Cindy Farlee

Program Officer

Cindy Farlee is a citizen of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe and was raised on a cattle ranch on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation in north central South Dakota. She is a first-generation college graduate who obtained a B.A. in Indigenous and American Indian Studies with an emphasis in Sovereignty from Haskell Indian Nations University. Cindy was also part of the first cohort of Arizona State University’s Food Policy and Sustainability Leadership Graduate Certificate program and has done graduate studies at Montana State University. 

Cindy has had the great opportunity in life to research many topics she is passionate about including cultural knowledge and healing through language revitalization and food sovereignty, federal Indian law and policy, and tribal government structure and relationships. Before joining NAAF, she served on the inaugural board of directors for the Native Youth Food Sovereignty Alliance, the youth advisory board of the Intertribal Agriculture Council. Cindy has also interned with the Indigenous Food & Agriculture Initiative, where she assisted in the development of a Native Agriculture-driven curriculum and coordination of a national youth leadership event, as well as the Indian Land Tenure Foundation where she was a research intern. 

She seeks to further educate herself and others on the importance and connectivity of Native Agriculture and looks forward to all the experiences that come through working with NAAF.