Indigenous Futures Society was pleased to welcome last October new Board Member Austin Stevenot.

Austin Stevenot (Northern Sierra Mewuk) is a registered member of the California Valley Miwok Tribe, a cultural practitioner, and a restoration leader. He serves as Director of Tribal Engagement at River Partners, where he builds long-term guardianship-based partnerships with Tribal Nations to restore floodplains, rivers, and culturally important landscapes across California. His work is grounded in the understanding that ecological restoration is inseparable from the restoration of language, ceremony, and cultural continuity.

Alongside policy and land-stewardship work, Austin is active in revitalizing Miwok language and knowledge lifeways — supporting election governance processes, teaching and learning linguistic variants, collecting oral traditions, and integrating cultural authority into contemporary planning. He also serves on public panels and networks such as the Water Solutions Network and national climate forums, advancing Tribal-led models for climate resilience, blended capital, and co-stewardship.

A hunter, fisher, father, and artist, Austin’s practice is rooted in reciprocity and lived relationship to land. Whether drafting governance protocols, coordinating seed return and land-back projects, or speaking in national climate spaces, he works to ensure that Indigenous leadership is not invited as a voice — but recognized as a rightful source of direction for how California plans its future.