MEET OUR TEAM
This is our Horse Nations youth program.
These youth carry on our farming traditions, train other youth in the way of the farm and the horses, and also work in our hemp processing facility. they are remarkable and represent the future.
Winona LaDuke
RESEARCH DIRECTOR
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Harvard-educated economist, environmental activist, author, hemp Farmer, grandmother, and a two-time former Green Party Vice President candidate with Ralph Nader. LaDuke specializes in rural development, economic, food, and energy sovereignty and environmental justice. Living and working on the White Earth reservation in northern Minnesota, she co-founded Honor the Earth with The Indigo Girls 28 years ago, and has since founded Anishinaabe Agriculture Institute, Akiing, and Winona’s Hemp. These organizations develop and model cultural-based sustainable development strategies utilizing renewable energy and sustainable food systems.
Darren Klarer
HEMP PROJECT COORDINATOR
Kara Knowles
FARM AND HORSE PROGRAM COORDINATOR
Joni Mcspadden
Finance Coordinator
Tera Nowicki
Finance Director
Piarre Willson
Farm Manager
Miko
BOARD OF DIRECTORS
James Reents
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Jim’s interest in horses was an early basis for a lasting friendship with Winona LaDuke. She refers to him as “Cowboy”, a name he is honored to wear. He helped and supported the hose rides along the Lind 3 Route and taught some of the early horse clinics for native youth. Jim believes AAI’s continued emphasis on horses and youth development is an important aspect of the organization.
Jim is a retired architect and construction manager who has always had an interest in traditional construction materials and their uses today. During his professional career he worked in both the public and private sectors including a HUD Grant on Dinetah (the Navaho Nation) to use available natural materials to create self-help housing on Tribal Trust lands. The use of cannabis hemp in building materials and solar solutions are of great interest to Jim.
Tracy Strong
Joe Morales
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Joe Morales is half Yaqui Indian and half German, born in Virginia and raised in Southern California. Joe did not grow up with traditional teachings; his introduction to the Lakota way of life – the Good, Red Road – began at age 15. That’s when he met John Funmaker, a Lakota spiritual person, who helped Joe begin a journey that has taken him from protesting the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant in San Luis Obispo in 1981, to fighting against Line 3 while standing up for #LandBack, food sovereignty, treaty rights, and MMIWR in northern Minnesota today.
Joe has been a boots on the ground organizer for 40 years adding his skills to work for healing and social justice & climate justice. He worked to fight extractive industries starting in the early 1990’s against Peabody Coal mines up to today against such companies as Huber mill and Enbridge. Joe is also active in upholding treaty rights and landback efforts.
Over the last 42 years Joe has learned and been gifted the ceremonies and teachings he carries today. He firmly believes that sharing traditional ecological knowledge, traditional teachings, and ceremony with the Oyate (the people), regardless of their background, is vital to the healing of Maka Ina (Mother Earth).
Joe lives in Northern Mni’sota with his partner and son. They practice traditional ecological knowledge on the land that they care for and teach permaculture and wild tending/foraging. The land also serves as a place of ceremony and as a safe space for water protectors and those working against the black snake as well as Environmental Justice activists.
Edith Smith
Peter Ellis
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Coming Soon