Presenters

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.

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.  

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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