational Prison Project, Armand is the Volunteer Development and Community Outreach Coordinator at Communities for Restorative Justice. He is a former coordinator for the Bridge Project at Everyday Boston, and now serves as advisor. He is also a member of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Roundtable on Racial Disparities in Massachusetts Courts and facilitates circles for first-year law students at Harvard Law School.
Sethu Laxmi Nair is a mediator, facilitator, coach, and trainer in the fields of alternative dispute resolution and restorative practices. Through her work, Sethu improves interpersonal and social dynamics by enhancing leadership capacity and conflict competence among leaders and groups. Currently, she serves as senior conflict resolution specialist at the Center for Creative Conflict Resolution within New York City government. A founding member of Hidden Water, Sethu facilitates restorative circles to heal the impact of child sexual abuse in the family system. Through the Center for Justice at Columbia, she also offers a foundational restorative practices training called “Responding Restoratively.” Through her private practice, Sethu consults with organizations, offering a unique blend of leadership coaching and restorative conflict management. Sethu has also worked with various human rights organizations in New York and India. Sethu is a graduate of SUNY Purchase and the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.
Saturday Afternoon Plenary
Seeding Justice: Possibilities, Tensions and Contradictions
Kumi Akua Owusu is a first generation Ghanian New Yorker. Born in the Bronx, Kumi grew up in various community spaces her parents could afford- both economically and energetically. This trend followed her as her lifestyle shifted to a single parent household throughout the two Westchester towns adjacent to NYC. Mount Vernon and Yonkers. While in these public school systems her natural curiosity for community, how stimulating care was and her mother helped her to stay involved in the city she grew up in. From the Pearl Program at the YWCA after school to the NAACP ACT-SO free high school based Competition - That spirit has never left. Kumi carried it with her in her 7 years since graduating from the public punishment school system. With a diverse background of learned lessons from various non profits, and food and retail establishments, political, art and business agencies she became an entrepreneur in 2020 and is now pka The Ultimate Kreative. It was on that journey, through her continued relationship with the NAACP that she encountered the How Our Lives Link Altogether - HOLLA Organization where she is currently interning in the second phase of their 24 month process. HOLLA is a nontraditional youth-centered grassroots community-based organization in New York City shaped by the revolutionary love of people impacted by the criminal justice (punishment) system. H.O.L.L.A!’s practice of Healing Justice stands on top of over 60 years of grassroots research and prison and community organizing which you can read about in their museum located in [insert assigned room]. It is through their study of the Non Traditional Approach to Criminal and Social Justice that she is enlightened to join us here today.
Danielle Sered envisioned, launched, and directs Common Justice. She leads the project’s efforts locally and nationally to develop and advance practical and groundbreaking solutions to violence that advance racial equity, meet the needs of those harmed, and do not rely on incarceration. Before planning the launch of Common Justice, Danielle served as the deputy director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Adolescent Reentry Initiative, a program for young men returning from incarceration on Rikers Island and worked at the Center for Court Innovation's Harlem Community Justice Center.
Danielle has been featured widely in the public conversation about mass incarceration and violence, including the Aspen Ideas Festival the Atlantic Magazine Summit on Race and Justice, in the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, on Democracy Now, NPR, and On Second Thought with Trevor Noah. Danielle is the author of The Other Side of Harm: Addressing Disparities in our Responses to Violence, Accounting for Violence: How to Increase Safety and Break Our Failed Reliance on Mass Incarceration, and the award-winning book Until We Reckon: Violence, Mass Incarceration, and a Road to Repair.
Robert Yazzie is a citizen of and Chief Justice Emeritus of the Navajo Nation. He served as Chief Justice from 1992 through 2003. He practiced law in the Navajo Nation for 16 years, and was a district judge for eight years. He was formerly the Director of the Diné Policy Institute of Diné College (Navajo Nation) developing policy using authentic Navajo thinking. He is a visiting professor at the University of New Mexico School of Law, an adjunct professor of the Department of Criminal Justice of Northern Arizona University, and a visiting member of the faculty of the National Judicial College. He recently taught Navajo law at the Crownpoint Institute of Technology.
Yazzie earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College of Ohio, and a Juris Doctor degree from the University of New Mexico School of Law. He is a member of the Navajo Nation Bar Association. He is the author of articles and book chapters on many subjects, including Navajo peacemaking, traditional Indian law, and international human rights law. Yazzie continues a career devoted to education in formal participation in faculties, lectures, and discussions of traditional indigenous law at various venues throughout the world. He has a global audience and he has frequently visited foreign lands to share his wisdom about traditional indigenous justice and governance.
Mimi Kim is a long-time advocate and activist in the anti-violence movement. In 2000, she co-founded Incite! to center radical feminists of color in challenging the intersection of state-based and interpersonal violence. In 2004, Mimi founded Creative Interventions in Oakland as a space to create community-based, collective, and non-police interventions to domestic and sexual violence or what is now known as transformative justice and community accountability. Mimi is an Associate Professor of Social Work at California State University, Long Beach and continues research, practice, and organizing for liberation here and now. Her latest projects include a non-law enforcement restorative justice project in Northern California and a re-launch of the StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP), a collaboration with Just Practice.
Martina Kartman dreams of a world rooted in joy, dignity and abundance. She is committed to supporting communities most impacted by interpersonal and state violence to have access to radical, unconditional love and healing. Her work is shaped by her own experiences as a young person on various sides of harm and the criminal legal system, and by her involvement with movements for anti-violence, racial justice, and abolition. Prior to joining Collective Justice, she provided support to survivors of violence and harm pursuing restorative justice, and legal and policy initiatives to better address the needs of people impacted by institutionalization. Martina is a recipient of the Open Society Foundation Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship, UW Bonderman Fellowship, Karin Stromberg Contribution to Social Justice, the Herring Phelps Award for Scholarly Activism, and the Meena Vashee Scholarship for Survivors. She holds a JD from the University of Washington School of Law, where she was a William H. Gates Public Service Law Scholar.
Sunday Morning Plenary
Addressing Conflict and Harm in Social Movements
John Page is a Seattle based racial justice organizer.
Shannon Perez-Darby is a founding member of the Accountable Communities Consortium, and is a queer, mixed Latina anti-violence advocate, author, activist, and consultant working to create the conditions to support loving, equitable relationships and communities. Shannon Perez-Darby centers queer and trans communities of color while working to address issues of domestic and sexual violence, accountability and abolition.