Jakob Foley

Jakob was raised in a small town in Kansas, with ancestral roots (Yup’ik) to Alaska. Spending more time with plants than people as a child, he naturally moved out to the Pacific Northwest in
2019, for environmental work in the pine-forested mountains of Montana, Oregon, and Washington. For the past few years he has been rooted in Portland, Oregon, balancing focus between university studies and his current career as an environmental educator.

Beginning as a Green Leader intern for the Native American nonprofit organization Friends of Tryon Creek, he since has been writing curriculum and leading groups of students aged 4-19 in lessons in English and Spanish on topics such as navigation, geography, plant identification, land tending, Indigenous ecological practices, place-based history, and river habitat health.

Jakob is an alumni of the Where There Be Dragons Andes & Amazon Semester, and a scholarship recipient of the Carpe Mundi program. In between work seasons, he is a student of Music & Sonic Arts at Portland Community College, as well as Indigenous Nations Studies at Portland State University. He believes language study and cultural exchange are important parts
of being human and sharing our Earth.

Passionate about modern Indigenous resilience and generational healing, he seeks to bridge cultural gaps and transform cycles of racism, gender discrimination, and cultural assimilation
through sharing music, conversation, and history that often isn’t encountered in schools.

His pastimes include performing in a band, hiking/camping, reading draconic fantasy novels (coincidentally), baking sweet treats, and visiting family.