Jim Enote

Jim Enote is a lifelong farmer, philosopher, activist, author, artist, and CEO of the Colorado Plateau Foundation. Enote was born on the Zuni reservation in Western New Mexico, where he still resides, and whose service to Native and Indigenous peoples over the past forty-five years includes environmental and cultural stewardship, philanthropy, and the arts. In the 1980s and 90s, he advanced Native-led self-determination through an innovative blueprint for sustainable development that he developed for the Zuni tribe. Between 2000 and 2011, as a museum director, he largely influenced conventional museum collections management to include source community collaboration. He also helped advance the idea of counter-mapping by curating revolutionary map art exhibitions throughout the US. In 2012, Enote created a Native-led philanthropy, the Colorado Plateau Foundation, dedicated to supporting tribal communities in their efforts to uplift culture, environmental stewardship, food security, and leadership innovation.

As a practitioner of a culture of land use, Enote’s decades of conservation activism and leadership led him to serve as the Chair of the Board of the Grand Canyon Trust, a member of the Governing Council of the Wilderness Society, and a board member of the Trust for Mutual Understanding.

Among Enote’s many writings, his favorites are the Museum Collaboration Manifesto, which he wrote to respond to museum orthodoxies; Counter Mapping Articulates What is Between, an essay for a map exhibition; and Precipice and Purpose, which he wrote while hunkered at home during the Covid-19 epidemic.