Windy Daniels is an Indigenous education advocate, environmental communicator, and mother of two, currently serving as the Education and Marketing Coordinator for the Hooheh Cultural Burn & Reforestation Program and as the Waccamaw Siouan Tribal Liaison and Education Programs Assistant at the Cape Fear Museum.
Her work is grounded in the belief that cultural heritage, environmental stewardship, and community resilience are deeply interconnected—and that healing our lands goes hand in hand with healing our people. She is passionate about community storytelling, environmental justice, and honoring traditional ecological knowledge.
Through the Hooheh Cultural Burn & Reforestation Program, Windy has helped efforts to bring back the practice of cultural burning to tribal lands in southeastern North Carolina—an Indigenous fire tradition used for generations to care for the longleaf pine ecosystem. As the communications and education coordinator, she’s helped reforest more than 20 acres of longleaf pine on Tribal land, developed culturally informed environmental programming, and created a week-long Indigenous STEM camp that celebrates both scientific discovery and traditional ecological knowledge. The program is rooted in the relationship between fire and land, elders and youth, and people and place.
Windy also plays a vital role at the Cape Fear Museum, where she advocates for Indigenous representation in public education and exhibit design. She currently oversees Indigenous content for the new museum exhibits, helping ensure that Native voices and histories are not only respectfully integrated, but presented as living, evolving cultures. Windy is especially passionate about challenging outdated narratives and highlighting the modern vibrancy of tribal communities—emphasizing that Indigenous culture is not a relic of the past, but a thriving part of the present. A graduate of UNC Charlotte with a degree in history, Windy brings a historian’s understanding and a community organizer’s passion to every initiative she joins. Her writing has been published in conservation platforms, and her leadership reflects a lifelong commitment to advocacy, access, and justice.
Raised among national and state parks, Windy sees public lands as sacred spaces—places of restoration, story, and belonging. Today, she continues that legacy with her own children, teaching them to be caretakers of the Earth and advocates for those whose voices too often go unheard. Whether she’s hiking with her family, tending to her garden, or organizing a youth program, Windy is constantly inspired by the strength of grassroots movements and the potential of the next generation to protect our shared landscapes.
Her mission is to help reimagine conservation through an Indigenous lens—where land is not a resource to be extracted, but a relative to be cared for. By blending cultural tradition, hands-on education, and environmental storytelling, Windy hopes to make public lands more inclusive, more representative, and more deeply rooted in community.