Association of Academic Museums and Galleries

Join us for Sustainability Now! and hear from our exciting keynotes!

Darren Parry is the former Chairman of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation and currently serves as head of development for the tribe. His passion is to ensure that the history and traditions of his people are never forgotten and to find reconciliation and healing through dialogue and learning. This passion has led him to facilitate the purchase of land where his ancestors once called home during winters, just north of the Utah-Idaho border, and where the most deadly massacre of Native people in the history of the United States occurred, The Bear River Massacre (1863). This land will soon be home to the Northwest Band of the Shoshone Nation Boa Ogoi Cultural Interpretive Center and will feature an amphitheater and extensive ecological restoration to turn the land back to the natural habitat that would have existed prior to pioneer farming. (Boa Ogoi means Big River in the Shoshone language). Also known as the So-so-goi, “those who travel on foot,” knowledge of local plants and animals was an important to his ancestor’s survival. Parry has worked extensively with Utah State University’s graduate students and faculty in the Climate Adaptation Science program as well as watershed and wildland sciences to carefully plan the restoration of the ecology, using his grandmother’s, Mae Timbimboo Parry, detailed records of native plants and species that were utilized by the tribe. 

Parry meets with the school groups, college classes and community groups regularly to share the tribe’s story with messages of kindness and to understand that history is owned by those who tell it. He serves on the Board of Directors for the American West Heritage Center, the Utah State Museum Board, the Community Advisory Board for the Huntsman Cancer Institute, the American Indian Services Board, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art Advisory Board, and Weber State Universities National Advisory Council and he is the author of “The Bear River Massacre: A Shoshone History.” He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Secondary Education, with an emphasis on History, from Weber State University.

Darren will be our kickoff to this year’s AAMG Annual Conference speaking in person on June 14th, at 3:30PM MST.

Michael Peter Edson is a strategist, consultant, and thought leader at the forefront of digital transformation in the cultural sector. Michael was the Director of Web and New Media Strategy for the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s largest museum and research complex, and co-founder of the Museum of the United Nations – UN Live, a newly emerging institution designed to catalyze global change from the bottom-up.

During 25 years at the Smithsonian (where his first job was cleaning Plexiglass for exhibitions) Michael worked on numerous award-winning projects and was involved in practically every aspect of technology and New Media for museums. In addition to leading the development of the Smithsonian’s first Web and New Media Strategy, first blog, and the first Alternative Reality Game to take place in a museum, Michael has been a forceful advocate for open content and the cultural commons.

Michael is a Salzburg Global Fellow; a Fellow at the Getty Leadership Institute; a Presidential Distinguished Fellow emeritus at the Council for Libraries and Information Resources (USA); and a juror for the MacArthur Foundation’s $100 million grant initiative, $100 & Change, and Cumulus Green, a global design competition for solutions to the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations. Michael is an O’Reilly Foo Camp alumni and he was named a “Tech Titan: person to watch” by Washingtonian magazine. Michael Chairs the Europeana Foundation Advisory Board, is an O’Reilly Foo Camp alumni, and was named a “Tech Titan: person to watch” by Washingtonian magazine.

Taking the floor to start off the first full day of this year’s conference, Michael will be speaking virtually on Wednesday, June 15th at 9:00am MST.

Farhana Yamin is an internationally recognized environmental lawyer, climate change and development policy expert. She has advised leaders and ministers on UN climate negotiations for 30 years, representing small islands and developing countries and attending nearly every major climate summit since 1991. In addition to founding Track 0, she is an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, a Director of Impatience, Senior Advisor to SYSTEMIQ, a FRSA and Visiting Professor at University of the Arts, London, and deputy chair of the Climate Vulnerable Forum expert advisory group. She is currently the Coordinator of the Climate Justice & Just Transition Donor Collaborative Project – a project bringing together some of the world’s largest private philanthropies on an educational journey about how to tackle systemic inequalities through intersectional solutions.

She was voted Number 2 on the 2020 BBC’s Power List with the judges describing her a “powerhouse of climate justice” and is active in numerous community-based initiatives and social justice movements. She is a columnist at Business Green and appears regularly in the media. She trained as an outdoor education leader and did a number of courses on nature connection, including how to support racialized minorities to access & enjoy green spaces.

From 2013 – 2018, she was an Advisor to the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) and advisor of the Expert Group of Advisors to the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a coalition of 55 of the world’s most vulnerable countries, that played a key role in the 2015 Paris Agreement negotiations. The campaigning NGO she founded, Track 0, is widely credited with getting the goal of net zero emissions by mid-century into the Paris Agreement through strategic communications and behind the scenes political and diplomatic coalition-building. She has worked with larger developing countries on climate and development policy issues including China, India, South Africa and Brazil. As an academic, she has published numerous books and articles on the intersection of climate change & social justice. At the Glasgow UN Climate Summit (COP26) she was an advisor to the Government of Bangladesh, led the Climate Vulnerable Forum and worked behind the scenes with climate justice activists, Indigenous Peoples, the Scottish Government and foundations who collectively secured a historic first commitment to funding loss and damage in the Global South. 

She has taught in UK universities for 30 years including as a Visiting Professor at University College London and now at UAL. She stepped back from UN negotiations in 2018 to focus on non-violent civil disobedience and social justice movements. As Political Coordinator of Extinction Rebellion for a year, she played a key role in XR April 2019 protests, gluing herself to the Shell HQ offices in London, alongside thousands of other activists. She is a champion of community-based action and is Chair of Bigbury Net-Zero, Devon, and also co-founded Camden Think and Do as ways to experiment with radical inclusion and concepts of social & spatial justice by supporting communities create “pop up” actions hubs in urban and rural settings.  She also sits as an expert on various Commissions including Camden Renewal Commission and IPPR’s Commission on Environmental Justice. She serves as trustee or an advisor to several organizations’ working on the intersection of social, racial and ecological justice, including the Tate Modern and Julie’s Bicycle, an organization working on supporting artists and the cultural sector tackle climate justice and sustainability. 

Farhana is championing climate justice and just transition as central organising principles in the UN Climate change negotiations. In October 2021, she published a “Manifesto for Justice for COP26 and beyond” in The World Today advocating that equality and fairness must be at the heart of all future climate change talks to allow those hardest hit by global warming to have a say in their future.

Helping us start up our last day of conference proceedings, Farhana will address us all virtually on Thursday, June 16th at 9:00am MST.