Heather Ponchetti Daly is a tribal member of the Iipay Nation of Santa Ysabel and an Assistant Professor of History and Affiliated Faculty in the Departments of Environmental Studies and the Design Lab at the University of California, San Diego. Daly received the 2023 UC San Diego-- Barbara & Paul Saltman Distinguished Teaching Award and the UC San Diego Teaching + Learning Commons Changemaker Anti-Racist Pedagogy Fellowship. Currently, Daly is appointed to the UC NAGPRA Implementation and Oversight Committee for the California Native American Heritage Commission representing UCLA. She is involved in the Scripps Institute of Oceanography cookbook project titled San Diego Seafood, Then and Now. Daly is also serving on the Scripps Institute Center for Ocean and Human Health Community Engagement Advisory Team and is on the UCSD Muir College Provost Advisory Board. Daly’s future research engages food sovereignty as both practice and theory; specifically, she is actively designing the Indigenous Food Sovereignty Lab at UC San Diego.
Daly received her Ph.D. in History from UCLA her doctoral dissertation "American Indian Freedom Controversy:" Political and Social Activism by Southern California Mission Indians, 1934-1958” covers the twentieth-century political activism by Southern California Mission Indians who opposed termination.