The Inaugural Visiting Scholar at the Ānako Indigenous Research Institute
Tasha Beeds is an Indigenous scholar of mixed nêhiyaw (Plains Cree), Scottish-Metis, and Bajan ancestry, a creative artist, a poet, a community engaged Water Walker, a Grandmother, and a Midewiwin practitioner.
Her creative and artistic endeavors are deeply connected to the notions of community, ethics, and responsibility that are integral to Indigenous peoples. Her message is simple and mirrors ideas of relationality. Indigenous ways of knowing and being in the world have survived, are of value, and need to be shared to help not only Indigenous people, but all people as well as in our traditional territories. It is imperative for the existence of our future generations that we, as Indigenous people, continue to give voice to the experiences of our people, our Lands, and our Waters.
Tasha’s teaching interests and research areas encompass Indigenous literatures, storytelling, and oral traditions; Indigenous knowledges, intellectual traditions and philosophies; gender relationships and relationships to the Lands, Waters and Creation; Indigenous legal traditions; Indigenous community engagement and resistance; anti-violence strategies; Indigenous responses to domestic violence, human trafficking and violence; Water knowledges and Water governance as well as reconciliation in multiple forms with non-Indigenous society, but through an Indigenous lens. She has recently completed two Water Walks: one local to the Sudbury/North Shore region and one nationally for the Saskatchewan River.
Tasha Beeds walking with a copper pot in one of her water walks
Tasha has been recognized for research and academic excellence through a number of grants and scholarships including a CGS SSHRC Grant for her Masters and Ph.D. research. The Indigenous community of Saskatchewan also recognized her scholarly contributions with a Gabriel Dumont Scholarship for her M.A. and a Trudeau Scholarship for her Ph.D. Tasha is a co-applicant on an Indigenous Poetics SSHRC Grant, and on two Ontario Council of the Arts Grants: one with the Kawartha Lakes Sexual Assault Centre for a creative expression of her work with the Water in relation to sexual violence/trauma and another for researching and working with a young Anishinaabe member of the Deaf Nation to produce a short documentary. Tasha won the ImagineNative’s Documentary Pitch Prize in 2015 for the conception of a documentary highlighting intimate partner violence. In 2019, she was awarded the Reese Fellowship for American Bibliography and the History of the Book in the Americas and the Charles J. Tanenbaum Fellowship in Cartographical Bibliography for a research project on Anishinaabe Scrolls. Most recently she became the Ron Ianni Fellow at the Indigenous Legal Orders Institute at the University of Windsor, as well as being a part-time faculty member with the Wheat Institute’s Art and Expressive Arts Therapy program. She also has numerous pieces of poetry published along with other creative non-fiction pieces.
Tasha will be joining us as Ānako’s inaugural Visiting Indigenous Scholar in September through until the end of April 2022.
During this time, she will:
- lead a series of workshops on Indigenous research methodologies and ethical research practices through the lens of research with the water,
- be available for mentorship opportunities with graduate students,
- and will teach a course during the winter term based in the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies.
For further information, please contact Ānako at anako@carleton.ca.