Speakers Bureau

Cathryn Chudy is a retired therapist and environmental activist, on the board of the Oregon Conservancy Foundation (OCF), a regional nonprofit foundation that works to keep fossil fuels in the ground, to oppose the resurgence of nuclear power and its Small Modular Nuclear Reactor (SMNR) designs, and promote the use of clean renewable energy, energy efficiency and energy conservation applications. She is also with the SW WA Alliance for Community Engagement and the Sierra Club’s SW WA Beyond Fossil Fuels task force in Vancouver, WA.

Cager Clabaugh has worked since 1993 for ILWU Local 4, serving as president from…He is currently… Clabaugh was an outspoken critic of–and helped mobilize labor unions to resist–the proposed Tesoro-Savage oil terminal, which would have been the largest oil terminal in North America. Watch an interview with him here.

Robert Collin has been an environmental scholar and activist since 1986, writing among the earliest EJ publications in articles, book chapters (one on reparations in Robert Bullard’s 2006 book The Quest for Environmental Justice: Human Rights and the Politics of Pollution), and encyclopedias. He is active as a collaborative founder of the Coalition for Environmental Justice CAER at the University of Oregon from 1993-2004 and was appointed to Gov. John Kitzhaber’s Environmental Equity Commission, the founding appointment to the first legislatively created EJ state agency – Environmental Justice Task Force at which he spent eleven years. Professor Collin was one of two EJ expert witness’s recognized in Federal Court in the Spokane Midnite mine uranium superfund cleanup settlement. 

Rachel Cushman is an enrolled citizen of the Chinook Indian Nation, where she/yaka is both an elected and hereditary leader. In 2017, Cushman was elected to the Chinook Tribal Council, but her role as a leader stems from her ancestor, Clatsop Tyee Wasilta. Cushman is an Indigenous knowledge practitioner, activist, educator, and canoe skipper. For over twenty years, Cushman has fought to protect Chinook and Indigenous lands, waters, rights, and sovereignty. She/yaka is a published scholar and a world-renowned expert on Chinook history and politics. Her/yaka scholarship engages with the resurgence of Indigenous ways of being/knowing, non-colonial economies, and Indigenous land stewardship, as well as the praxis of radical sovereignty. Currently, Cushman is pursuing a Doctoral Degree in Indigenous, Race, and Ethnic Studies at the University of Oregon.

Barbara Ford is a retired clinical social worker, a student of and collaborator with the groundbreaking eco-psychologist Johanna Macy, a longtime climate justice activist/artivist who is a longtime volunteer with 350PDX, helping to create art-based actions and develop resilience training for climate justice. She is a painter and singer/songwriter and poet, who publishes in Medium, you can find out more about her work here.

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