Associate Professor
Credentials
PhD, Special Individualized Program, Concordia University
BA, English Literature & Political Science, McGill University
Research Keywords
Indigenous Knowledge, Rights & Food Sovereignty; Indigenous/Settler Alliances; Food Justice Movements; Visual Arts-Based Participatory Research Methodologies; Documentary & Video Activism.
Contact Information
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
416 736 2100
Research Interests
Food Justice has framed my academic research, teaching, documentary filmmaking and community organizing for more than 15 years. I worked for seven years as a community organizer in Montreal’s food security and urban agriculture movement, then went on to graduate school to explore what land-based cross-cultural organizing around food sovereignty might look like in my home province of Nova Scotia. In my doctoral research I used participatory video to examine alliances between Bear River First Nation (Mi’kmaq) and neighboring non-Indigenous communities resisting fisheries privatization, in the wake of the Supreme Court of Canada’s 1999 Marshall decision.
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.