As a community of researchers, our aim is to facilitate knowledge that re-centres Indigenous knowledges, languages, practices and ways of being. The Centre supports research involving both traditional and contemporary knowledges, as care-taken, shared and created by Indigenous scholars located in the University and knowledge holders from communities.
For information about becoming a member, see our Associate Information page.
Dr. Kenzie Allen is an Assistant Professor of English at York University, specializing in Creative Writing and Indigenous Literatures. Her research centers on documentary and visual poetics, literary cartography, and the enactment of Indigenous sovereignties through creative works. She is a descendant of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. Professor Kenzie is also the recipient of the James Welch Prize for Indigenous Poets and a 92Y Discovery / Joan Leiman Jacobson Poetry Prize. Her poems can be found in The Iowa Review, Indiana Review, Narrative Magazine, Black Warrior Review, Boston Review, and other venues. She received her PhD in English & Creative Writing at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she was an R1-Advanced Opportunity Program Fellow, Chancellor’s Award recipient, and a TA in American Indian Studies. She received her MFA in Poetry from the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at University of Michigan (‘14), and her BA in Anthropology from Washington University in St. Louis (’10). She is the managing editor of Anthropoid and the founder of Apiary Lit. Born in West Texas, she now shares time between Toronto, Ontario; Trondheim, Norway; and the Oneida reservation in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Previously, Professor Allen has contributed to technology startups as a web, product, and ui/ux designer. She is a member of the High Plains Society for Applied Anthropology, and she serves as an archivist and volunteer fire lookout for the Sand Mountain Society.
Dr. Angele Alook is a proud member of Bigstone Cree Nation and is a speaker of the Cree language. She successfully defended her PhD in Sociology from York University and is now an Assistant Professor in the School of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University. Her dissertation is entitled "Indigenous Life Courses: Racialized Gendered Life Scripts and Cultural Identities of Resistance and Resilience." She specializes in Indigenous feminism, life course approach, Indigenous research methodologies, cultural identity, and sociology of family and work. Dr. Alook currently works in the labour movement as a full-time researcher for the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees. She is also a co-investigator on the SSHRC-funded Corporate Mapping Project, where she is carrying out research with Parkland Institute on Indigenous experiences in Alberta’s oil industry and its gendered impact on working families. She is also a member of the Just Powers research team, a SSHRC-funded Insight Grant. Through the Just Powers project Dr. Alook has been able to produce a documentary called "Pikopaywin: It is broken" which features stories on the land with Indigenous traditional land users, environmental officers, and elders. She is directing her research toward a just transition of Alberta’s economy and labour force, and the impact climate change has on traditional Treaty 8 territory.
Dr. Beaulne-Stuebing (she/they) is Métis and belongs with the Anishinaabe bald eagle clan through adoption in the Three Fires Midewiwin lodge. Her mother’s family has roots in the Sault Ste. Marie Métis community and Manitoba, and they are registered with the Métis Nation of Ontario. Through her father’s family, Beaulne-Stuebing is also of Austrian settler ancestry. She has worked with Shingwauk Kinoomaage Gamig in Sault Ste. Marie, supporting the development of Anishinaabe Studies and Anishinaabemowin degree programs as a helper to the late Dr. Edward Benton Banai (Bawdwaywidun Banaise-ban). Professor Beaulne-Stuebing’s dissertation, “Grief Medicines,” focused on learning from Indigenous grief workers and through the land about what helps urban Indigenous community members through experiences of loss. The project draws attention to how Indigenous women and two spirit people are theorizing grief work, medicines, and healing in the context of settler colonialism, and are making care through relationships within and across communities. Beaulne-Stuebing also collaboratively facilitates Asemaa Circles, a community medicines sovereignty project supporting Indigenous, Black-Indigenous, and Black community members to grow and access sacred medicines.
Dr. Brant-Birioukov is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at York University. She is a proud member of the Mohawks of the Bay of Quinte. She was raised by strong parents and grandparents who taught her the importance of language, community, and identity, which she carries with her in her work as an educator and researcher. She is interested in Indigenous thought and knowledge in education, curriculum studies, teacher education, and reconciliatory pedagogies. Her doctoral dissertation is grounded in curriculum theory, Haudenosaunee thought, educational theory, philosophy, autobiography, and Creation Stories, where she is theorizing the possibilities of estrangement/homecoming in education from a Haudenosaunee consciousness. Professor Brant-Birioukov has published on Indigenous teacher education, curriculum theory, reconciliatory pedagogies, and the phenomenon of Indigenous resilience, adaptation, and ingenuity in Canada. Her current research projects include working with the Frederick W. Waugh project to repatriate historical documents of Haudenosaunee culture, life, and stories to community members in the creation of educational resources and materials. In addition, Dr. Brant-Birioukov and her husband run an education consulting firm, Ridge Road Training and Consulting.
