During this year鈥檚 Day of Truth and Reconciliation we are spotlighting some of the current research and various initiatives being undertaken by the Indigenous faculty members within our vast Faculty of Arts community.听听
Each year, September 30th marks National Truth and Reconciliation Day, which honours the children who never returned home and Survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.听听
Since the 2017 Provost Task Force on Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Education, the Faculty of Arts has seen a range of recommendations implemented among its varied disciplines, such as the School of Social Work鈥檚 Annual Indigenous Field Studies course, the Department of Linguistics鈥檚 Ad Hoc MA and PhD program in Indigenous Language Revitalization, and the establishment of the Indigenous Studies and Community Engagement Initiative, which offers an Indigenous writer-in-residence and artist-in-residence series, as well as an Indigenous Knowledge Holder speaker series.听听
Professor Yann Allard-Tremblay, Department of Political Science听听
Recently appointed Director of the Indigenous Studies and Community Engagement Initiative (ISCEI), Professor Allard-Tremblay's research is in political theory focused on the decolonization and Indigenization of political theory.听听
His latest article, 鈥淒ispelling the Fantasy of Innocence: Complicity and the Cultivation of Transgression in Settler Colonial Contexts鈥� was published in the Canadian Journal of Political Science, in January 2024.听听
The article critically engages with the Canadian framing of settler colonial/decolonial politics in terms of guilt and innocence, and argues for the acknowledgement of the political significance of daily individual acts and for the cultivation of dispositions that disrupt unjust structures, such as a disposition to transgress.听听
You view Professor Allard-Tremblay's .听听
Professor Noelani Artista, Department of History and Classical Studies听听
Earlier in 2024, Professor Arista was named a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Land, Governance, and Language. Her research seeks to answer questions such as, how can Indigenous nations uncover their own paradigms of land-relationships upon which their laws and politics are founded?听
Professor Arista also serves as the Director of the Indigenous Studies Program. Find out more about the Indigenous Studies Program. 听
Professor Arista is presently working with several of her undergraduate research assistants in History and in Law to do research on the first Hawaiian constitutional period of 1837-1845, a moment in Hawaiian history, which produced a Declaration of Rights, the First Hawaiian constitution and compendium of published k膩n膩wai which included Hawaiian customary law and kapu.听听
Students are learning how to conduct research in primary source manuscripts and newspaper repositories, as well as organization of data and transcription, in multiple languages, such as Hawaiian, English and French.听听
Professor Arista鈥檚 2019 award-winning book, 鈥溾�� which details Native Hawaiians鈥� experience of encounter and colonialism in the early nineteenth century.听
Professor Alyssa Bader, Department of Anthropology听听
Professor Bader is a Tsimshian anthropologist whose community-based, collaborative research program draws from a range of archaeological sciences, including paleogenomics, bioarchaeology, and stable isotope analysis.听听
Her current research is concentrated in the Northwest Coast of North America, where I am investigating relationships between diet, health, and socio-political dynamics in both ancestral and contemporary Indigenous communities.听
Her recent article, 鈥淎 relational framework for microbiome research with Indigenous communities鈥� published in Nature Microbiology in September 2023, proposes a framework for听 ethical practices in human microbiome research. Bader and the co-authors' research aims to听 provide space for Indigenous worldviews in pursuit of Indigenous research sovereignty in human microbiome research. 听
of Professor Bader鈥檚 research.听听
Professor Gloria Bell, Department of Art History and Classical Studies听听
Professor Bell is an art historian and Terra Foundation Rome Prize Fellow, whose research focuses on exhibition histories of First Nations, M茅tis, and Inuit arts in the early twentieth century in Italy, Global Indigenous studies, decolonizing and anti-colonial methodologies, materiality studies, global histories of body art, and the importance of art as living history.听
is her latest book, published by Duke University Press in October 2024, and offers a critical revision of the 1925 staged Vatican Missionary Exposition in Rome鈥檚 Vatican City. The exhibition served to promote the narrative of the Catholic Church鈥檚 beneficence to a global congregation of worshippers and displayed thousands of cultural belongings stolen from Indigenous communities across Turtle Island. 听
Eternal Sovereigns is the compilation of years of archival research and field interviews in which Professor Bell provides insight into the Catholic Church鈥檚 colonial collecting and its ongoing ethnological display practices, and reclaims Indigenous belongings and artifacts that remain in the Vatican Museums. 听听
