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 and her husband, Dan Peplow, and their son live in the Yakima Valley of Washington. She is author of the book “The Land Is Not Empty: Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery” (Herald Press 2021).

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.

 

 

Doe Hoyer

Coalition Organizer

Doe Hoyer is an organizer and songleader with the Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery, and coordinates the Repair Network. They have lived on Dakota homelands for most of their life, and are involved locally with the Twin Cities Repair Community for Makoce Ikikcupi (Dakota land recovery). Doe was raised Lutheran, but their spirituality is authentically Earth-based, which calls them into solidarity with Indigenous Peoples. Doe is working on completing their Master’s of Divinity in Interreligious Chaplaincy and Social Transformation.

Deborah Yoder

Communications Coordinator and Indigenous Solidarity Organizer

Deborah is the current Communications Coordinator and Indigenous Solidarity Organizer for the Coalition this year through Mennonite Voluntary Service. She currently lives in Tucson, Arizona, on the lands of the Tohono O’odham and Pascua Yaqui people. Deborah graduated from Bluffton University in May of 2023 with a degree in English.