Dr. Mary Bunch is a Canada Research Chair in Critical Disability, Vision and the Arts, and Associate Professor Cinema and Media Arts. Through theoretical inquiry and collaborative research creation, Bunch mobilizes feminist, queer, crip, and decolonial frameworks to engage worldmaking imaginaries, and develop new understandings of relational ethics. Her co-created media arts work has exhibited at Nuit Blanche (Emerging from the Water: Gathering 2022) and the group exhibition More than Human at OCADU’s Onsite Gallery (Emerging from the Water: Resonance, 2023). The art works, based on Anishinaabe relational ontology, are created in collaboration with Anishinaabe philosopher and artist Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning, Bunch’s partner of 25 years. Together Manning and Bunch wrote “Decolonial Re-worlding: Potential Ecologies of the Virtual.” (In Life in Art, Phenomenology, Aesthetics, and Identity, In Press 2023). A white settler, Bunch’s decolonial commitments are informed by this relationship with Manning and her large extended family from Kettle and Stoney Point. Bunch is co-editor of Public Issue 66: Access Aesthetics. Her article “Posthuman Ethics and the Becoming-Animal of Emmanuel Levinas” was selected for the critical reader Ethics After Poststructuralism (2020). She has published articles in such journals as Culture, Theory and Critique, the Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies; and Feminist Theory. Her current projects include a monograph titled Ecstatic Ethics, and the research creation project Pluriversal Worlding with Extended Reality, which creates XR media to re-imagine southwestern Ontario as decolonized territory (SSHRC Insight).
Dr. Maya Chacaby is a Two-Spirited, Disabled, Anishinaabe, from Kaministiquia (Thunder Bay). Her family comes from Red Rock First Nation. She works in the Sociology Department of York’s Glendon Campus. Maya’s work centres on promoting the Ojibwe language and culture and ending Indigenous human trafficking, homelessness, and violence against Indigenous women and girls. She designed and launched the Indigenous Social Wellness Model for addressing Human Trafficking in First Nations communities through the Ontario Native Women’s Association. Maya also designed a provincial Training on understanding Indigenous Human Trafficking for the Ministry of Community and Social Services (MCSS),
through the Provincial Anti-Human Trafficking Coordination Office. She also designed and currently runs a certificate program in Indigenous Trauma Informed Practices and Cultural Resurgence, open to all Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. The Certificate is run through a partnership with Nokiiwin Tribal Council and Glendon (York University) Continuing Education. Maya has developed unique courses on Anishinaabe culture at the Glendon campus. She runs a Dungeons and Dragons style table top adventure in Anishinaabemowin (Ojibwe Language) for her online classes, with quests character development and of course, boss battles! She also teaches a course dedicated to Anishinaabe Futurism and another dedicated to experiential practices in Indigenous activism. Maya is currently Developing an Indigenous Metaverse called Biskaabiiyaang where community members can interact with language and cultural teachings in open world, real time adventures. She is currently working with Nokiiwin Tribal Council, UniVirtual, community Elders, and Indigenous youth to develop and co-create the Metaverse content.The Biskaabiiyaang site and free demo are here: https://www.biskaabiiyaang.com Maya also developed an online interactive teaching on understanding Anishinaabe teachings about kindness which can be
found here https://sweetgrassteachings.com.
Cora Coady is a proud member of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. She is an assistant librarian in the Student Learning and Success Department. Cora has a Masters of Information from the University of Toronto and a B.A. in Sociology from McMaster University. During her time at the University of Toronto, Cora was the Indigenous Outreach and Research Assistant at the University of Toronto Libraries. Before entering librarianship Cora had a successful career as a Certified Vision Rehabilitation Therapist (CVRT) at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind and Vision Loss Rehabilitation Ontario, where she provided in-person and remote instruction to people living with visual impairment. Her current research is focused on Indigenous student experiences within the academic library system. Cora’s goal is to contribute to her community in a meaningful way by creating and supporting important Indigenous research, building strong relationships between the Indigenous community and the University Library, and promoting the works of Indigenous scholars and students.
Dr. Elaine Coburn is a Euro-Canadian researcher. Currently, she is Director of the Centre for Feminist Research and an associate professor in International Studies at York University's bilingual Glendon College. In addition, through the Faculty of Graduate Studies, she is a member of the Department of Sociology, the Gender, Feminist and Women's Studies and Social and Political Thought at York University. Elaine holds a PhD in sociology from Stanford University, and a BA in sociology and Canadian Studies from the University of Toronto. Prior to coming to Glendon, she was a researcher at the Centre d'analyse et d'intervention sociologiques (CADIS) at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris, France, and assistant professor at the American University of Paris. Currently, with Andrea Davis, she is co-editor of the Journal of Canadian Studies and on the editorial board of the Canadian Review of Sociology. Her research interests include neoliberal forms of globalization, struggles for social justice and social theory, especially socialist feminist, Indigenous and anti-racist perspectives. Finally, she has recently begun writing for the Literary Review of Canada.
Dr. Alan Corbiere is a proud Anishinaabe from M’Chigeeng First Nation on Manitoulin Island. He is a historian, who has made remarkable contribution to the research of the Anishinaabe language, cultural practices, and material culture for many years. Dr. Corbiere completed a B.Sc from the University of Toronto, a Masters in Environmental Studies and a Ph.D in History from York University. Previously, Dr. Corbiere was the Anishinaabemowin Revitalization Program Coordinator at Lakeview School, M’Chigeeng First Nation, where he and his team worked on a culturally based second language program that focused on using Anishinaabe stories to teach language. He has also conducted research on wampum belts with known Anishinaabe associations, and researched medals, gorgets, and other diplomatic gifts. He has recorded elders speaking in Ojibwe about their crafts and work. Additionally, Dr. Corbiere is the Executive Director at the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation and is one of the co-founders of GRASAC.
