This story is published in YFile’s New Faces Feature Issue 2021, part two. Every September, YFile introduces and welcomes those joining the York University community, and those with new appointments. Part one was published on Sept. 3.
Two Indigenous educators join York University’s Faculty of Education this fall as full-time faculty members. They are Kiera (Kaia’tanó:ron) Brant-Birioukov and Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing.
“We are delighted to welcome two new colleagues: Kiera (Kaia’tanó:ron) Brant-Birioukov and Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing. Each are respected scholars and teachers in their particular fields of study,” said Faculty of Education Dean Robert Savage. “They bring a diverse range of expertise to the Faculty of Education in Indigenous understandings and development. We very much look forward to the new ideas, perspectives, and contributions that they will make to our faculty and towards our ongoing mission of reinventing education for a diverse, complex world.”
Kiera (Kaia’tanó:ron) Brant-Birioukov
Kiera (Kaia’tanó:ron) Brant-Birioukov is a Haudenosaunee (Kanyen’keha:ka) educator and educational theorist from Kenhtè:ke, also known as the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory in Ontario. She joins the Faculty of Education and the Wüléelham community at York as an assistant professor and will support the Indigenous cohorts, courses and programs in the Faculty of Education.
She is a certified teacher in Ontario and British Columbia and is committed to ethical Indigenous education across all K-12 and post-secondary classrooms. Some of her current projects include the repatriation of historical Haudenosaunee stories, artifacts and journal diaries to communities across the Six Nations Confederacy, as well as collaborating in the knowledge mobilization of Indigenous-Settler food sovereignty through the Earth to Tables Legacies project.
Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebin
Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing joins the Faculty of Education as an assistant professor. She is Métis, adopted into the Anishinaabe bald eagle clan in the Three Fires Midewiwin lodge. Her family has roots in the Sault Ste. Marie Métis community and Manitoba, and they are registered with the Métis Nation of Ontario.
Beaulne-Stuebing is also of French and Austrian settler ancestry. Her PhD thesis, “Grief Medicines,” focused on learning about what helps community members through ongoing experiences of loss. Beaulne-Stuebing facilitates mashkiki gitigaanan, an urban Indigenous medicines sovereignty project in Toronto.