Back in March 2022, Professor Bell was on her research in conjunction with that year鈥檚 Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops, who had arranged for a group of First Nations, M茅tis and Inuit delegates to have a private tour of the Vatican Museums and meet with Pope Francis.听听
Two years later, in March 2024, Professor Bell was on the Pope鈥檚 support for the restitution of Indigenous items to Canada. 鈥淭o say that these are gifts is a false and simplistic narrative,鈥� Professor Bell told The Globe and Mail, explaining that many items were stolen by missionaries or removed under duress in an era of cultural genocide.听
Professor Cindy Blackstock, School of Social Work听听
Professor Blackstock is a member of the Gitksan First Nation with over 30 years of social work experience in child protection and indigenous children鈥檚 rights. In 2023, she received a Canada Research Chair, Tier 1, in First Nations Child and Family Services Implementation.听
She and her research team are evaluating interventions to support the implementation of evidence-informed, decolonized and culturally appropriate services for First Nations children and families. Their aim is to support First Nations children and families, and those who provide services to them, by conducting community-based evaluations of policies and actions aimed at addressing the root causes of ongoing social issues (structural driver interventions).听
Blackstock also serves at the executive director of the and in 2023 she received the for her decades-long work advocating for the rights and welfare of Indigenous children.听听
Professor James Crippen, Department of Linguistics听
Professor James Crippen is Tlingit, a member of the Kaa岣得k始w H铆t (Basket/Arch House) of the Deisheetaan clan in the Raven moiety (Laayineid铆) and a child of the S始iknax瘫.谩di clan in the Wolf/Eagle moiety. Since joining the Department of Linguistics at McGill University in 2021, he has worked extensively with the (MULL) and worked on developing the Ad Hoc MA and PhD program in Indigenous Language Revitalization. Read more about Professor Crippen鈥檚 work with the the Ad Hoc MA and PhD program, along with colleagues Professor Arista and Professor Coon. 听
With the MULL, Professor Crippen has published a number of for language materials and publications. With a background in historical linguistics, he explores various issues in orality, such as conversation, narrative, and oratory, art and history.听听
Professor Crippen鈥檚 most recent SSHRC Insight Grant with Professor Jessica Coon from the Department of Linguistics, titled 鈥淭he Grammar of Hierarchy Effects鈥�,听 is on the hierarchy effects with a primary focus on Mayan, Algonquian, Ktunaxa and Tlingit languages.听
Back in April 2023, we spoke to Professor Crippen about the importance of indigenous language revitalization in light of his leadership in organizing the 26th annual Workshop on Structure and Constituency in Languages of the Americas.听听
Professor Celeste Pedri-Spade, Associate Provost (Indigenous Initiatives)听
Pedri-Spade is McGill鈥檚 and oversees McGill鈥檚 ongoing response to the 52 Calls to Action articulated by the Provost鈥檚 Task Force on Indigenous Studies and Indigenous Education.听听
She is also Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and her research interests include Indigenous art and decolonization, settler colonialism and Indigeneity, Indigenous visual/material culture; Anishinabemowin regeneration; and creative Indigenous research methodologies.听
Professor Leslie Sabiton, Department of Anthropology听听
Working at the intersections of political, legal, and medical anthropologies, as well as Indigenous Studies, Professor Sabiston鈥檚 work brings together critical social theories of colonialism, race, class, gender and sexuality with the political commitments of decolonization and aspirations of realizing alternative liberatory worlds informed by Indigenous futurities.听听
Professor Sabiton joined the Faculty in 2021. You can view his research .听听
Professor Ann Seymour, School of Social Work听听
Professor Ann Seymour joined the School of Social Work this year as the new Director of Indigenous Access McGill (IAM), a support program for First Nations, Inuit and M茅tis students in the School of Social Work. In conjunction with IAM, the School of Social Work offers an annual Indigenous Field Studies course, which provides an opportunity for students from Social Work, Law, Medicine and Health Sciences, Anthropology and the Indigenous Studies Minor to learn about Indigenous cultures and worldviews, with a particular emphasis on Haudenosaunee teachings and their connection to the students' areas of practice, all under the instruction of community elders and a multi-disciplinary team of instructors听
An alumna of the School of Social Work, Professor Seymour has over 35 years of experience in healthcare, government, and non-profit program management and social work.听听
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