Elsie DuBray

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Elsie lives on a buffalo ranch on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. Elsie is Oohenunpa Lakota on her father Fred DuBray’s side, and is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe. She also comes from the Mandan Hidatsa and Arikara Nation on her mother Michelle Fredericks-DuBray’s side. Elsie is a junior at Stanford University majoring in Human Biology with a concentration in the biochemical applications in the holistic health and wellbeing of Indigenous communities. She is also pursuing a minor in Native American Studies. Elsie’s passion for science and desire to address disparate health outcomes led to her research into the health benefits of grass-fed buffalo meat. Her research is most important to her because of the potential it has to contribute to ongoing efforts of health restoration in Indigenous communities. Elsie and her dad Fred were featured in Gather (2020), a film highlighting Native food sovereignty across what is now known as the United States. While adjusting to her first year at Stanford, she was able to apply her research to larger concepts of holistic health and wellness in Native communities. She is currently engaging in this work through conversations on Native food sovereignty, as it is urgent and beautifully encapsulates holistic Indigenous health wellbeing. Inspired and empowered by her father, Elsie dedicates her life to helping bring back the Buffalo with honor and integrity for the sake of the People, Buffalo, and Land.

Plenary Panel

Wednesday November 11 – 12:00 – 2:00 PM MDT

There is already vast knowledge in our collective histories to guide us out of climate disaster, racial inequity, and land degradation. This panel will include discussion among Indigenous and BIPOC leaders of ways we can reframe our relationship to land and how we can work together to heal soils and other natural systems, grow healthy crops and livestock, and along the way also heal ourselves. We will explore the reintroduction of Indigenous frameworks for psychological connection and relationship with our lands, with a focus on recognizing and dismantling the current extractive systems and structures that continue to colonize the minds of land stewards.