Dr. Ravi de Costa is a mixed-race settler who came to Canada in 2002 to take up a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship at McMaster University. Prior to joining York in 2007, he also taught at Trent University in the Department of Political Studies. His work has focused on Indigenous-settler relations, showing how processes such as treaty-making, truth and reconciliation, and constitutional recognitions of Indigenous rights reproduce settler colonial interests. He is also interested in Indigenous peoples’ advocacy and activism in international forums, most recently the Convention on Biological Diversity. He is an associate professor in the Department of Social Science, a member of the Graduate Programs in Environmental Studies and Development Studies, and currently serves as the Associate Dean Research and Graduate in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
Dr. Sheila Cote-Meek is Anishinaabe from the Teme-Augama Anishnabai. She is currently the Vice-President, Equity, People and Culture at York University. She is responsible for the development and implementation of a progressive strategy and structure that cultivates an equitable, inclusive, respectful, and healthy work environment. Dr. Cote-Meek holds a PhD in Sociology and Equity Studies from the University of Toronto and is author of Colonized Classrooms – Racism, Trauma and Resistance in Post-Secondary Education (2014), co-editor of Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada (2020) and co-editor of Critical Reflections and Politics on Advancing Women in the Academy (2020). She is an active researcher and has extensive experience working on equity and inclusion in higher education including substantive experience working with Indigenous communities nationally and internationally on social justice and education issues. In 2016, she was nominated as an Indigenous Role Model for the Council of Ontario Universities Future Further Campaign, and in 2013, she was the recipient of a YWCA Women of Distinction Award. Dr. Cote-Meek has a strong history of building relationships that provide synergistic opportunities to advance institutions, and she is committed to working toward accessible higher education for all.
Dr. Don Davies (he/him) is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Biology at York University. He is a proud member of the Manitoba Métis Federation. He attended many cultural events, seminars, and conferences at the Manitoba Métis Federation. He was always fascinated by the health disparities between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians in numerous health conditions. This has and continues to drive his scientific interests. The Canadian Indigenous population has an increased prevalence and earlier onset of Alzheimer’s disease than the Canadian non-Indigenous population. He has established a research program studying Alzheimer’s disease within the Indigenous community. His program involves interviewing unpaid dementia caregivers who are usually adult children, spouses, or other family members and friends. He is identifying the available services for people with dementia in the Métis population, identifying the amount of support that caregivers of Métis seniors with dementia need to live well, and identifying how caregivers engage in self care for themselves.
Dr. Ashley Day joins York University as a lecturer in the School of Kinesiology & Health Science. She is a third-year Dene/English PhD candidate in the Policy Studies program at Ryerson University. Her ancestral ties are located in the SAHTU region of the Northwest Territories, where she is a member of the Norman Wells Métis. She holds an advanced diploma in sport management as well as a BEd (Honours), a BA and an MA in kinesiology and health science from York University. Her SSHRC-funded dissertation research examines how Indigenous worldviews of health and well-being may offer a more holistic approach to colonial physical education policy in Ontario. As a physical educator, Day understands how health and physical education is a powerful and often overlooked site where education might be strengthened by Indigenous knowledges and worldviews. She is committed to creating opportunities for Indigenous Peoples and communities to inform and cultivate curricula that supports holistic health grounded within cultural knowledges. Day’s work is concerned with building relationships that nurture Indigenous knowledges, reinforce positive notions of Indigenous identities, and recognize the diversity of Indigenous Peoples and their worldviews.
Dr. Shital Desai is an Associate Professor of Interaction Design at York University and the York Research Chair in Accessible Interaction Design. A leading expert in Human-Centered Systems Design, she specializes in accessible and inclusive design to address societal challenges and improve quality of life, especially with emerging technologies such as Augmented Reality and AI.
As head of the Social and Technological Systems (SaTS) lab, supported by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Dr. Desai engages with diverse communities—including rural and urban populations, immigrants, people with disabilities, healthcare practitioners and Indigenous groups—to co-design and co-create inclusive solutions. Her research spans assistive technologies for aging and dementia, adaptive technologies, wearable technologies, tele-wellness, remote rehabilitation, interaction modalities, and intergenerational knowledge transfer.
Dr. Desai co-leads the Connected Minds Training Committee, fostering innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration among emerging researchers. Dr. Desai actively contributes to global health policies through the WHO’s Dementia Knowledge Exchange and has been recognized with awards like the AMPD Dean’s Research Award and the Petro Canada Young Innovator Award. Dedicated to mentorship, equity, and interdisciplinary collaboration, she champions sustainable design and innovative practices to foster a more accessible and inclusive future.
Dr. Susan Dion is the Associate Vice-President of Indigenous Initiatives at York University. She is a Lenape and Potawatomi scholar with mixed Irish and French ancestry and was the first Indigenous tenure-track faculty member to be hired in the Faculty of Education at York. Early in her time at York, Professor Dion demonstrated her commitment to supporting Indigenous initiatives. She worked with Indigenous students and the University administration to address student-identified needs and interests through her advocacy for and support of the establishment of Aboriginal Student Services and the Centre for Indigenous Students at York. She was a founding member of York's Aboriginal Education Council (presently York's Indigenous Council) and served as co-Chair for three terms between 2004 and 2015. In 2014, Professor Dion served as the first Academic Director for the Centre for Aboriginal Student Services. In the Faculty of Education, Professor Dion has led development of the Wuleelham: Indigenous Education Initiatives, including the Urban Indigenous Education MEd Cohort, an Indigenous PhD Cohort and the Waaban Indigenous Teacher Education Program. With a focus on Urban Indigenous Education, decolonizing systems of education, and most recently, education sovereignty, her teaching, research, and service deepens understanding of Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies; addresses gaps in educators' knowledge of Indigenous peoples, histories, and cultures; and identifies and examines Indigenous students' experiences, perspectives and hopes for education. Professor Dion has led numerous research projects, including nIshnabek de'bwe wIn // telling our truths, (SSHRC, 2017) and inVISIBILITY INDIGENOUS IN THE CITY (SSHRC, 2013). She has followed up her successful book Braiding Histories: Learning from Aboriginal People's Experiences and Perspectives (2009) with Braided Learning: Illuminating Indigenous Presence through Art and Story, expected out in January 2022. Professor Dion has expertise in the skillful cultivation of equitable and respectful relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. She holds a PhD, MEd and BEd from the University of Toronto, and a BA from the University of Waterloo. Dr. Dion is an internationally respected scholar and researcher in Indigenous relationships and education.
