Keynote Speaker Profile

Prof. Jason Edward Lewis

Concordia University, Montreal

Keynote Speaker Profile

Prof. Jason Edward Lewis

Concordia University, Montreal

Jason Edward Lewis is a digital media poet, artist, and software designer. He founded Obx Laboratory for Experimental Media, where he directs research/creation projects exploring computation as a creative and cultural material. Along with the artist Skawennati, he co-directs Aboriginal Territories in CyberspaceSkins Workshops on Aboriginal Storytelling and Video Game Design and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. Lewis is deeply committed to developing intriguing new forms of expression by working on conceptual, critical, creative and technical levels simultaneously.

He is the University Research Chair in Computational Media and the Indigenous Future Imaginary as well as Professor of Computation Arts at Concordia University, Montreal. Born and raised in northern California, Lewis is Cherokee, Hawaiian and Samoan.

Lewis’ creative and production work has been featured at Ars Electronica, Mobilefest, Elektra, Urban Screens, ISEA, SIGGRAPH, and FILE, among other venues, and has been recognized with the inaugural Robert Coover Award for Best Work of Electronic Literature, two Prix Ars Electronica Honorable Mentions, several imagineNATIVE Best New Media awards and six solo exhibitions. His research interests include emergent media theory and history, and methodologies for conducting art-led technology research. In addition to being lead author on the award-winning “Making Kin with the Machines” essay, he has contributed to chapters in collected editions covering mobile media, video game design, machinima and experimental pedagogy with Indigenous communities, as well as numerous journal articles and conference papers.

Lewis has worked in a range of industrial research settings, including Interval Research, US West’s Advanced Technology Group, and the Institute for Research on Learning, and, at the turn of the century, he founded and ran a research studio for the venture capital firm Arts Alliance.

Lewis is a former Trudeau Fellow and a former Carnegie Fellow. He received a B.S. in Symbolic Systems (Cognitive Science) and B.A. in German Studies (Philosophy) from Stanford University, and an M.Phil. in Design from the Royal College of Art.

Speaker Profile

Arlana Bennett (Redsky)

Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta

Speaker Profile

Arlana Bennett (Redsky)

Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta

Arlana Bennett (Redsky) is an Anishinaabekwe (Shoal Lake 40) from unceded Secwépemc territory living in Edmonton (Treaty 6). She is a Ph.D. student in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, and a co-organizer of the annual Summer Internship for Indigenous Peoples in Genomics (SING). Her dissertation focuses on Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) of cervids (deer, moose, elk, and caribou) and posthumanist kincentric ecologies with Indigenous peoples in the endemic zone. Her poetic work is an arts-based research creation project that is intended to identify her position as an Indigenous person within the broader assemblage of CWD work.

 

Speaker Profile

Geraldine King

PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies Program at Queens University

Speaker Profile

Geraldine King

PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies Program at Queens University

Geraldine “Jibby” King is a PhD candidate in the Cultural Studies Program at Queens University where she is a Joseph Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholar. Geraldine is also a writer who focusses on Anishinaabe erotics. 

As a faculty member of the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University, Geraldine’s research interests include: Anishinaabe phenomenology, eco-erotics, pushing theories through the flesh and Indigenous pedagogical transformations. Geraldine is a mother to two beautiful children.  

Speaker Profile

Elaine D. Alexie

Northern Community Engagement Officer, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

Speaker Profile

Elaine D. Alexie

Northern Community Engagement Officer, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

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Speaker Profile

Brittany Johnson

Métis PhD student, burlesque performer, singer/songwriter, writer, beadwork artist, and decolonial sexuality enthusiast

Speaker Profile

Brittany Johnson

Métis PhD student, burlesque performer, singer/songwriter, writer, beadwork artist, and decolonial sexuality enthusiast

Brittany Johnson is a Métis PhD student, burlesque performer, singer/songwriter, writer, beadwork artist, and decolonial sexuality enthusiast. As a full spectrum doula, she encourages teachings about sexualities, bodies, and healthy relationality. She looks to beadwork as text and as a form of teaching about the body and as part of healing.

Speaker Profile

Tashina Makokis

nehiyaw iskwew artist from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation

Speaker Profile

Tashina Makokis

nehiyaw iskwew artist from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation

Tashina Makokis is a nehiyaw iskwew artist from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation.

