Dr. John M. H. Kelly
CIRCLE Co-Director, Adjunct Professor
John M.H. Kelly, directed the Centre for Aboriginal Education, Research and Culture (CAERC) in 2002 after he accepted the position at Carleton. The next year, John and musicologist Elaine Keillor founded and co-directed CIRCLE, which combined CAERC’s research functions with the Centre for First Peoples’ Music and Research, the Canadian Musical Heritage Society and the Centre for Canadian Cultures and Heritages.
John is Haida from Skidegate Village in Haida Gwaii, a group of lush, rain-forested North Pacific islands about 80 km off the coast of British Columbia, a 1,750 kilometre road trip from Victoria. The journey is much shorter by the ocean-faring canoes of his rugged ancestors.
John has worked to support Indigenous languages, cultures and education in Canada and the United States since 1993. He earned his doctorate in education from Oregon State University in 2000. John’s work includes co-investigator, editor and a writer for four of CIRCLE’s research project Web publications funded by the Department of Canadian Heritage and other organizations. These are Native Drums (www.native-drums.ca), Native Dance (www.native-dance.ca), Path of the Elders (www.pathoftheelders.com) and First Encounters (www.firstencounters.ca). He also co-authored with Elaine Keillor and Timothy Archambault, The Encyclopedia of Native American Music of North America (Santa Barbara, Calif,: Greenwoood Press, 2013). He is co-author with Miranda Brady of a book, Indigenous Interventions: Studies in History, Media, Image and Discourse. The book is undergoing revisions under contract to UBC Press.
Among numerous committees, grant adjudication boards and other activities, John is one of 15 researchers the Department of Canadian Heritage designated as Canada’s leading authorities on language and cultural revitalization. In 2004, this Circle of Experts worked with a 10-member Task Force to design a national languages strategy to perpetuate aboriginal languages in Canada.