MEMBERS
Collectively, we are interested in narratives, theories, frameworks, and technologies that help us articulate a continuum between our histories, our present, the seventh generation, and beyond.
Current members hold a diverse range of research interests in such topics as digital and material artistic practice, art history and curation, theatre and performance, oral histories and tradition, Indigenous geographies and stewardship, pre- and post-contact community histories, ethical genetic research and storytelling, and business management.
FACULTY
Dr. Theresa Arriola
Assistant Professor, Sociology and Anthropology
Theresa (Isa) Arriola (Chamorro) is from the island of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands and is currently an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology and Sociology Department at Concordia University. She teaches about Critical Indigenous Studies, militarization and imperialism in Oceania/Pacific. Her research explores the intersections between militarization, indigeneity and the environment in her home community where she works to understand the contemporary sociocultural and political implications of the United States military occupation on the lands, water and air that are home to the Indigenous Chamorro and Refaluwasch (Carolinian) communities of the archipelago.
"Realistic" Island Environments in Society for Cultural Anthropology (January 2022)
"Scenes from everyday life in the Northern Mariana Islands during the COVID-19 pandemic" In Oceania (2020)
Prof. Ronald Abraira
Senior Lecturer, Management (JMSB)
Ronald Abraira is interested in entrepreneurship and Indigenous community economic development.
Dr. Natasha Blanchet-Cohen
Associate Professor, Applied Human Sciences, and FRQSC/SJQ Youth Network Chair
Dr. Natasha Blanchet-Cohen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Applied Human Sciences at Concordia University and Graduate director of the Youth Work diploma. She is co-chair of the Quebec Youth Research Network. As a community engaged scholar, she focuses on opportunities for community youth development, and the provision of rights-based and culturally-safe services and programs, particularly as it relates to education.
http://www.chairejeunesse.ca/jeunes-autochtones
https://www.concordia.ca/faculty/natasha-blanchet-cohen.html
Prof. Jessica Carmichael
Assistant Professor, Theatre
Jessica is an associate professor in the Department of Theatre. She is a director, dramaturge, creator and performer of mixed Indigenous and European heritage. Her research in the field of theatre experiments with embodied performance creation work, working in professional contexts most often with Indigenous artist-creators. Her collaborations interweaves building methods of interconnectedness for Indigenous and non-Indigenous performance creators in theatrical creation conditions, rehearsing moments of ceremony and oral storytelling weaving, while engaging notions of interdisciplinary theatrical explorations that engage contemporary theatre practices as well as issues of cultural anthropology.
Jessica's creation research often investigates the body of classic western works in non-traditional adaptations and forms. Project themes regularly touch upon grief, survival, resistance and resilience. Work has comprised revisioning classical plays from a non-hierarchical, feminist, and Indigenous perspectives as well as devising and supporting contemporary new plays that examine performance texts between Indigenous and Western conversations and tensions of knowledge, ritual and land connectivity.
Prof. Hannah Claus
Assistant Professor, Studio Arts
Hannah Claus is a transdisciplinary artist of Kanien’kehá:ka / English heritage whose practice-based research engages with the idea of space shaped by language, material culture and place as transversal living concepts. She employs Onkwehonwenéha [Indigenous methodology] to critique dominant colonial narratives and give voice to Indigenous histories, teachings and cosmologies. A 2019 Eiteljorg Fellow and 2020 Prix Giverny recipient, recent group exhibitions include Inaabiwin (touring exhibition with the Robert McLaughlin Gallery; Oshawa), Future Retrospectives (Harbourfront Gallery; Toronto) and Àbadakone (National Gallery of Canada; Ottawa). Claus’ installations belong to various public collections, such as the National Gallery of Canada, the Eiteljorg Museum, the North American Native Museum (Zurich, CH), the Musée des beaux arts de Montréal, the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, and the City of Montreal. Claus is a member of the Board of Directors of the Conseil des arts de Montréal and a co-founder of daphne, a new Indigenous contemporary arts centre based in Tiohtià:ke [Montreal]. Claus is a member of Tyendinaga Mohawks Bay of Quinte.
https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/studio-arts/faculty.html?fpid=hannah-claus
Prof. Jason Edward Lewis
Professor, Design and Computation Arts, and University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary
Professor Lewis conducts research into how Indigenous communities are using computational and networked media, as well as into how cultural frameworks influence how digital technology is created and used. He is also an interactive media artist and software developer.
Dr. Michelle McGeough
Assistant Professor, Art History
Dr. Michelle McGeough's research focuses on reconstructing knowledge around gender and sexuality through an Indigenous worldview. She also focuses on Indigenous Queer identities in the arts, bringing historical, traditional knowledge into the present.
Dr. Monica Mulrennan
Associate Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment
Dr. Monica Mulrennan's research focuses on Indigenous rights and interests in coastal and marine portions of Indigenous traditional territories, including Indigenous knowledge, use and stewardship of Indigenous land-sea territories, Indigenous-led strategies of conservation and environmental protection, and local adaptations to environmental change.