Trained in the fine arts at the University of Alberta and taught beading and sewing from her aunties, their work is an eclectic mix of paintings, illustrations, multimedia, prints, zines, beadwork, handmade jewelry and pouches, upcycled clothing, and handpainted denim jackets that they use to focus their work on Indigenous issues and her experiences. A lot of her own personal research and work has centered on Indigenous sexuality and the reclamation of their bodies and lives

Makokis’ first solo exhibit, held at the femlab gallery from July-October 2017 and hosted by the Department of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta, was featured in a CBC Arts video in October 2017. Their seminal work, The Cancer Series, was surveyed in the Winter 2018 issue of Canadian Art magazine by Cree writer, Billy-Ray Belcourt.

She currently resides in Edmonton with her partner and her dog.

Speaker Profile

Kirsten Lindquist

PhD student in Indigenous Studies at the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

Speaker Profile

Kirsten Lindquist

PhD student in Indigenous Studies at the Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta

Kirsten Lindquist is Cree-Métis and Settler European (English, Swedish, German, Ukrainian & Romanian) from rural north-east Alberta – near the place where atimoswe creek drains into kisiskâciwani-sîpiy (North Saskatchewan River). She is a PhD student in Indigenous Studies at the Faculty of Native Studies (University of Alberta), Research Assistant at RELAB, and co-producer of Tipi Confessions. She is learning how bodies are energy; are power-full (resisting & intersecting with settler colonial capitalist white supremist heteronormative patriarchal power systems) specifically in relation to themes of Indigenous sexualities, gender & somatics (movement and feeling)… & love. 

Through a practice of walking tours, apothecary tea blending, divination mediumship, burlesque dancing, and training to become a registered massage/reiki therapist, Kirsten is learning about how the erotic (as source energy) is part of research-creation, relationality, & anti-oppression and Indigenous knowledge generation. Her dream is to bring paskwa-mostoswak back to the (familial) land, and create a space where people can have the connection with plants and bison she had as she did growing up.

 

Speaker Profile

Matthew James Weigel

poet and artist in this place, this creek, this river

Speaker Profile

Matthew James Weigel

poet and artist in this place, this creek, this river

Matthew James Weigel is a poet and artist in this place, this creek, this river. He holds a B.Sc. in Biological Sciences from the UofA and is pursuing higher degrees in English. He is Dene Métis, British & German, actively practicing research-creation centred in relations to history and the landscape. His work investigates a variety of interfaces between water, land, air, people, and the material and visual arts.

Speaker Profile

kateryna barnes

settler-Haudenosaunee graduate student in the Digital Humanities program at the University of Alberta

Speaker Profile

kateryna barnes

settler-Haudenosaunee graduate student in the Digital Humanities program at the University of Alberta

kateryna is a settler-Haudenosaunee graduate student in the Digital Humanities program at the University of Alberta who theorizes decolonial ways of being in the virtual, creates weird arts-based research, and studies anti-oppressive pedagogy and settler-colonialism as horror culture.  

https://katerynabarnes.com/

Twitter: @barnfeline

Insta: @barnfeline

Speaker Profile

Mandee McDonald

hide tanning enthusiast, and first-year Indigenous Studies PhD student at the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta

Speaker Profile

Mandee McDonald

hide tanning enthusiast, and first-year Indigenous Studies PhD student at the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta

Mandee McDonald is a Maskîkow-iskwéw, born at Màntéwisipihk, who grew up in Sòmba K’é, Denendeh. As a hide tanning enthusiast, and first-year Indigenous Studies PhD student at the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta, she is exploring concepts of embodied knowledge, body logic, and relationality between human and other-than-human entities through a lens of Indigenous hide tanning practices. Her ideas for research creation work are framed around organizing hide tanning opportunities, facilitating land-based learning for Indigenous peoples interested in hide tanning, and tanning hides with her friends. She will share stories from hide tanning camps, show pieces of tanned and near-tanned hides, and display some of the tools used in the hide tanning process.

Mandee has been working in the field of Indigenous land-based learning since 2013, and is currently the Managing Director for Dene Nahjo, an Indigenous innovation collective based out of Sòmba K’é, Denendeh.

Speaker Profile

Métis in Space

Indigenous feminist science fiction podcast

Speaker Profile

Métis in Space

Indigenous feminist science fiction podcast

Métis in Space is an Indigenous feminist science fiction podcast that brings into conversation critiques of mainstream portrayals of Indigenous people with anti-colonial futurities and imaginings. Métis in Space is also organizing Back 2 The Land: 2Land 2Furious, a teaching and learning space for cultural and language land-based education and skill-building.

www.metisinspace.com

Twitter: @metis_in_space