Jim Enote is a Zuni tribal member who has spent more than 40 years working to protect and steward cultural and natural resources. He is the CEO of the nonprofit Colorado Plateau Foundation that supports regional Native communities in protecting water and sacred places, ensuring food security, and preserving languages and ancestral knowledge. He has worked on projects for organizations such as UNESCO, UNDP, International Secretariat for Water, Nordic Council of Ministers, Tibet Child Nutrition Project, the Mountain Institute, National Geographic Society, U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. National Park Service, Zuni Tribe, and several major charitable foundations, museums, and universities. He has published extensively, including in Heritage In the Context of Globalization; Science, Technology, and Human Values; Sacredness as a Means to Conservation; Mapping Our Places; Indigenous People and Sustainable Development; A:shiwi A:wan Ulohnanne; and Redrock Stories.

Enote serves as the chair of the board of trustees for the Grand Canyon Trust and as a board member of the Trust for Mutual Understanding, and he sits on the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society. He has received the first Ames Prize for Innovative Museum Anthropology by the American Anthropological Association; the Guardian of Culture and Lifeways Award from the Association of Tribal Archives, Libraries, and Museums; and the Hewett Award for leadership and service to the New Mexico Museum.

Photo credit: Rucha Chitnis