2025 ReFED Food Waste Solutions Summit

An Eyak Athabascan Native of the Eagle Clan, Dune Lankard grew up in Eyak (now called Cordova) in Southcentral Alaska. Dune’s Eyak name is “Jamachakih,” which means “Little Bird that screams really loud and won’t shut up.”

Born into a fishing family, his life education was as a subsistence and commercial fisherman which began at age five on the water. Dune commercially fished and made a living as a fishery and seafood processing consultant. When the Exxon Valdez oil spill happened on March 24, 1989, in his homelands of Prince William Sound, Dune had to live up to his Eyak name, so he transformed himself into a social change artist (community activist) to take on the powers that be who wanted to develop his ancestral lands and waters beyond belief. In the process he became a formidable Native Rights leader that his Eyak mother Rosie had always wanted him to be. Dune founded and co-founded numerous non-profit orgs, including the Eyak Preservation Council (now called the Cultural Defense Fund) and the Native Conservancy.

Dune’s dedicated work has helped win the preservation of more than one million acres in the Gulf of Alaska coastline. Dune gained wide recognition from Time magazine, as they featured him as one of the top 50 Heroes for the Planet, and fellowships with the Ashoka Foundation, Hunt Alternatives Fund (Prime Movers), Future of Fish Cohort, and SeaWeb’s Seafood Champion Award for his tireless LandBack and OceanBack (ocean farming) work since 1989. In May 2025, Dune was acknowledged by the James Beard Foundation for an Impact Award for his Food Security & Food System Change work. Dune was featured in a mariculture film featuring Native Conservancy’s Ocean farming work, named “Hope in the Water” produced by Fed By Blue, that aired in June, 2024, now nominated for an Emmy Award in 2025.