Meet Our Staff
Sarah Augustine
Co-Founder and Executive Director
Sarah Augustine, who is a Pueblo (Tewa) descendant, is co- founder and Executive Director of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. She is also the co-founder of Suriname Indigenous Health Fund (SIHF), where she has worked in relationship with vulnerable Indigenous Peoples since 2005. She has represented the interests of Indigenous community partners to their own governments, the Inter-American development bank, the United Nations, the Organization of American States Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the World Health Organization, and a host of other international actors including corporate interests. She is a columnist for Anabaptist World, and co-hosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery podcast with Sheri Hostetler. She has taught at Heritage University, Central Washington University, and Goshen College. In Washington State, where she lives, she serves in a leadership role on multiple boards and commissions to enable vulnerable peoples to speak for themselves in advocating for structural change. She is author of the book The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery (Herald Press 2021), and co-author, with Sheri Hostetler, of So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis (Herald Press 2023).
Sheri Hostetler
Co-Founder
Sheri Hostetler is co-founder of the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery and is currently the Administrative Leadership/Advancement Director. With Sarah, she co-authored the book So We and Our Children May Live: Following Jesus in Confronting the Climate Crisis (Herald Press 2023) and co-hosts the Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery Podcast. She has been the Lead Pastor at First Mennonite Church of San Francisco since 2000. She was also one of the founders of what is now called Inclusive Mennonite Pastors, a coalition of pastoral leaders seeking LGBTQ+ justice in the church. A poet and writer, her work has appeared in A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. She is trained as a spiritual director and a permaculturist, and lives with her husband, Jerome Baggett, and their son, Patrick, on an island in the San Francisco Bay.
Amanda Pittman
Episcopal Organizer
Amanda Pittman is an Episcopal Organizer with the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, where she serves as Chair of the Episcopal Indigenous Justice Roundtable. Amanda was born and raised in southern and central Wyoming. She is a descendant of the Pueblo (Tewa) peoples of Northern New Mexico through her mother’s family, who came to Wyoming in the early 1900s for work on the railroad and in sheepherding. Raised Catholic, she has found a spiritual home in the Episcopal Church. She hears Jesus’ call to love one another as an imperative to seek justice and liberation alongside the oppressed and vulnerable.
Amanda holds a BA in Anthropology from the University of Wyoming. She has been a long-time grassroots organizer in her local community, doing organizing and advocacy around immigration, police accountability, and political education in red state politics. Throughout all her work, she weaves art, craft, and a reverence for the Earth.
She lives and works in southeastern Wyoming, on Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Lakota lands.
Joe Hubbard
Episcopal Organizer
Joe is an Episcopal priest in North Dakota. He serves as the Convener of the Episcopal Indigenous Justice Roundtable, a network of Episcopal communities, congregations, and diocese committed to joining Indigenous land and water protectors in the struggle for liberation and justice. Joe was ordained to the priesthood on Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, and he spent the first two years of his ministry learning alongside the Diné of Navajoland. Joe served as the Vicar of St. Christopher’s Mission and the Ministry Developer and Priest-in-Charge of the Utah Region of the Episcopal Church on Navajoland. Joe is originally from Montgomery, AL, where he founded a regional Civil Rights and Litigation law firm and served in the Alabama House of Representatives.
Joe is compelled by a vision for uniting members of diverse communities together in mutual listening and learning as they work to weave their stories together in a shared narrative rooted in the reconciling love of Jesus.
molly block
Oak Flat Organizer
molly finds home in fallen gingko leaves, bodies of water, and the crisp feeling on her nose of a cool Sonoran Desert winter night. Born and raised in Chicago, IL (Council of Three Fires territory), she now twirls and whirls her mind and body reverently on occupied Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui lands in what is also known as Tucson, AZ. As a Kohenet, a Jewish community-minded ritualist, she spends her time kissing the earth, singing songs the winds inspire, and imagining and practicing ever-refined ways of relating to and with each other in creating the world we all crave, Now. She sees her role as the Oak Flat Organizer with the Coalition to Dismantle the DoD as a way to support her own and other’s work of embracing our own inherent dignity through fighting for San Carlos Apache dignity and Right to pray on their lands.