Karen Drake is a member of the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation who researches and teaches in the areas of Canadian law as it affects Indigenous peoples, Anishinaabe constitutionalism, Indigenous pedagogy within legal education, property law, and dispute resolution, including civil procedure and Indigenous dispute resolution. She joined the Osgoode faculty in July 2017 from the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University, where she had been a founding Co-Editor in Chief of the Lakehead Law Journal. Prior to joining Lakehead, she articled with Cassels Brock & Blackwell LLP, completed a clerkship with the Ontario Court of Appeal, served as a part-time judicial law clerk with the Federal Court, and practised with Erickson & Partners, focusing on legal issues impacting Indigenous peoples, human rights, and civil litigation. Professor Drake is currently the principal investigator, in partnership with the Sarnia-Lambton Native Friendship Centre, on a SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant, which will be used to develop a methodology for assessing the effectiveness of the Bkejwanong (Walpole Island) First Nation Court and the Sarnia Indigenous Persons Court. Professor Drake has presented at education seminars held for Canada’s Department of Justice, Ontario’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, and the National Judicial Institute. She was the recipient of the Osgoode Legal and Literary Society’s Equity Award in 2018, and of the Osgoode Hall Law School Teaching Award in 2019. She is a member of the legal advisory panel for RAVEN, a member of the advisory council for the Indigenous Human Rights Program, and a member of the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Women and the Law. She previously served as a Commissioner of the Ontario Human Rights Commission, on the Board of Directors of the Indigenous Bar Association, and on the Board of Directors of the Human Rights Legal Support Centre.
Dr. Andrew Fisher is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow with Connected Minds in the School of Health Policy and Management. He is a settler-scholar whose research focuses on the intersection of artificial intelligence and Indigenous health, with a commitment to developing ethical and inclusive AI systems. Andrew is working to collaborate with Indigenous communities to explore how technology can support health communication, language preservation, and cultural revitalization while respecting Indigenous data sovereignty as well as knowledge systems. Having a background in computer science, he has worked extensively on projects that apply artificial intelligence in health-related contexts, ensuring accessibility for underrepresented groups. Andrew is honored to contribute to the centre's mission of advancing Indigenous resurgence and decolonization through collaborative and meaningful research.
Dr. Sarah Flicker is a York Research Chair in Community Based Participatory Research and Full Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. She is engaged in an exciting program of research that focuses on the engagement of youth and other actors in environmental, sexual and reproductive justice. More broadly, she is interested in community-based participatory methodologies and is active on a variety of research teams that focus on adolescent sexual health, well-being and responding to gender-based violence in Canada and South Africa. Recently, she has published in the areas of health promotion, sexuality, ethics, decolonizing methodologies, participatory visual methods and community-based participatory research methods. Her research has informed policy at the municipal, provincial and federal levels. Sarah and her teams have won a number of prestigious awards for youth engagement in health research. Sarah is a straight, white, middle class, able-bodied, Jewish, cisgender female, of immigrant/settler descent who tries to understand the pervasive effects of privilege, and her roles and responsibilities as a treaty person. She is an inaugural member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
Dr. (Kristi) Leora Gansworth, Anishinabekwe, is a scholar and maker who holds a PhD from York University in the field of critical geography. She is also trained in social sciences of environmental and food systems (MA, Antioch University, 2014) and a lifelong poet/artist (MFA, Writing, Goddard, 2012). Leora is a proud citizen of Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg, where her maternal ancestry comes from. She also grew up living with Haudenosaunee Peoples (paternal ancestry) on Tuscarora Nation territory.
Sovereignty and healing are the foundation of research practice for Dr. Gansworth. Mino bimaadiziwin, the gift of life, was given to Anishnabeg to care for and Leora applies this responsibility in her works. She is a frequent contributor and collaborator on projects that relate to multiple forms of justice.
Tehota’kerá:ton Dr. Jeremy D. Green is a proud Kanien’kehá:ka ‘Mohawk’, wolf clan from the Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. Tehota’kerá:ton is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at York University specializing in Indigenous Language and Culture Revitalization.
Tehota’kerá:ton earned his PhD at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo in the Hawaiian and
Indigenous Language & Culture Revitalization PhD Program where he graduated from the first ever non-Hawaiian speaking cohort.
With over three decades of experience in the field, Tehota’kerá:ton sits on several advisory
boards and is a sought-after indigenous language revitalization consultant whose research
supports the speaking proficiency development of second language learners of indigenous
languages and communities. He is a sitting member of the Ontario College of Teacher’s
Kanien’kéha Circle Steering Committee (advisory group) and Kanien’kéha Endorsement
Representatives (recognized speakers of the language by their community) who works with
other endorsement representatives to endorse and verify individuals to teach Kanien’kéha (The Mohawk Language) in Ontario schools.
