For more than forty years, Brian Bibby has been involved with Native communities, families, and individuals, preserving and documenting their various cultural art forms, languages, and oral histories. He has taught at a number of institutions and conducted research at museums and archives across the nation. He has also served as a consultant and guest curator for many cultural and folk arts programs. His other books include The Fine Art of California Indian Basketry, Deeper Than Gold: A Guide to Indian Life in the Sierra Foothills, and Precious Cargo: California Indian Cradle Baskets and Childbirth Traditions.

Krystina Castella and Brian Boyl are a husband and wife team of designers, photographers, and avid hikers that consider nature to be a source of limitless inspiration. Both are professors at the Art Center College of Design and at UCLA.

Jean Melesaine is a Samoan American documentary writer-photographer based out of Oakland, California. Working with Silicon Valley De-Bug for over ten years, she was taught conscious photography from community members as a teenager. Her parents are from the villages of Moamoa and Faleali’li in Western Samoa. Jean’s photography and writings have been featured in places such as the Oakland Museum of California, and have earned a number of awards including the Tautai Arts Trust, an international residency for artists and writers.

Raj Jayadev is the cofounder of Silicon Valley De-Bug. His community organizing and writings about Silicon Valley have been featured in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, a PBS-aired documentary, and media outlets across the country. For his work lifting up personal experiences to impact public discourse around social, economic, and political issues, Jayadev has received numerous awards, including the MacArthur Fellowship and the Ashoka Fellowship. He lives in San Jose, California, with his wife and son.

Sherry L. Smith is a University Distinguished Professor of History (Emerita) at Southern Methodist University. A historian of the American West and Native America, Smith’s award-winning books include Hippies, Indians, and the Fight for Red Power and Reimagining Indians: Native Americans through Anglo Eyes, 1880–1940, both published by Oxford University Press. She is a former president of the Western History Association and received the Los Angeles Times Distinguished Fellowship at the Huntington Library, which supported research for Bohemians West. Smith has also been honored with fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, and Yale University. She lives in Moose, Wyoming, and Pasadena, California. Visit her website at sherrylsmith.com.

Gordon Lee Johnson, Cahuilla/Cupeño, lives and writes on the Pala Indian Reservation. A former newspaperman, he was last a columnist and feature writer for the Press-Enterprise, covering Southern California’s Inland Empire. He is the author of three books: Rez Dogs Eat Beans, Fast Cars and Frybread, and Bird Songs Don’t Lie.

Arisa White is a Cave Canem graduate poet and her work has been nominated for the NAACP Image Awards, California Book Awards, and Wheatley Book Awards. Her recent poetry collection You’re the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened was a nominee for the 29th Lambda Literary Awards. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates cultural events and artistic collaborations that center narratives of queer and trans people of color. She serves on the board of directors for Nomadic Press and is an assistant professor at Colby College. Visit her website at arisawhite.com.

Richard Schwartz is a historian and the author of Eccentrics, Heroes, and Cutthroats of Old Berkeley; Earthquake Exodus, 1906; Berkeley 1900; The Circle of Stones; and The Man Who Lit Lady Liberty. An outdoor enthusiast and animal lover, he worked on a Pennsylvania Dutch farm before heading west to find higher mountains. He now lives in Berkeley, California, where he works as a building contractor and documents early Native American sites in the Bay Area. Visit his website at richardschwartz.info.

Nicknamed “Mr. BART” by his colleagues, Michael C. Healy was responsible for BART’s media affairs and marketing activities from 1971—about ten months before trains started running—until his retirement in 2004. He wrote for radio and film and was the editor of the Sausalito News before taking a public relations job at the nascent transit agency. He is an alumnus of the University of Southern California.