Advisory Board
Our Advisory Board is composed of a distinguished group of leaders, scientists, and knowledge keepers whose collective expertise bridges Indigenous and Western sciences to protect life for generations to come. Representing a powerful alliance of traditional leadership, cultural stewardship, and global scientific achievement, our board includes respected Oglala Lakota chiefs and elders, internationally recognized geneticists, and conservation pioneers. Together, they guide our mission to preserve the Horse Nation as a keystone species, advance sustainability for all life, and create pathways where traditional knowledge and cutting-edge research unite. Their combined wisdom—rooted in ceremony, community, and rigorous scientific discovery—ensures that our work honors the past, serves the present, and safeguards the future for the next seven generations and beyond.
Chief Joe American Horse, PhD
Mila Hunska Tašunke Icu
Chief Joe American Horse is Headman for the American Horse tiospaye, and the grandson of Chief American Horse. He is an enrolled member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe who has dedicated his life to serving his people and protecting life. He has served as Vice-President of the Oglala Sioux Tribe (1972-1974) and (1980-1982), Oglala Sioux Tribal President (1982-1984) and (1986-1988), Tribal Judge (1989-1990) and (1993-2004), Oglala Supreme Court Justice (2006-2012), Director of Oglala Lakota College (2009-2023) and Chairman of Taku Skan Skan Wasakliyapi: Global Institute for Traditional Sciences (GIFTS) (2022 – present). He also led a European and United Nations mission for the Black Hills Claim as a Sovereign First Nation in 1983 during his tribal presidency. He has served as a co-author for numerous scientific publications, and was a recipient of the 2024 Newcomb Cleveland Prize by The American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 2024. He was awarded his honorary doctorate from University of Colorado Boulder in May 2025. Chief American Horse is known for his compassionate and collaborative spirit, his dedication to the preservation of Lakota sciences, tradition and ceremony, and his dedication to creating transformative educational opportunities and experiences for youth. He supports Indigenous scholars and has spearheaded the call for a new path forward in the sciences that creates a place of alignment allowing the best of Indigenous and Western science to join together for the preservation of life for the next seven generations and beyond. Chief Joe American Horse is dedicated to establishing a sustainable future for the Horse Nation as a keystone species in conservation and ensuring that their positioning in the Black Hills and around the world reflects their true history and significance.
Chief Harold Left Heron humbly holds, protects and carries the traditions, leadership and ceremonial responsibilities appropriate of his lineage and commitment to the Oyate. Chief Left Heron learned his language, culture and traditions within his community and was raised in a family that valued and cultivated Lakota horse husbandry and related sciences. He has held various traditional and tribal IRA government leadership and management roles throughout his career for the purpose of protecting the Lakota Oyate, tiospaye governance structure, sacred sites, He’Sapa (the Black Hills), land stewardship, species protection, language preservation and Lakota lifeways. He has helped to lead educational and scientific research initiatives to protect life by incorporating and bringing forward traditional sciences aligned with Lakota protocols for the protection of knowledge. Chief Left Heron currently serves in the Oglala Sioux Tribe (OST) Natural Resources Department and he has also served in the following elected tribal leadership positions for the Oglala Sioux Tribe: Fifth Member (1986 to 1988), Vice President (1988 to 1990) and Tribal President (1990 to 1992). Among his many other positions, he has also served as Executive Director of the Oglala Sioux Parks & Recreation Authority (2012 to 2017), Program Manager for the OST Safety of Dams (2007 to 2012), Land Coordinator for the OST Land Committee (2005 to 2007) and Chief of Police (2002 to 2003). He is a recognized leader in successfully partnering with federal and tribal agencies on government land, resource and wildlife management initiatives. His research has been featured in Science, and he was a recipient of the 2024 Newcomb Cleveland Award. Chief Left Heron is dedicated to helping restore language, custom, governance, economics and social systems with relative Canadian bands. He dedicates his prayer and life’s work to the unification of the Očeti Sakowin, and to all of his relations for the next seven generations and beyond. He is a loving father, grandfather and great-grandfather.