Tehota’kerá:ton’s community-based work centers on dynamic Kanien’kéhá:ka ceremonial
practices, speeches, oratory, rites, and land-based practices. In 2014 Tehota’kerá:ton was
recognized by Six Nations Polytechnic’s Indigenous Knowledge Center as a Six Nations
Community Scholar for translating repatriated works from the Smithsonian Institute’s J.N.B.
Hewitt collection from Kanien’kéha to English; the translation of locally sourced ceremonial
speeches from the Onondaga and Cayuga languages into Mohawk, and for his research,
collection, transcription, translation and recording of ceremonial speeches in the Mohawk
language. Professor Green’s community-based practice also includes the perpetuation and
maintenance of Kanien’kehá:ka ceremonies, feasts, and rites; hunting and fishing practices,
forest gardening, planting of indigenous foods, collection and use of medicinal plants, maple sap collection and syrup production and the re-establishment of the region’s biodiversity through planting and stewarding of native plants and trees.
Dr. Ruth Green is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work at York University. She has served as the Co-Chair of the Indigenous Council at the university and the Special Advisor to the President on Indigenous Initiatives. She is an activist turned accidental academic. Professor Green identifies as an urban Indigenous person and is a citizen of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. She is from the Mohawk Nation and is a member of the Turtle Clan. She was born a Canadian but was 1/2 disenfranchised when she was 10 years old. By the time she was 34.5 years old, she was completely disenfranchised. She acknowledges the privileges she gets in a world of identity politics to be governed by legislation that is 100 years older than she is! Professor Ruth also acknowledges her paternal Celtic heritage. She likes to think about Indigenous education and social issues that impact Indigenous communities. Dr. Green has a PhD from OISE in Adult Education and Community Development, an MSW and a BSW from Ryerson University
Celia Haig-Brown is a Euro-Canadian ethnographer committed to respectful and reciprocal research and practice. Her first book (1988), a retrospective ethnography of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, was based on interviews with former students. A new and updated edition, Tsqelmucwílc: The Kamloops Indian Residential School, Resistance and a Reckoning, with Indigenous collaborators, will be launched on September 30, 2022 at the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc grounds in BC. She co-directed two documentaries with the children and grandchildren of the KIRS students. Her recent film Listen to the Land addresses the complexities of the Naskapi Nation’s commitment to land and caribou in the reality of open pit mining (http://www.listeningtotheland.org). She has completed two shoots for her next film, Rodeo Women: Behind the Scenes (https://rodeowomencanada.org)
Jeffrey Hewitt (mixed-descent Cree) is an Associate Professor at Osgoode Hall Law School, and teaches constitutional law as well as co-directs Osgoode’s Intensive Program in Indigenous Lands, Resources and Governments. His research interests include Indigenous legal orders and governance, public law, human rights and remedies, legal education, as well as art and law. Prior to his appointment to Osgoode, Professor Hewitt was on the Faculty of Law, University of Windsor and had been adjunct faculty at both Osgoode Hall Law School and the University of Toronto. In 2019, Professor Hewitt received a Law Society Medal, was the 2015 Charles D. Gonthier Fellowship from the Canadian Institute for the Administration of Justice; and a 2013/14 McMurtry Fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School examining the relationship between Indigenous art and law; is past-President of the Indigenous Bar Association of Canada; and since 2002 served as General Counsel to Rama First Nation during which time General Counsel’s office received a 2011 Canadian General Counsel Award for Social Responsibility for work with First Nation Elders and youth. Professor Hewitt holds an LLB and LLM from Osgoode Hall Law School and is called to the Bar in the Province of Ontario. He has served on various boards, and continues to volunteer in various capacities.
Dr. Sean Hillier is a Mi’kmaw scholar (member of the Qalipu First Nation). He is an associate professor and York Research Chair in Indigenous Health Policy & One Health in the Faculty of Health at York University. Sean sits on the National Interagency Panel on Research Ethics. His collaborative research program spans the topics of aging, living with HIV and other infectious diseases, and One Health - all with a concerted focus on policy affecting health care access for Indigenous Peoples. Dr. Hillier has been successful in receiving funding from each of the three federal granting agencies and is the current Inaugural Associate Director of the $318 million research project, Connected Minds: Neural and Machine Systems for a Healthy Just Society.
Dr. Anna Hudson is an art historian, curator, writer and educator specializing in Canadian art, curatorial and Indigenous studies. Formerly Associate Curator of Canadian Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Hudson is now a professor in the Graduate Program in Art History, Department of Visual Art & Art History at York University. Hudson’s collaborative curatorial credits include Tunirrusiangit Revisited, a virtual reality reimagining of Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak (2018, with Koomuatuk Curley, Taqralik Partridge, Jocelyn Piirainen, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, and Georgiana Uhlyarik for the Art Gallery of Ontario), the international touring show Painting Canada: Tom Thomson and the Group of Seven (2011, with Ian Dejardin and Katerina Atanassova, for the Dulwich Picture Gallery, London, UK); inVisibility: Indigenous in the City, part of INVISIBILITY: An Urban Aboriginal Education Connections Project (with Susan Dion and Carla Rice for the John B. Aird Gallery, Toronto, 2013); The Nude in Modern Canadian Art, 1920-1950 (with Michèle Grandbois, for the Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec); and the Art Gallery of Ontario exhibitions Woman as Goddess: Liberated Nudes by Robert Markle and Joyce Wieland; and Inuit Art in Motion (co-curated with Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory).
