2024 Speakers

The Keynote

Subhankar Banerjee

A photographer, writer, curator and conservationist. He is a professor of Art & Ecology and director of the Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities at the University of New Mexico. Since 2002, he has been working closely with Indigenous Gwich’in and Iñupiat elders (who are among his most important teachers), scientists and conservationists in Alaska. He is the author of Seasons of Life and Land: Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and the editor of Arctic Voices: Resistance at the Tipping Point.

His photographs have been exhibited in more than fifty museums around the world, including the 18th Biennale of Sydney, the Anchorage Museum, and the University of Alaska Museum of the North. He most recently served as the director and cocurator (with Dr. Jennifer Garcia Peacock) of “a Library, a Classroom, and the World,” a project for the 2022 Venice Biennale art exhibition Personal Structures organized by the European Cultural Centre in Venice, Italy. He has received a number of conservation awards for his contribution to conservation of Alaska’s Arctic and Indigenous rights, including an inaugural Greenleaf Artist Award from the United Nations Environment Programme; a National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation and a Special Achievement Award from the Sierra Club; a Housberg Award from the Alaska Conservation Foundation; and was named an Arctic Hero by the Alaska Wilderness League. Subhankar is currently working on a book on the global history of shorebirds.

The Net Loft Presenter

Kim McNett

Having a life-long fascination with the natural world, Kim received a Bachelor of Science from The Evergreen State College in her home state of Washington before moving to coastal Alaska in 2009. Her work as an environmental educator, sea kayak guide, and fisheries observer led to an intimate understanding of the local ecosystems and allowed Kim to develop her professional niche as an artist.

At the perennial heart of Kim’s work is her practice of keeping a nature journal to document her explorations, which have taken her across the vast and remote reaches of Alaska. Along with her partner Bjorn Olson, she has traversed thousands of roadless miles in both summer and winter by fatbike, packraft and sea kayak.

International Presenter

Bianca Bosarreyes from Guatemala

Coordinator of the Sipacate chapter at the Foundation for EcoDevelopment and Conservation FUNDAECO and Researcher at the Eastern Regional Centre from the National Public University (Centro regional de Zacapa de la Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, CUNZAC)
Biologist; thirteen years of experience in management and monitoring birds; researcher for several local NGO´s and governmental institutions like San Carlos University, the National Secretary of Science and Technology Development; Consultant for many natural private reserves and development of environmental impact assessment including hydroelectric and wind energy projects; since 2018 working on marine-coastal issues specifically with shorebirds; associate researcher in projects such as Telemetry Study with Quetzal, birdlife inventories in Dry Forest, pollinators in melon crops and National Quetzal Conservation Strategy; experience un in hydroelectric, wind farms and oil palm biodiversity monitoring projects.

Amy-Claire Huestis & Kim Trainor

Amy-Claire Huestis lives and works on Coast Salish territories on the Fraser River in British Columbia, where she teaches at Kwantlen Polytechnic University and makes artworks through ritual and attention to the landscape over time, thinking through how we might live better with more-than-human kin.  Her work is experimental and community-oriented; some of her collaborators, partnerships, and programs have included North Pacific Cannery Museum, Aadmsteti: Stinging Nettle Net, Time Lapse Dance, Henry Andersen Elementary School, Birds Canada, and UCLA Art/Science Center.

Kim Trainor is the granddaughter of an Irish banjo player and a Polish faller who worked in logging camps around Port Alberni in the 1930s. Ledi was a finalist for the 2019 Raymond Souster Award. A blueprint for survival appeared with Guernica Editions in Spring 2024. She lives in Vancouver, ancestral, unceded homelands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Skwxwú7mesh, and səlil̓ilw̓ətaʔɬ Nations. www.kimtrainor.ca