PISACON 25 Keynote Speakers

Santino (Tino) Camacho (he/they), Grandson of Eduardo G. Camacho (familian Camacho) and Irene W. Sgambelluri Camacho (familian Desa), is a Gela', CHamoru artist and Indigenous health scholar from the village of Tamuneng on the island of Guåhan. Tino has spent their last 10 years in Seattle where they have worked closely with Pasifika communities, largely with Queer and Transgender Pacific Islanders (QTPI). They are a co-founding member of the Guma' Gela' Queer and Trans CHamoru Art Collective and a current board member of the United Territories of Pacific Islander's Alliance of Washington. In these spaces Tino has dedicated their time to support QTPI community through collaboration on community-based research, policy action, and development of safer cultural spaces for Queer and Trans CHamorus to practice and express their culture.

Tino is also a triple dawg and life-long husky who achieved a Bachelors of Science in Psychology and Masters of Public Health at the University of Washington and is currently a PhD Candidate at the University of Washington's School of Social Work. As a social work and Indigenous health scholar, Tino's work has focused on co-developing, with QTPI communities, culturally grounded health promotion models and practices to promote QTPI healing from colonial harm through storytelling and ceremony. Through their research and community work, they were selected for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Health Policy Research Scholars program, a national program to train and develop underrepresented and marginalized scholars into policy leaders to advance health equity for all marginalized communities.

Tino is also an artist, and their creative work explores love, intimacy, and healing amidst grief and loss to imagine and generate futures where Queer and Trans CHamorus and QTPI find belonging and are connectedness to their families, communities, ancestors, and lands. Through their collective works, they hope to provide spaces and opportunities of healing and liberation for QTPI.

Suluafi Brianna Fruean is a Samoan climate activist who has been leading grassroots climate justice movements for most of her life. She is the youth representative of the Pacific Climate Warriors Council of Elders and is currently studying Politics and International Relations in Auckland, New Zealand. At 11, she became a founding member of 350 Samoa, becoming the youngest 350.org country coordinator. In 2019, Brianna joined New Zealand’s School Strikers who organized Auckland’s “Schools Strikes for Climate”, where 170,000 people joined the movement. The same year, Brianna gave a speech at the “Caring for Climate” Meeting, alongside former United States Secretary of State, John Kerry. She was also the youth representative and speaker during the COP25 High-Level Plenary Session on “Climate Emergency”. Brianna was chosen by the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Programme (SPREP) as their first ever youth ambassador in recognition of her efforts to include young people in environmental conservation, and the youth representative in the COP21 Samoan Delegation COP21 and the Paris Agreement negotiations.