Lourdes Pereira

Lourdes Pereira (she/her) is Hia-Ced O’odham and Yoeme and a citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation. She received her bachelor’s degree from Arizona State University in American Indian Studies and Justice Studies. Lourdes is a former Miss Indigenous ASU 2020-2022 and a 25 Under 25 UNITY (United National Indian Tribal Youth) Leadership Award recipient. She was also the female co-president of the Tucson Native Youth Council in 2017-2019, where she created a policy within Tucson Unified School District that solidified the right for Native youth to wear their tribal regalia at graduation. Recently, the Arizona Cardinals of the NFL recognized Lourdes as part of its Community Spotlight series.

Lourdes is a community memory/ancestral knowledge protector for her Tribe. She formerly worked at Labriola National American Indian Data Center, an Indigenous Library at ASU. She was also a research assistant for Trevor Reed, a Hopi attorney and Professor that specializes in Intellectual Property rights at the Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law at ASU. These experiences taught Lourdes the importance of and need to protect Intellectual Property and data in Indian Country. She digitalized over 400 cassette and microcassette tapes of her great grandmother interviewing elders in their village and speaking in the O’odham language. She has also scanned over 700 photos and other documents for her community. Lourdes also organized all of this work on a master drive and is currently working with her Tribe to create a digital repository which will hold its traditional knowledge and community memory and the Tribe will be the main steward of the repository.

Lourdes is passionate about data sovereignty and an advocate for tribes to have full control over their Intellectual Property. She is a public speaker, model, and works full-time as a Program Specialist with Tribal Tech, LLC working primarily with the Administration for Native Americans where she supports eastern region tribes and Native non-profits in maintaining their federal grants. Lourdes will be attending the University of Washington in the fall for her Master’s in Information Sciences.