People

Kim TallBear is Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience & Environment. She is building a research hub in Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society. Follow them at www.IndigenousSTS.com and @indigenous_sts. TallBear is author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Her Indigenous STS work recently turned to also address decolonial and Indigenous sexualities. She founded a University of Alberta arts-based research lab and co-produces the sexy storytelling show, Tipi Confessions, sparked by the popular Austin, Texas show, Bedpost Confessions. Building on lessons learned with geneticists about how race categories get settled, TallBear is working on a book that interrogates settler-colonial commitments to settlement in place, within disciplines, and within monogamous, state-sanctioned marriage. She is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota. She tweets @KimTallBear and @CriticalPoly.

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.

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.