FOR URBAN NATIVES BY URBAN NATIVES

Delfina Roybal (she/her) is of Diné, Mexican, and Jewish descent, born and raised on occupied Lenapehoking territory, also known as New York City. She is the Communications and Marketing Manager at Urban Indigenous Collective, where she leads visual branding, digital storytelling, and strategic outreach across all major initiatives from Indigenous Peoples Day NYC to the MMIWGT2S+ East Coast Summit.

Delfina is a land defender, water protector, and creative strategist who uses communications as a tool for organizing, healing, and visibility. She currently interns with the Water Protector Legal Collective, supporting their communications team. She also works with the New York Small Claims Advisory Service, helping underserved New Yorkers navigate housing, labor, and consumer disputes, and recently helped build out the legal infrastructure for Legal AI(d); a student-led app increasing access to legal information for low-income communities.

A Political Science major at Columbia University and recipient of the 2025 Phyllis Stevens Sharp Fellowship, Delfina is passionate about bridging the gap between law, storytelling, communications, and visual design. Looking toward the future, Delfina plans to pursue law school and earn her J.D., with the goal of continuing to build a career at the intersection of legal advocacy, current media, and communications.

[email protected]

Marianne Zhetot Kwe Almero is a first generation Potawatomi and Pilx MSW candidate at the Columbia School of Social Work. Marianne earned her Bachelor’s degree from UC Berkeley, where she researched art-therapy as treatment for PTSD in collectivist societies. Since her graduation in 2019, Marianne has worked in the mental health field as a strong means of support for youth struggling with addiction, self-harm, trauma, suicide attempts and ideation, eating disorders, mood dysregulation, psychosis, and other challenges surrounding mental health. 

For the past year, Marianne has used these experiences in the field to support the Urban Native community in New York City by providing mental health counseling and advocacy services. With the understanding of the relationship between mental health and oppressive systems that marginalize Native communities, Marianne also engages in social justice advocacy to decolonize education institutions, climate justice, incarceration and police systems, and health accessibility. 

Marianne is spending her last year of graduate school as an intern with Urban Indigenous Collective, developing programming on MMIP, direct-care mental health services, and community health initiatives. On her free days, you can find Marianne participating in local social justice initiatives, supporting local drag artists, exploring new music, foraging, and spending time with her loved ones.

 Austin is a member of the Chicoran Shakori tribe of South Carolina. Austin is descended from Indigenous and white sharecroppers on his mother’s side, and New York City Italian-American settlers on his father’s side. As part of the Great Migration of the 60s, Austin’s ancestors walked away from sharecropping alongside other peoples of color by migrating to the northeast “for the good union jobs”. Growing up as a Two-Spirit urban native in the Simsbury area of Hartford, Austin has found himself at powerful intersections between the forces of Technology and Globalization. During and after pursuing his degree in Technology and Globalization at NYU Gallatin, Austin continued to enhance his Product Design skills as the Chicoran Shakori Tribal Web Developer and the Lead Product Designer at Up2Code, ZED Aerospace, and Blue World Inc. While pursuing his degree at Gallatin, Austin worked for Apple at one of their HQ locations, and observed the structural changes presently roiling the global economy firsthand. Finding himself at another powerful global crossroads, Austin is currently focused on the intersections between Indigenous communities, Sustainability, and Product Design.

Primitiva Buesaquillo is a queer Quillasinga (Pasto) and Muiska (Sopó) woman, born on the traditional territories of the Arhuaco (Ika), Wiwa, Kogi, and Kankuamo peoples on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.

She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies with double minors in Psychology and Theater from Rutgers University–New Brunswick. While at Rutgers, she served as Treasurer for LLEGO: The LGBTQQIA People of Color Union and President of the RU Indigenous Turtle Island Club.

Primitiva is a multimedia artist and lifelong dancer and singer of Cumbia and Colombian folclórica. Her work is rooted in cultural memory, movement, and community connection.

She currently serves as the Events and Outreach Coordinator at Urban Indigenous Collective, supporting relationship-building across our community and ensuring our presence is felt at gatherings, powwows, and cultural events. She approaches this work with care, intention, and accountability to the people we serve.

Trini is Afro Indigenous of the Mattaponi and Pamunkey people from rural Virginia. She currently attends New York University and is based in Lenapehoking (NYC).

She is a multidisciplinary student of the world with her studies and work centering community-based research and translating the cultural experience of Black and Indigenous groups transfigure beyond often forsaken, soiled parameters into actual, tangible policy. She is passionate about discussions of CSA and SA among Black and Indigenous women/femmes and has aspirations of advocating for survivors of war crimes and human rights violations at an international level. She is a dedicated poet and essayist.

While much of her work would be academic, she has aspirations for cross-lingual modes of creative writing and storytelling.