John Waaseyaabin Hupfield (he/him) is Anishinaabe, Marten clan, and a member of Wasauksing First Nation. Hupfield’s research is rooted within his work as a grassroots community based educator, teaching powwow alongside his partner Deanne Hupfield, to urban Indigenous folx in Toronto over the past 15 years. As a grass dancer, he travels extensively to powwows across the Anishinaabeg nation, and Turtle Island at large. His work looks at powwow as a place of critical importance for Anishinaabeg, where we can enact our own pedagogy, praxis, and knowledges in grounding our community through culture and land.
Dr. Bonita Lawrence is Mi'kmaw, with Acadian and English background. Dr. Lawrence created the Indigenous Studies program at York University and was the Chair of the Department of Equity Studies as well from 2008-2010. Currently, Professor Lawrence is teaching in the Indigenous Studies Program at the university. Her research and publications have focused primarily on urban and non-status identities, and federally unrecognized Aboriginal communities. She is the author of "Fractured Homeland: Federal Recognition and Algonquin Identity in Ontario" (UBC Press, 2012) and "Real" Indians and Others: Mixed-Blood Urban Native People and Indigenous Nationhood (University of Nebraska Press and UBC Press, 2004). She is also the author of N'In D'la Owey Innklan: Mi'kmaq Sojourns in England, a historical novel spanning 500 years of Mi''kmaq history both in Atlantic Canada and in London. She is also a traditional singer who continues to sing with groups in Kingston and Toronto at Native social and political gatherings.
Andrew McConnell is a member of Nipissing First Nation living in the Toronto area, and has been teaching for almost 20 years. He was the coordinator for Indigenous education at the York Region District School Board for 5 years, where he directly supported the work of the Indigenous Education team, liaised with the education staff from Georgina Island First Nation, and the Anishinaabek Education System while constantly advocating for the inclusion of Indigenous content across the board. Before becoming a teacher, Andrew worked in the media, first at Aboriginal Voices, a Native arts magazine based in Toronto, and then at CTV News, where he worked in production for 7 years. Andrew, a member of AISES, is currently pursuing his PhD in Digital Media at the Lassonde School of Engineering, and teaching as a seconded faculty member for the Faculty of Education at York University.
Dr. Deborah McGregor (Anishinaabe), Principal Investigator, holds the Canadian Research Chair in Indigenous Environmental Justice. She is cross-appointed to Osgoode Hall Law School and Faculty of Environmental Studies (FES) at York University. Dr. McGregor's research has focused on Indigenous knowledge systems and their various applications in diverse contexts including water and environmental governance, environmental justice, forest policy, and management, and sustainable development. Her research has been published in a variety of national and international journals and she has delivered numerous public and academic presentations relating to Indigenous knowledge systems, governance and sustainability. She co-edited Indigenous Peoples and Autonomy: Insights for a Global Age with Mario Blaser, Ravi De Costa, and William Coleman (2010). She is co-editor (with Alan Corbiere, Mary Ann Corbiere and Crystal Migwans) of the Anishinaabewin conference proceedings series. Prior to joining Osgoode, Professor McGregor was an associate professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto and served as Director of the Centre for Aboriginal Initiatives and the Aboriginal Studies program. She has also served as Senior Policy Advisor, Aboriginal Relations at Environment Canada-Ontario Region. In addition to such posts, Dr. McGregor remains actively involved in a variety of Indigenous communities, serving as an advisor and continuing to engage in community-based research and initiatives. In 2021, she was the co-recipient (along with Dr. Angele Alook) of York University's Catalyzing Interdisciplinary Research Clusters (CIRC) Grant for "Indigenous Climate Leadership and Self-Determined Futures."
Dr. David T. McNab is a leading authority on Indigenous Treaties, land, and resource issues in Canada. Elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada on November 24th, 2017, McNab taught Indigenous Thought and Canadian Studies in the Departments of Equity Studies/Humanities in the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies at York University (2004-2018) where he was a Full Professor. He is now Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar at York University. He was one of the first Metis historians to complete his doctorate on British Imperial policy towards Indigenous peoples in 1978 at the University of Lancaster. In two books (Circles of Time, Aboriginal Rights and Resistance in Ontario, 1999; No Place for Fairness: Indigenous Land Rights and Policy in the Bear Island Case and Beyond, 2009), he shows that much was achieved for Indigenous rights in the 1980s and early 1990s in Ontario. McNab has published, or completing, more 15 books, and many other publications numbering well over 140. In 2009 he published the Fourth Edition (with Olive Patricia Dickason), of Canada’s First Nations, (Oxford University Press). In 2013 he co-authored Indigenous Voices and Spirit Memory with Aboriginal Issues Press as well as Historic Saugeen Metis, A Heritage Atlas (with Paul-Emile McNab). In 2015 he co-edited Tecumseh’s Vision, Indigenous Sovereignty and Borders in the Great Lakes, and Beyond with Aboriginal Issues Press at the University of Manitoba. McNab is currently completing an edited multi-volume edition of the Journals (1885-1912, 1918-1928) of Ezhaaswe (found in 2003 at more than 6,000 pages), William A. Elias (c. 1849—1929) for Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Ezhaaswe was a citizen of Bkejwanong, residential school survivor at Mount Elgin, graduate of Victoria College in the University of Toronto, Methodist missionary, teacher and medicine person. McNab is a champion of knowledge mobilization, exploring through community engagement both the Truth about Canada’s policies as they impact on First Nations’ and Metis communities and on their lands and resources. He has always been guided by the Two Row Wampum, Indigenous Knowledge and Thought, and by the true meaning of Canada as a place of both Reconciliation and Truth.
