Dan Hawk Principal Scientist United First Nations Planetary Defense

Dan Hawk, Oneida Nation, Wisconsin. Dan was born and raised on the Oneida Indian Reservation. On March 2022, Dan addressed the United Nations Legal Subcommittee of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space by providing the history-making General Exchange of Views. Dan has been appointed to lead the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium Lunar Dust Interoperability and Standards Focus Group. Dan discovered how lightning strikes and is currently working with the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration to prevent dust explosions in mines and factories.

Dan enlisted in the Army National Guard out of high school and served in the Navy as a nuclear reactor operator on two Fast-Attack submarines. Dan was a senior power plant operator at UW-Madison and UW-Madison Hospital. While working with the Wisconsin Space Grant, Dan and Dr. Aileen Yingst founded the First Nations Launch and the Tethered Aerostat Program. Following WSGC, Dan supported the Montana Space Grant in ensuring the Salish Kootenai Tribal College was successful and BisonSat was launched on October 8, 2015. Following BisonSat, Dan worked with the U.S. Department of State, to remove Native Americans from the International Traffic and Arms Regulations List. Prior to BisonSat Dan helped the El Paso Community College with two NanoRacks ISS Experiments and launched a payload RockOn payload on a suborbital Terrier-Orion in 2009. Dan is a recognized Amazon Black Earth expert with NASA, NOAA, and the DOE in the latter Dan made one ton of high CEC carbon and is being used to mitigate radiocesium-137 on Bikini Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands. Dan currently supports Space Traffic Management, Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium, Green Aero industrial hemp rocket fuel research, NASA Office of Tribal Affairs, and the new National Native American Space Grant. Dan is an International Committee Member for the National Space Society, a Member of the United Nations Indigenous Committee. Dan also is on a number of indigenous and space panels like the Indigenous Research Center, MIT Space Enabled Group, and Anthropogenic Environmental Impact on Space Traffic.

Dan is currently working with NASA to waive Satellite Export Controls to First Nations People, Canada. In cooperation with many entities and institutions, the first tribal sovereignty data blockchain Jay Treaty satellite is being designed.