Background and Vision
Amy Bowers Cordalis and Daniel Cordalis established R2R in 2020 to serve the natural and cultural resource needs of Indigenous communities. Amy is a Yurok Tribal member, attorney, and fisherwoman whose family still lives at the village of Rek-Woi at the mouth of the Klamath River. Daniel is Diné and an attorney whose family has advocated for environmental protections on the Navajo Nation for decades. They each have extensive experience working on complex Indian and natural resource law and policy issues. They have served in leadership roles in tribal, state, and federal governments, and as board members on national conservation organizations. Amy and Daniel saw a need to provide more legal, policy, and advocacy support for natural resource management in Indian Country.
R2R’s mission is to help fill this need by supporting Indigenous governments and communities in pursuit of their cultural and natural resource objectives. R2R works in partnership with Indigenous Peoples to advance their cultural and natural resource interests through legal and policy advocacy.
AMY BOWERS CORDALIS (Yurok)
Co-Principal
Amy Bowers Cordalis is a mother, fisherwoman, attorney, and member of the Yurok Tribe. She served her Tribe as General Counsel and was a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund.
Amy’s family is from the village of Rek-Woi at the mouth of the Klamath River in Northern California. Since colonization, every generation of Amy’s family has fought for Yurok Rights. Her family’s Supreme Court case, Mattz v. Arnett, reaffirmed the status of the Yurok Reservation as Indian Country, laying the foundation for the exercise of the Tribe’s sovereignty and the enjoyment of its federally reserved water and fishing rights. Amy continues her family legacy by focusing her work on Klamath River restoration, including dam removal, water rights, and fisheries issues.
DANIEL CORDALIS (Diné)
Co-Principal
Daniel Cordalis is a member of the Navajo Nation who grew up within the four sacred mountains in Southwest Colorado. Daniel is an attorney who has nearly two decades of experience working with Tribes to protect their water, natural, and cultural resources through litigation, resource negotiations, land acquisition, and tribal governance and land management initiatives. His family has fought for environmental protections on the Navajo Reservation since the late 1980s, successfully fighting off a medical waste dump in their community, and they continue to advocate for environmental and sustainable development practices throughout the Navajo Nation.
Daniel has served in an appointed role within the Department of Interior, as an attorney at Earthjustice, as a clerk for the late Justice Greg Hobbs in the Colorado Supreme Court, as a clerk with the Native American Rights Fund, a research assistant for Charles Wilkinson, and worked as a legislative associate for the National Congress of American Indians in Washington, D.C. Prior to working on policy issues, Daniel obtained a Master’s degree from the University of Colorado, Boulder, studying alpine hydrology; a way to combine his background and interests in physical science and spending as much time as possible recreating and learning in the mountains. With Amy, Daniel is raising three boys who will embrace the world from the mountain and desert ridges to the river riffles their families have lived with since the beginning of time.
MOLLI MYERS (Karuk)
Vice-Principal Operations
Vice-Principal of Operations Molli Myers is a Karuk Tribal member, raised at the village of Vuunharaáx, near the place where the mouth of the Salmon River meets the Klamath.
For over two decades, Molli has worked on the campaign to remove the Klamath River Dams, helping to form the grassroots organization known as the Klamath Justice Coalition. During that time, Molli also worked in Tribal natural resources administration, operations, and grants compliance roles. Molli brings to R2R her extensive understanding of and experience in organizational development and management, as well as generations of traditional and cultural knowledge.
Molli comes from a family and community that emphasized her inherent responsibility as a steward of the land and a fix-the-world person. Together with her husband, Frankie, they continue seeking protection and preservation of ancestral lands and cultural resources, while raising their five children to carry on the tradition.
LENA NEUNER (Karuk)
Intern
Lena Marie Neuner is a Karuk Tribal member and Yurok descendant from Orleans, California. She is in her last semester of law school at Arizona State University. During law school, Lena worked as a summer law clerk for the California Tribal Families Coalition as well as the Yurok Tribe. Before law school, she worked as a Cultural Resources Technician and as a Natural Resources Technician for the Karuk Department of Natural Resources.
