COL Staff
Ali Meders-Knight - Executive Director
Ali Meders-Knight is a Mechoopda tribal member, mother of five, and traditional basketweaver based in Chico, CA. She has been recognized by the Mechoopda Tribe as a Master TEK practitioner, and works to form partnerships for federal forest stewardship contracting and tribal restoration programs on public lands. She has been a Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) practitioner for over 20 years, collaborating on environmental education and land restoration projects with Chico State University, the City of Chico, Tehama County Resource Conservation District, and more. She serves on the Tribal Relations Strategic Planning and Implementation committee for the US Forest Service in Region 5. In March 2022 she testified to the U.S. House of Representatives Environmental Oversight Subcommittee on the merits of TEK and Tribally-led workforce development to restore California forest resilience and address the problem of catastrophic wildfires. In 2009 she helped plan and establish Verbena Fields, a unique 17-acre interactive food forest and interpretive park in North Chico, to educate about the rich ecological heritage of the Mechoopda people through weekly community tending workshops.
Dewey Barnes - General Foreman
Dewey Barnes is a certified C-faller, hazard tree removal specialist, and a Wildland Type 2 firefighter. He has worked as Mechoopda TEK Crew Foreman for Calaveras Healthy Impact Product Solutions (CHIPS) since 2019, working on fuels reduction contracts in Concow, Magalia, Yosemite National Park, El Dorado National Forest, Tahoe National Forest, and Collins Pine Timber Reserve. Previously, he worked in logging and fuels reduction for five years at the Quartz Valley Indian Reservation. He also works on prescribed burning through the Butte Cal-TREX program, and in forest restoration through the Chico Traditional Ecological Stewardship Program.
Alex Zubia - Program Director, Food, Fiber & Medicine Program
Alex Zubia, also known as “Xef,” is a chef and food justice advocate born and raised in Fresno, CA (Yokuts Land). He attended The California Culinary Academy in San Francisco (Ramaytush Ohlone land) in 2007 and discovered his passion for cooking through his love of eating. From 2008-2015, Xef opened his own food truck, focused on providing healthier, farm-to-fork versions of familiar foods.
In Fresno, Alex works to fight for food justice, mentor young fathers, system impacted youth, and created the Food Sovereignty & Medicine Program at Fresno Barrios Unidos. His goal is to promote food sovereignty and bring his community back to cooking and eating their indigenous foods, which are abundant in the Central Valley. Alex adopts certain principles like ITEK Indigenous Traditional Ecological Knowledge and Indigenous Permaculture Design as a way to combat the problems of soil erosion and lack of biodiversity, which will be crucial to climate restoration for our next seven generations. Xef and his community literally plant seeds for the next seven generations.