Associate Professor
Credentials
PhD, Special Individualized Program, Concordia University
BA, English Literature & Political Science, McGill University
Research Keywords
Indigenous / settler treaty relations, Indigenous knowledge, rights & food sovereignty, Food justice movements, Arts-based participatory research methodologies and ethics, Documentary & video activism, Disability justice & disability arts
Contact Information
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
416 736 2100
Research Interests
My research interests straddle three overlapping areas of inquiry: 1) Indigenous treaty relations, rights and knowledge systems; 2) food sovereignty and justice movements; and 3) participatory video and arts-based research methodologies. I also have a growing interest in disability justice and disability arts.
I worked for seven years as a community organizer in Montreal’s urban agriculture movement, then went on to graduate school to explore what land-based cross-cultural organizing around food sovereignty might look like in Mi’kma’ki, my home province of Nova Scotia. In my doctoral research I used participatory video to examine alliances between L’sitkuk Mi’kmaq First Nation and neighboring non-Indigenous communities resisting fisheries privatization, in the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Marshall decision.
I’ve since collaborated with Indigenous scholars, artists and communities on various arts-based research projects including those exploring treaty relations in Toronto (with Ange Loft and the Talking Treaties Collective), Indigenous climate justice (with Dr. Deb McGregor and Dr. Angele Alook), Mi’kmaq food sovereignty and treaty relations (with Dr. Sherry Pictou) and Mi’kmaq traditional knowledge and fishing (with Elder Kerry Prosper and Dr. Jane McMillan).
My research / creation practice combines decolonizing research methodologies with participatory media production and dissemination strategies, to explore dynamics of accommodation and resistance within resource dependent and First Nation communities, in the context of neo-liberal transformations, as well as state-led Aboriginal and treaty right recognition processes. My interdisciplinary research is community-based, documenting peoples’ vision for ecological sustainability, social justice and dignity, in ways that deepen dialog within and across communities and strengthens their capacities for action. I am interested in processes of contestation: how people understand the barriers they face, the learning-in-action their organizing comes out of and contributes to, how local mobilization links to larger social movements, and the ways arts-based participatory research methodologies can contribute to these efforts. My research also analyzes the ways ever-evolving colonial relations are intersecting with neo-liberal transformations in economic relations and political governance, the consequences of these processes for community food security and Indigenous food sovereignty, as well as the possibilities for solidarity between Indigenous and settler communities resisting these forces.