Phoebe Chatfield
Development Organizer
Alicia Maldonado-Zahra
Goshen College Scholar-Activist
Alicia Maldonado-Zahra is a descendent of Puerto Rican ancestors and the child of Madeline and David Maldonado. Alicia was born and raised in Fort Myers, Florida but left her hometown in her early 20s to pursue higher education. She attended Hesston College and then Eastern Mennonite University. During these years, she began to study various aspects of history that continue to shape our current contexts and methods of peacebuilding, such as Restorative Justice and Social Movements.
In 2019 Alicia moved to Northwestern Indiana, to the lands of the Potawatomi, with her spouse. Here her desire to grow deeper in awareness of Scripture’s stance on peace and justice led to studying theology at Anabaptist Mennonite Biblical Seminary, where she was further encouraged to act for what is right. The Scholar-Activist position drew her attention as it relies on both the theoretical / educational aspects of harm and conflict and the practical and actionable gathering as individuals and communities to make things right. To make this position happen, GC has collaborated with the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery that uplifts Indigenous leaders, sovereignty and rights. The role of the Scholar-Activist is to teach students about these complex issues, peacebuilding frameworks, support students in their peacebuilding work, and engage the broader community to join. Alicia works with the Goshen Repair Network with the hopes of expanding membership and engaging in systemic and policy change in the state of Indiana.
Rev. Dr. B. Cayce Ramey
Training Coordinator
The Rev. Dr. B. Cayce Ramey (he/him) is the Coalition Training Coordinator. He co-founded Racial Heresy with the Rev. Jabriel Ballentine, a ministry and podcast that challenges white supremacy and helps communities step into truth-telling and repair. Living on the homelands of the Piscataway people in Northern Virginia, Cayce leads pilgrimages to Ghana’s enslaver castles, where his own journey was transformed, and works with leaders across the U.S. to grow as change-makers for racial justice in the Church.
An Episcopal priest, Cayce was charged with heresy for his public work on reparations and racial justice—an experience that deepened his commitment to embodying the Gospel’s call to justice. Before his ordination, he served as a Marine Corps officer, deploying in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He holds degrees from MIT, Virginia Theological Seminary, and Virginia Union University, where he earned a DMin studying sacramental theology and transatlantic slavery.
Cayce is a writer, teacher, photographer, cyclist, husband, father, son, godfather, and friend. He co-hosts a podcast on racism and the Church and helps leaders use systems-focused tools to guide change in their own communities.
Rev. Canon Deborah J. Royals
Chaplain
Debbie is Pascua Yaqui from Tucson, AZ, a sister, mother to two wonderful young men and grandmother to four. She is an Episcopal priest, author, retreat leader and educator. Debbie earned a diploma in Nursing, a B.A. in Native American Spirituality and Theology from Prescott College, an M.Div. from the Church Divinity School of the Pacific and a M.A. in Religion and Society from the Graduate Theological Union. She is developing a “new church community” called Four Winds serving Indigenous people. After 13 years of service as the Canon for Native American Ministry in the Episcopal Diocese of Arizona, Debbie retired recently. She served for 19 years as Faculty for the Church Pension Group leading clergy wellness conferences in Physical Health and Spirituality, designing curriculum and developing the worship materials for all conferences. Debbie has served as Native Ministry Coordinator for Province VIII, Missioner for Native Ministry in the Dioceses of Northern California and Los Angeles, as chair of the Standing Commission on Mission & Evangelism and on the Executive Council’s Committee on Indigenous Ministry. She also participated in Lambeth 2008 as a presenter and writer for the Listening Process. Debbie led the Indigenous Theological Training Institute for 10 years and published several journals with Indigenous theologians, has published in books on prayer and daily meditations. Debbie has navigated the divide of being Native and Christian by forming a bridge as a Native American spiritual leader and Episcopal priest. Her passion for restorative justice and binding community is evident in every aspect of her life.
Deborah Yoder
Communications Manager
Michelle Lee
Contractor - Admin Support
A retired Postmaster and an active volunteer mediator, Michelle folds her lifelong passion for peacekeeping and her love for copyediting into her work for the Coalition. Michelle lives on the ancestral lands of the fourteen Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation.