Ashley Salaz is an Indigenous storyteller and land steward living in the occupied Ohlone territory of Huchiun (Oakland, CA). She is an enrolled member of the Coharie Tribe (North Carolina), but was born and raised in the East Bay Area. Ashley began documenting Indigenous people in California as a way to connect to a culture that she didn’t know growing up, and to tell modern stories of the people who have tended to this land since time immemorial.

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Ashley is a self-taught photographer and filmmaker and is passionate about using visual mediums to highlight Indigenous activism, community work and kinship. Ashley has a keen eye for capturing raw emotion and an unromanticized authenticity of Native peoples through her imagery.

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She is currently working for Sogorea Té Land Trust as a media artist and land team member, as well as shooting freelance photography. She is also directing her first documentary short film about her tribe’s Native-run school and the lasting effects of its closure on the community.