Christo El Morr, PhD, is a Professor of Health Informatics and the Director of the Centre for Feminist Research (CFR) at York University. He is also a Research Scientist at North York General Hospital, Toronto. Additionally, he serves as the Health Informatics Certificate Coordinator.
His research aligns with an Equity Informatics perspective, covering areas such as Equity AI (e.g., patient readmission, disability advocacy), Patient-Centered Virtual Care (e.g., chronic disease management, mental health), Global Health Promotion for equity (e.g., equitable health promotion), and Human Rights Monitoring (e.g., disability rights, Gender-Based Violence).
As a theologian and poet, his broader intellectual contribution to social justice focuses on defending the human person against alienation, whether through infringements on human freedom or dignity in the face of irrational powers and exploitation. His work encompasses the fight for freedom from oppression (e.g., analysis of exclusive identities, communion and solidarity, freedom, liberation of reason), freedom from exploitation (e.g., analysis of illusions of freedom, political and religious exploitation), and the freedom to celebrate life (e.g., poetry).
Chandra Murdoch is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Osgoode Hall Law School and holds a PhD in History from the University of Toronto. She is a settler scholar of British and Norwegian descent. She is working on her first book titled Confronting the Indian Act: Colonial Strategy and Indigenous Response in Nineteenth Century Ontario, based on her doctoral research, which examines the development of the Indian Act alongside Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, and Lenni Lenape political response to the law through the Grand General Indian Council. Her postdoctoral research examines treaty, property, and inheritance laws in Ontario to analyze the role of the Department of Indian Affairs in creating and maintaining settler property while imposing restrictive inheritance measures on reserves. She holds a SSHRC Connections Grant with Dr. Alan Corbiere to examine a historically significant Grand Council held at the Six Nations of the Grand River in 1858. Indigenous academics, knowledge keepers, and community delegates from fourteen historically involved First Nations will be invited to present community histories and expert perspectives on the council, inter-Indigenous, and Crown-Indigenous diplomacy.
Dr. Nicole Muir is Métis with family roots in Red River. Dr. Muir recently joined the Faculty of Health as an Assistant Professor in Psychology (Clinical Developmental stream). She recently completed a Post Doctoral Fellowship from the University of Toronto at Well Living House, an Indigenous action research centre. During her post doc, she helped to set up Auduzhe Mino Nesewinong (Place of Healthy Breathing), an Indigenous health support centre that focused on COVID testing and vaccination for urban Indigenous people where she developed the Indigenous contact tracing training component. Dr. Muir completed a Masters degree in Clinical Child Psychology followed by a PhD in Forensic Psychology, both at Simon Fraser University (SFU) as a SSHRC scholar. During graduate school, Dr. Muir collaborated with BC Youth justice, guided by Indigenous professionals working in youth justice, to develop and implement practice guidelines and training for youth probation officers to support their work with Indigenous youth on probation.
Prior to graduate school, Dr. Muir worked at an Indigenous child protection agency, an Indigenous health unit (both in Toronto), and as a consultant for children with special needs in the Downtown Eastside in Vancouver. Within urban Indigenous populations, her research focuses on colonialism, trauma, foster care involvement, justice system involvement, mental wellness, and violence risk assessment tools. Her career, even before graduate school, has focused on improving the health and mental wellness of Indigenous children, youth, and adults.
Danica Pawlick-Potts is a Research Associate in Communication and Media Studies at York University and a member of the Alexis Nakota Sioux First Nation. Danica’s research specializes in Indigenous Data Sovereignty and focuses on supporting the development of data infrastructure that affirms and respects Indigenous data sovereignty and expanding our knowledge of the implications of emerging data and technologies for Indigenous peoples. Danica works closely with the First Nations Information Governance Centre’s Data Sovereignty Research Collaborative and is a member of the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance. She also holds expertise in broader issues in AI and data ethics and data literacy such as trust and public perceptions of AI. In 2021 Danica and her colleague, Dr. Mike Ridley, received the Association of Information Science and Technology’s SIG AI Publication of the year award for their paper “Algorithmic Literacy and the Role for Libraries”. Danica is currently completing her PhD in Library and Information Science at Western University. Her dissertation focuses on the theory of data territories to make sense and navigate the networked and decontextualized nature of Indigenous data in virtual spaces, and as a tool to guide the assessment and development of research data repositories. She received her MLIS from the Faculty of Information and Media Studies at Western University (’18), and her BA with Distinction in English from the University of Calgary (’16).
Link to bio.
Dr. Patricia E. (Ellie) Perkins is a Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University, Toronto, where she teaches ecological economics, community economic development, climate change science & policy, and critical interdisciplinary research design. She has also taught at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo, Mozambique. She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Toronto and has authored many publications on feminist ecological economics, climate justice, commons, and participatory governance. Her research and community projects with civil society and university partners address environmental and climate injustice, economic inequities, and the transition to sustainable provisioning.
She is a Lead Author for Chapter 5 (“Demand, Services, and Social Aspects of Mitigation”) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Sixth Assessment Report (2022).
