About Princess
Rooted in Storytelling and Defender of People's Rights
Research Coordinator, Community Advocate, and Social Justice Advocate
Princess Talaña
Research Coordinator, Indigenous Just Transition
Community Advocate, Storyteller, and Defender of People’s Rights
Princess Talaña (Leyteño/Filipino) is a research coordinator, storyteller, and advocate for justice whose work bridges community wisdom and systemic change. Born to the quick rhythm of the city; its lights, rush, and relentless hum of ambition; and raised by the steady pulse of the countryside, Princess learned early that to live well is to live with the Earth, not superior to the Earth. Her worldview was shaped in the soil of her grandmother’s garden, where she planted trees and root crops as one would tell a story: with patience, attention, faith, and care.
From those teachings grew a lifelong understanding that humans are not owners or conquerors, but relatives of the land. “We are relatives with the land,” her grandmother would say, a lesson that became Princess’s compass through urban streets and forest paths alike. It taught her that work is not just labor; it is a relationship. It is participation in a long conversation of giving, tending, and returning.
Princess’s advocacy is rooted in this ethic of reciprocity. She challenges extractive systems that treat forests as inventories and data as commodities, insisting instead on approaches that honor consent, sovereignty, and care. She reminds us that luxury is hollow if it severs us from belonging, that progress measured only in profits, not in the health of salmon, soil, or children, is a foundationless house. Her voice calls us back to deeper choices: to be relatives rather than consumers, caretakers rather than tourists in our own homelands.
In her work with Indigenous Just Transition, Princess asks the questions that keep movements accountable: Who benefits? Who bears the risk? Who decides, and how? And what does accountability look like five, ten, twenty years from now?
For Princess, belonging means planting and protecting, planning and passing on. It means refusing forms of “progress” that cost us our home, and dedicating one’s life to returning the good things the Earth has given, again and again, until reciprocity becomes the truest wealth we know.