Our Team
Staff
Samantha Morales-Johnson (Tongva, she/her) is Land Return Coordinator of the TTPC, a science illustrator, and ethnobotanist. Alongside her mom, Kimberly, she started the Protect White Sage digital campaign to protect Grandmother White Sage. She has a BA in Marine Biology from CSU Puvungna and has been adapting her ecological knowledge to work with Tongva ethnobotany she grew up with to handle advanced ecological problems that come with land return from non-native species to native species in the midst of climate change.
Cheyenne Reynoso (Choctaw, Cherokee, Muscogee, and Mexican descent, she/her)is the TTPC’s Administrative Coordinator. She recently obtained her Master’s in American Indian Studies from UCLA. Her thesis focuses on the creation and transformational work of The Tongva Taraxat Paxaava Conservancy and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust. She will be a legal apprentice with the Land Clinic training to become a lawyer in Tovaangar focusing on land back.
Ian Schiffer (kuuy/guest, he/they) is the TTPC’s Resource Mobilizer and land return practitioner. Through relationship and on teams, he works to support release of resources and return of land in service of rematriation. He will be becoming a lawyer through apprenticeship with the Land Clinic to support the TTPC’s legal needs.
Jay Lamars (Tongva, he/him) is the newest addition to the TTPC’s staff as our Manager of Social Media. He is a photographer/filmmaker and multi-faceted artist. In the summer of 2023, he joined the Paddle to Muckleshoot journey as a Tiat crew member and documentary filmmaker. With an upcoming documentary on the way, he will be at the helm of our social media channels and is designing the website you're looking at now!
Kimberly Morales Johnson (Tongva, she/her) is co-founder and Executive Director of the TTPC and an active member and tribal secretary of the Gabrieleno / Tongva San Gabriel Band of Mission Indians, where she maintains tribal traditions and continuity and is dedicated to the preservation and continuance of Native American culture and tradition through future generations. She’s a PhD student at UC Davis in Native American Studies and a Native American community elected commissioner for the LA City/County Native American Indian Commission.
Board of Directors
Wallace Cleaves (Tongva, he/him) is the President and co-founder of the TTPC, Associate Professor of Teaching, Director of the CA Center for Native Nations, and Associate Writing Program Director at UCR. He has served in many positions on the Tribal Council and the Kuruvungna Springs Foundation. He wrote an article called “Native Land Acknowledgments Are Not the Same As Land.”
Anmarie Ramona Mendoza (she/her) is a board member of the TTPC and is a Tongva community member born and raised in the San Gabriel Valley. Annie is a PhD candidate at UCLA who focuses on the barriers and opportunities that local Native people face in participating in proposed water planning in Los Angeles. She is the co-creator and director of the "Aqueduct Between Us," a five-part social justice multimedia radical oral history documentary that aims to educate the people of Los Angeles about the water from an Indigenous historical and political perspective. Her love for water in Los Angeles guides her current work to lead an Indigenous water planning effort for the Los Angeles River.
Photo credit: Jean Melesaine