Chief Harold Left Heron
Akil Nujipi
Dr. Oliver Ryder
Dr. Oliver Ryder serves San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance as the Kleberg Endowed Director of Conservation Genetics. He oversees research activities in the areas of molecular genetics, genomic studies, and genetic rescue efforts, including stem cell applications – all focused on reducing extinction risk and contributing to species recovery and sustainable populations. He guides the strategic development of efforts to develop and expand a global network of cryobanking facilities, especially for viable tissue culture cells as Co-chair of the newly formed Animal Biobanking for Conservation Specialist Group of SSC-IUCN. Oliver has contributed to key studies relevant to conservation management efforts for gorillas, California condors, African rhinos, Przewalski’s horses, Anegada iguanas, bighorn sheep, and other species. He participates in developing studies that link conservation efforts for small managed populations of wildlife under human care with larger landscape scale efforts for wildlife populations in native habitat. He was co-organizer of the Genome 10K project, is a member of the Steering Committee for the Vertebrate Genome Project and a member of the Earth Biogenome Project’s Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues Committee. Oliver earned his BA in Biology from the University of California, Riverside, and his PhD in Biology from the University of California, San Diego, where he now serves as Adjunct Professor in the Department of Evolution, Behavior and Ecology. Oliver is an AAAS fellow, recognized for contributions to understanding and conserving genetic diversity. His scientific achievements in animal health and species conservation have been recognized by the American Association of Zoo Veterinarians, the Association of Zoos and Aquariums. Oliver has been a consistent contributor to science-based efforts to conserve the legacy of life on Earth.
Dr. Yvette Running Horse Collin is honored to serve as the Executive Director and Principal Science Officer for Taku Skan Skan Waskliyapi: The Global Institute for Traditional Sciences (“GIFTS”), a Lakota-led, 501C(3) South Dakota non-profit institution that focuses on high-level, cross-scientific collaborations to preserve life. She is an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation (Oglala Sioux Tribe). Her post-doctoral genomics research on the horse has been published and reported in numerous journals and media around the world. Her most recent paper, “Sustainability insights from Late Pleistocene climate change and horse migration patterns” received the May 15, 2025 cover of Science Journal. Her Lakota collaboratively-led paper entitled, “Early Dispersal of Domestic Horses into the Great Plains and Northern Rockies” combined both Indigenous and Western sciences and was the cover article selected for the March 31, 2023 issue of Science Journal. It was subsequently awarded the 2024 Newcomb Cleveland Prize by The American Association for the Advancement of Science in February 2024. Dr. Running Horse Collin received a University Medal from Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse, France for her cross-cultural and collaborative scientific leadership in helping to unite a global team of 87 scientists across 66 institutions representing more than 30 countries while completing her post-doctoral work in Europe under an European Union-sponsored, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Action Fellowship. She has received numerous prestigious scholarships and fellowships, and she currently serves on the Board of Reviewing Editors (BoRE) for Science magazine. Dr. Running Horse Collin is a graduate of The Johns Hopkins University, New York University, and the University of Fairbanks Alaska, (Phi Beta Kappa, Golden Key). She completed her post-doctoral work in ancient genomics at Paul Sabatier University of Toulouse, France with the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse (CAGT). She is the founder and curator of Sacred Way Sanctuary, a National Park Service award-winning Native American horse sanctuary, interactive museum, and horse research center, which is home to more than 100 horses of lineages kept historically by indigenous peoples in the United States, Canada and Mexico. She is a daughter, granddaughter, wife, mother and grandmother. She practices her People’s traditional ways, and has been formally trained in Lakota sciences and spiritual and cultural lifeways by her Elder knowledge keepers for decades. She strives to create safe places for elders and youth to transfer knowledge by adhering to all traditional protocols and implementing Lakota sciences to ensure sustainability for at least the next seven generations.
Dr. Yvette Running Horse Collin
Tašunke Iyanke Win
Ludovic Orlando
Ludovic Orlando was born the year when the first DNA molecule was sequenced. Trained as a molecular biologist, he is fascinated by the constant evolutionary movement of life, transforming species, people and cultures. He is a world-renown expert in ancient DNA and evolutionary genomics, who spent the last decade developing cross-cultural collaborations around the world, and combining genetics, archeology and history, to rewrite the genomic history of horse domestication. He is the founding director the Centre for Anthropobiology and Genomics of Toulouse (CAGT), a joint, multidisciplinary research centre between the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and University of Toulouse (France). Some of his achievements include leading international teams that have accomplished the following: Bridged western and Indigenous science by revisiting the history of First Nations horses [Science 2023, Science 2025], mapped the horse [Science 2018, Nature 2021, Nature 2024] and donkey [Science 2022] domestication homelands, reconstructed the genomic history of horse domestication [Science 2017, Cell 2019], described the first ancient epigenome [Genome Research 2014, Science 2014], sequenced the first Middle Pleistocene genome [Nature 2013], and tracked genetic consequences of the last great Megafauna extinction [Nature 2011]. In addition, he contributed to the international teams that tracked the consequences of climate change in the Arctic [Nature 2014, Nature 2016, Nature 2020, Nature 2024] and Sequenced 2000+ ancient human genomes [Nature 2014ab, Nature.) Dr. Orlando has been awarded several internationally recognized scientific prizes, including the CNRS Silver Medal (2023), the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize (2024), and the Prix Charles-Léopold Mayer (2024) from the French Academy of Sciences.