Prof. Nadia Myre
Assistant Professor, Studio Arts, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Art Practices
Nadia Myre is a nationally renowned interdisciplinary artist and Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishnabeg First Nation. As exemplified by seminal works Indian Act (2002), and The Scar Project (2005-2013), her work explores the politics of belonging by positioning it within a framework of Indigenous resistance and resilience. Myre has an extensive exhibition history, with over 115 shows—25 of which have been solos—just in the last 10 years. Her work can be found in the Canadian Embassies of New York, London, Paris and Greece. Most recent exhibitions include Volume 0 (Zuecca Project, Venice), Balancing Acts (Textile Museum, Toronto, 2019), Show Me Your Wound (Dom Wein, Vienna, 2018/19), Code Switching and Other Work (The Briggait, Glasgow International, 2018), Tout ce qui reste/Scattered Remains (Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, 2017/18). Myre is the recipient of many commissions and awards, notably the 2014 Sobey Art Award for Canadian artists under 40, and in 2019 was inducted into the Order of Arts and Letters of Quebec.
Myre works across the disciplines of sculpture, fibres and material practice, photography, video, and performance, and teaches in undergraduate ArtX cluster, and MFA Studio Classes in the department of Studio Arts.
https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/studio-arts/faculty.html?fpid=nadia-myre
Prof. Nicolas Renaud
Assistant Professor, First Peoples Studies
Nicolas Renaud is a filmmaker and installation artist who has been creating documentary and experimental work since the 1990s, including the Hot Docs award winning film Brave New River (2013, Fr. v.: La Nouvelle Rupert). He has also written and lectured on a range of topics relating to art, Indigenous cinema, and Indigenous ecologies. From 2014 to 2020, he was a film programmer for the Montréal International First Peoples Festival. He is an Assistant Professor in First Peoples Studies, in the School of Community and Public Affairs at Concordia University. The areas of his research, art projects and teaching include: cultural contexts of relationships with nature, experiments with perception and language, wampum belts, history and worldview of the Wendat people, and colonial ideology in Québec. Nicolas Renaud is of mixed Québécois and Indigenous heritage and is a member of the Huron-Wendat First Nation of Wendake.
https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/cinema/faculty.html?fpid=n-renaud
Dr. Catherine Richardson / Kinewesquao
Director and Associate Professor, First Peoples Studies
Dr. Richardson’s research focuses on recovery from violence, including colonial, state, structural violence and on response-based practice. Dr. Richardson is furthering knowledge on topics such as recovery, human dignity and ways of dealing with violence as well as ways Indigenous people can assert and centre Indigenous ways of knowing, being and living, highlighting sacred relationships.
https://cathyrichardsoncounsellor.com
https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/scpa/faculty.html?fpid=catherine-richardson
Dr. Miranda Smitheram
Assistant Professor, Design and Computation Arts
Dr. Miranda Smitheram is a design researcher and artist, who explores themes of hybridity and materiality. Originally from Aotearoa/New Zealand, she is currently Assistant Professor of Material Futures in the Department of Design and Computation Arts. Miranda’s research practice incorporates ancestral and speculative methods through making with ecosystems, localised phenomena, and human and nonhuman collaborators. Through this she develops new hybrid materials to contribute to sustainable and relational futures.
Dr. Jeannine-Marie St-Jacques
Assistant Professor, Geography, Planning and Environment
Jeannine-Marie St-Jacques received a PhD in Biology, specialty in environmental science from Queen's University in 2007 and joined Concordia University's Department of Geography, Planning and Environment in 2017. She holds masters degrees in botany and mathematics. After her doctorate, she spent nine years as a Research Associate at the Prairie Adaptation Research Collaborative, University of Regina. Her expertise is in paleoclimatology, climatology and hydrology. Her research is funded by NSERC. She collaborates with a broad spectrum of colleagues and students, both in Quebec and abroad, who have expertise in the environmental sciences and studies, climatology, climate modelling, hydrology, botany, geology, statistics, aquatic sciences and Indigenous Studies.
https://www.concordia.ca/artsci/geography-planning-environment/research/labs/chapel.html#tab0
Dr. Sigwan Thivierge
Assistant Professor, First Peoples Studies and Linguistics
Dr. Sigwan Thivierge is Anishinaabekwe (Algonquin) from Long Point First Nation in Winneway, QC. She is an Assistant Professor in both First Peoples Studies (SCPA) and Linguistics (CMLL). A linguist by training, her research focuses on both theoretical linguistics and language reclamation, and the ways in which linguistic theory and community-based research can inform each other.
Dr. Mark Watson
Associate Professor, Sociology and Anthropology
Dr. Mark Watson works in collaboration with the Southern Quebec Inuit Association based in Montreal and Tungasuvvingat Inuit in Ottawa on a SSHRC-funded community-university partnership called 'Mobilizing Nipivut'. This partnership focuses on making sustainable the communications platform for bi-weekly Inuit radio shows in both cities, supporting Inuktut language use and learning in the city, information exchange and other organizational aims.
Dr. Louellyn White
Associate Professor, First Peoples Studies
Dr. Louellyn White's research and teaching interests include: Indigenous identity formation and language/cultural resurgence; boarding/residential school history and its intergenerational impacts on healing and reconciliation, decolonization and Indigenous Knowledges in STEM, Indigenous youth and land-based pedagogies, and community-based research.
https://www.concordia.ca/finearts/art-history/faculty.html?fpid=louellyn-white