Katherine A.H. Graham Lecture on Indigenous Policy | Featuring: Abram Benedict, Ontario Regional Chief of the Assembly of First Nations

Abram Benedict

Abram Benedict is the Ontario Regional Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He is the former Grand Chief of the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne, where he led a 12-member governing body responsible for delivering services to the Mohawk community situated across the Canada-U.S. border and Ontario-Quebec provinces. With 18 years of leadership experience, he played a pivotal role in modernizing governance structures and negotiating with federal partners to secure over $280 million for community priorities, including land claims. Benedict’s career also includes private sector experience, and he has served on boards such as the Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Societies and as Chair of St. Lawrence College’s Board of Governors.

Knowledge-Sharing through Community Engagement: Insights from Experiences in Northern Indigenous Fisheries Research

Carola Ramos is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Public Policy at Carleton University, working at the FISHES (Fostering Indigenous Small-scale fisheries for Health, Economy, and food Security) project. She is a geographer (Queen’s University, PhD 2021), working in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary settings, and has research experience in Northern Canada and the Peruvian Amazon. Her research interests include human-environment relationships (e.g., socioenvironmental changes, Indigenous land governance and livelihoods); state-society relations (e.g., cultural-political geographies, decolonization, and reconciliation); and community-based qualitative research methods. She has been more recently studying the social-ecological dynamics of sportfishing and the potential of nature-based tourism in northern communities, as well as the implications of a cultural approach to fisheries management.

Developing A Community-Based Food Sovereignty Assessment Tool in Rural Haiti

Joshua Steckley completed his PhD at in geography at the University of Toronto. His forthcoming book, The Nightcralwers: A story of worms, cows, and cash in the underground bait industry, examines the political ecology of the lucrative bait worm industry and tracks how southwestern Ontario became the ‘worm capital of the world.’ Prior to his academic work, Joshua spent 5 years in Haiti, working with environmental organizations and advocating for local food systems through the production of documentaries, community radio broadcasts and Haitian television commercials. Joshua’s  Banting research seeks to bridge this past work in Haiti with his academic interests to understand how the transformation of nature has shaped Haiti’s environmental history, revealing the contradictions and opportunities in the relationship between biotechnology, capital, and rural livelihoods.

The Value of Pre-Engaging To Build Real Engagement With First Nations – Lessons From The Field

Giuseppe Amatulli is a postdoctoral fellow in the Rebuilding First Nations Governance (RFNG) Research Project, whose main goal is to enhance the capacity building of those First Nations who want to transition from the Indian Act to self-governance. Giuseppe has been doing community-based research with and for Doig River First Nation since 2019. His research methodology, anchored in a strong community-based approach, allows him to perform cutting-edge qualitative research (using various methods such as ethnography, participatory observation, interviews, and discourse analysis) at the intersection of socio-legal and environmental anthropology, intertwined with Human Rights Law, Indigenous Governance, and Public Policy. Giuseppe obtained his PhD in Anthropology from Durham University (2023).

Human Dimensions of Wildlife Management Research — The Need For Acknowledgement, Engagement, And Equitable Collaboration

Howard (Howie) Huynh is postdoctoral research fellow at Carleton University.  He is a wildlife biologist who specializes in mammalian biology and natural history, with particular interests in taxonomy, biogeography, disease ecology, and conservation.  He successfully combines numerous quantitative (e.g., morphometrics, genetic analyses) and qualitative (e.g., field sampling, examination of museum vouchers in natural history collections) research methods to profitably collaborate with other scientists to address important biodiversity conservation and wildlife management issues.  

As a member of the TRIA-FoR research consortium at Carleton University, he is conducting integrative research on forest pest management, with focus on mountain pine beetle (Dendroctonus ponderosae) impacts on the economics of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta) harvesting, better incorporating stakeholders and rightsholders engagement into more equitable decision-making processes, and conveying that information into furthering effective forest management planning and policy development.  Through his partnerships with various Indigenous communities (e.g., Inuit; Swan River First Nation; Metis Nation of Alberta), he also seeks ways to further address pressing issues pertaining to self-governance, land rights, and reconciliation and how they contribute to community-based development and sustainability. 

How The Meaning Of “Community” Might Need to Change Across Research: Scales, Goals, And Connections

Kyle Plotsky is an interdisciplinary researcher who works with stakeholder and rightsholder communities across western Canada to improve environmental management and policy. He is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Biology at Carleton University working with the TRIA-FoR (Transformative Risk Assessment and Forest Resilience) project to increase the inclusion of local rightsholders in the management of Mountain Pine Beetles and the landscape more broadly. After completing his PhD in Geography, he worked on the socioeconomics of managing zoonotic diseases in wood bison while a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Calgary; he continues this work in partnership with researchers at Environment and Climate Change Canada.