10 Dec San Miguel Resource Center: “A Conversation with Kali Reis, Actor, Boxer/Athlete, Activist,” 12/10!
Telluride’s San Miguel Resource Center (SMRC) is hosting a very special event featuring a very special speaker, Kali Reis, TV star and athlete. The event takes place Tuesday, December 10, 5-7pm at the Telluride Science & Innovation Center. (Board chair Ana Bowling thanks Telluride Science for the generous donation of its beautiful space).
The event is free and open to the public so please feel free to bring along friends and family.
Scroll down to listen to an interview with Kali Reis hosted by CBS Sports.
Kali Reis, courtesy SMRC.
She is of Native American descent – specifically Cherokee, Nipmuc, and Seaconke Wampanoag and Cape Verdean ancestry – a professional boxer and former world champion, having held the WBC female middleweight title in 2016 and the WBA, WBO, and IBO female light welterweight titles between 2020 and 2022. Also an active supporter of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) movement, a nonprofit she came upon while s racking up wins in her early 20s. The MMIW movement is a social campaign to bring awareness to the epidemic of violence faced by Native women.
She is also an actress and writer, known for “True Detective,” (2014) with Jodie Foster; “Catch the Fair One,” (2021) and “Mercy,” (2025).
She is Kali Reis, a self-described “voice for the voiceless,” who is coming to town to speak out about her own experiences with abuse and to advocate for survivors using her story to shed light on the broader issue of violence against women, especially in marginalized groups.
Reis is known to emphasize the intersectionality of abuse, highlighting how that scourge disproportionately impacts indigenous women, and calls for greater awareness, support systems, and legal protections. Turns out indigenous women are 10 times more likely to be murdered than women of other ethnicities, and more than four out of five have experienced violence.
In 2021, Reis saw her megaphone get larger with her film debut in “Catch the Fair One,” a story about a half-Native American, half-Cape Verdean boxer tracking her abducted younger sister. The film’s writer and director, Josef Kubota Wladyka, had reached out to Reis on Instagram about starring in the movie. Reis’ moving performance caught the eye of Jodie Foster, who suggested Reis for the role of Evangeline Navarro, an Alaskan state trooper of Iñupiaq heritage, in “True Detective: Night Country.” The six-episode, fourth season of HBO’s anthology crime drama follows Foster’s and Reis’ characters investigating the mysterious deaths of eight scientists in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska. The program had strong Indigenous representation in the cast and touched upon the topic of MMIW.
Through her public speaking and advocacy work, Reis seeks to challenge harmful cultural norms, promote healing, and encourage empowerment for those who have experienced violence.
Her efforts include collaborating with organizations such as Telluride’s SMRC, that provide resources for survivors. Her activism is all about dismantling systemic inequalities that contribute to cycles of abuse.
SMRC’s goal is to put itself out of business by ending interpersonal violence in the Telluride region.
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