Plenary Session (Big Ten Room)

Plenary Session

Big Ten, Monday, 08:30

KEYNOTE

Whitney Gravelle
President, Executive Council, Bay Mills Indian Community

Whitney’s session will focus on the most pressing environmental topics in Michigan and beyond from the perspective of an indigenous community and role that environmental science and modelling can play in finding solutions to these challenges. She will discuss the importance of environmental justice and the importance of considering unique community backgrounds when working through environmental decision-making processes, with a special emphasis on Line 5. This will include conversation about the role treaty rights play in protecting the environment and cultural lifeways of indigenous people. She will also challenge the audience to think about the practices their community has used for years around sustainable land and natural resource use how that incorporating some of their concepts could resolve in a richer and more robust system.

Whitney Gravelle is a citizen of the Bay Mills Indian Community “Gnoozhekaaning” (Place of the Pike) in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. After graduating from Michigan State University College of Law in 2016 with a Juris Doctorate and a certificate from the Indigenous Law Program, Whitney worked for the Department of Justice with the Environment and Natural Resource Division in the Indian Resource Section, where she worked on cases related to the scope of tribal lands and jurisdiction, treaty rights, and the protection of lands held in trust for tribes and individual Indian lands. Whitney has also served as Chief Judge of Bay Mills Tribal Court where she worked on transforming restorative justice within her community, and again as In-House Counsel and attorney for Bay Mills Indian Community where she worked on a variety of legal issues that impact Indian Country, including the Indian Child Welfare Act. Currently, Whitney serves as President of the Executive Council on behalf of Bay Mills Indian Community; and sits serves as Chair of the Department of Interior’s Secretary’s Trial Advisory Committee and Commissioner on the Michigan Advisory Council on Environmental Justice.