She directed international research projects on community-based watershed organizing in Brazil and Canada (2002-2008) and on climate justice and equity in watershed management with partners in Mozambique, South Africa and Kenya (2010 – 2012). Her most recent international project with partners in Brazil, Chile, South Africa, Cameroon, Kenya, Mozambique, and Nigeria is building a global network of participatory researchers on Climate Justice, Ecological Economics and Commons Governance
Dr. Brock Pitawanakwat is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and is the Coordinator of the Indigenous Studies Program at York University. He is a proud Anishinaabe from Whitefish River First Nation. In 2013, Dr. Pitawanakwat was an Assistant Professor in Indigenous Health and Wellness at the University of Sudbury’s Department of Indigenous Studies. Prior to this, he worked as a researcher with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and held two academic appointments as an Assistant Professor, Graduate Chair, and Acting Director of the Aboriginal Governance Program at the University of Winnipeg and as an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at First Nations University of Canada. Additionally, his MA thesis looked at Indigenous political movements in southern Mexico and his PhD dissertation explored language revitalization efforts of the Anishinaabeg in Manitoba and Ontario. Currently, Dr. Pitawanakwat’s research interests include Indigenous language revitalization, health, history, labour and politics.
Link to bio.
Dr. Dean Ray is the new coordinator for the Centre of Indigenous Knowledges and Languages. He is a settler-scholar who works in partnership with Indigenous communities. His research focuses on building ethical relationships with Indigenous Peoples and understanding how these communities create, maintain, and grow organizations. Dean is a language learner and speaker, spending five years learning Nłeʔkepmxcín from elders in the Nicola Valley region of British Columbia. He is excited by the mission of the centre and to work with scholars here at York to further Indigenous resurgence and decolonization.
Dr. Graeme Reed is a Senior Policy Advisor with the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), where he advocates for the inclusion of First Nations in the federal, provincial, and territorial climate change and energy policy dialogue. He also recently completed his doctorate from the University of Guelph (2022) studying the intersection of Indigenous governance, environmental governance, and the climate crisis. His thesis, entitled Indigenous climate futures: Developing alternative visions for nature-based climate solutions, explores how Indigenous solutions can generate self-determined futures in the face of catastrophic change. In addition to research, he is keenly involved in the mobilization of knowledge, including as Coordinating Lead Author of the Indigenous Resilience Report in the National Climate Assessment and as Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. He is Anishinaabe from the Great Lakes (Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory) with mixed ancestry from England, Scotland, and Germany.
Dr. Michael Rotondi is an Associate Professor of Biostatistics in the School of Kinesiology and Health Science. Working in partnership with Indigenous health service partners and Well Living House for over 10 years, he has developed and applied advanced statistical techniques, specifically respondent-driven sampling, to improve the health of Indigenous Peoples living in urban areas. Recent projects include: a) Co-leading a CIHR-funded research study to measure the rates of testing, incidence and vaccination for COVID-19 in First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples living in Toronto, London, Thunder Bay and Kenora; and, b) Unmasking factors that are associated with cardiovascular disease in Indigenous Peoples living in Toronto and Hamilton.
In 2024, he was awarded a Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Public Health Agency of Canada Applied Public Health Chair to further support the Indigenous partners’ research priorities. These include developing the most accurate population counts of Indigenous Peoples living in cities, and measuring the long-term impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on chronic health and mental health outcomes in Indigenous Peoples living in urban areas.
Anna St. Onge (she/her/they) is an archivist at York University Libraries based out of the Department of Digital Scholarship Infrastructure. She holds a B.A. in History and Celtic Studies and a Masters of Information Studies degree with a specialization in Archival Studies and Book History & Print Culture, both from the University of Toronto. Her current research focuses on archival praxis and reminiscence therapy for PLWD (people living with dementia) and a collaborative archives project with the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation on Manitoulin Island. She is Canadian of mixed Irish, Acadian, French Canadian and Scottish ancestry and grew up northeast of North Bay.
Dr. Martha Stiegman is a filmmaker and Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University. She is white settler of mixed French ancestry, who grew up in Mi’kma’ki, or so-called Nova Scotia. Her community-based research and collaborative video work examine Indigenous/settler treaty relations in their historic and contemporary manifestations, with particular attention to food sovereignty and justice; as well as participatory and visual research methodologies and ethics. Recent publications include A Treaty Guide for Torontonians with the Talking Treaties Collective; Recognition by Assimilation: Mi’kmaq treaty rights, fisheries privatization, and community resistance in Nova Scotia with Sherry Pictou; and Leashes and Lies: Navigating the colonial tensions of institutional ethics of research involving Indigenous people in Canada with Heather Castleten. Recent films include By These Presents: “Purchasing” Toronto with Ange Loft, kiskisiwin | remembering with Jesse Thistle, and We Story the Land with Sherry Pictou.
Jessica Vorstermans (she/her) is an assistant professor in Critical Disability Studies, School of Health Policy & Management. As a white woman settler scholar I work to enact equity as a set of social relations, equity as relational, in all sites of my work. I am an interdisciplinary scholar with plural threads of inquiry rooted in relationship with transnational communities and activists doing equity, anti-racism, anti-colonial and anti-capitalist work and resistance. My research is guided by multiple lines of inquiry that, together, work to understand how the processes of colonization and disablement have organized, and continue to organize, our world and the ways this is hidden, erased and pushed out of our systems of knowledge. My teaching is embedded in this understanding of the world, asking students to engage with critical understandings of ways that oppressions are produced and reproduced and how communities are intervening and building new worlds. My research programme is rooted in community engaged participatory research, which is predicated on building meaningful, reciprocal and messy relationships. My research is transnational, and in community with those experiencing extreme marginalization and poverty. Specifically, my research examines two substantive sites to take up questions of inequity, disability, disablement, and social change: (1) Transnational transformative education (with a major focus on transnational service learning) and (2) Community development, mutual aid and solidarity in the Global South. I work to do research that is reciprocal and not extractive, research that is led by community for their benefit, engaging co-PIs in the co-construction of research questions, methodologies and knowledge mobilization plans.
