Dina Gilio-Whitaker is a Colville Confederated Tribes member who grew up in Southern California, moving to North Shore in the Hawaiian Islands in 1980.
[1] As a mature student, Gilio-Whitaker studied at the University of New Mexico, initially intending to go into a legal career.
[2][1] In 2016, Gilio-Whitaker co-authored "All the Real Indians Died Off" and 20 Other Myths About Native Americans with Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz.
[1][3] In 2017, she wrote a chapter of The Critical Surfer Reader (2017) titled "Appropriating Surfing and the Politics of Indigenous Authenticity".
[5][6][7] Gilio-Whitaker is also a senior research associate and policy director at the Center for World Indigenous Studies.