Dennis Martinez

Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network – USA

For over 40 years, Dennis Martinez has contributed extensively to the cause of ecological and cultural restoration at the local, national and international levels. A community organizer, educational speaker and author, Martinez is recognized as a leader in bridging Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) with Western science. As co-director of the Takelma Intertribal Project, Martinez and Agnes “Grandma Aggie” Pilgrim (1924 – 2019) reestablished the annual Salmon Thanksgiving Ceremony after a 150 year absence! Formerly a board member of the Society for Ecological Restoration International (SER), Martinez is now Chair of the SER’s Indigenous Peoples’ Restoration Network, and has been involved with numerous other organizations and causes. 

Dennis grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, on a ranch where he experienced a “rich subsistence life.” Martinez closely identifies with an inter-tribal community of people in Southwestern Oregon who work to restore traditional lands and cultures. He currently lives in the Klamath Mountains of Northern California. There, Dennis’ ecological work starts on the ground, restoring forest ecosystems by utilizing controlled or prescribed burns, thinning and seeding trees, reestablishing native plants, maintaining prairie and savanna, and protecting aquatic habitat (successfully restoring coho salmon and steelhead runs) in Oregon and California.

Some of his best known work has been to facilitate events that incorporate teaching a better understanding of the “natural” world, and generate intercultural consensus on a variety of ecological and social-justice issues. Some of the issues he’s helped to tackle include indigenous land tenure, genetically modified organism (GMO) threats to traditional agriculture, and climate change. In 2001, Dennis Martinez was honored as a finalist for the “Ecotrust Indigenous Leadership Award in Conservation,” for his endeavors in building bridges betwixt ecological knowledge (TEK) and Native American cultural restoration.

Restoring the Rights of and Respect for Indigenous Cultures is not about some romantic return to the past; it is about the survival of all humans on planet Earth and it is about the recovery of the collective heritage of our species. We lose Native Wisdom at our peril! 

“Our approach is to empower local communities to do their own assessments.”
“Native Alaskans recognized that ice was thinning as early as the 1960s, whereas Western scientists didn’t acknowledge the problem until 1979.“
“There is no Indian word for wilderness because there was no wilderness.”

Bio: Native Perspectives
Article: “Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change”

Video 1: Interview
Video 2: View on Sustainability
Video 3: Bioneers Indigenous Knowledge