Bios for the 2016 Symposium speakers:
John Moses – Conservation as Reconciliation: The Russ Moses Residential School Memoir & Rattle as Context for an Indigenous Heritage Conservation Ethic
John Moses is a member of the Delaware and Upper Mohawk bands of the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. Previously employed as an artifact conservator, Native history researcher and assistant curator at the former Canadian Museum of Civilization, with additional training and experience in artifact conservation at the British Museum and the National Museum of the American Indian, he currently works as a policy analyst with the Aboriginal Affairs Directorate of the Department of Canadian Heritage in Gatineau, Quebec. He holds a diploma of applied arts in museum technology, a bachelor’s degree in interdisciplinary studies, a master’s degree in Canadian studies, and is currently completing PhD work in cultural mediations at Carleton University. He is presently a member of the Aboriginal Advisory Committee for Canadian History Hall Redevelopment at the Canadian Museum of History. He is the son of the late Russ Moses, whose residential school memoir forms the basis of this presentation.
Robert Shipley – More to Canadian Heritage Than Old, White, French & English
Before retiring in 2016 Professor Robert Shipley was Associate Director of the School of Planning, University of Waterloo, Director of the Heritage Resources Centre (HRC) and Visiting Research Fellow, Oxford Brookes University, England. Under his leadership the HRC became a leading source internationally of empirical research on cultural heritage, tourism and the economics of heritage. Robert served as VP of the Canadian Association of Heritage Professionals, Associate Editor of Plan Canada and the journal Planning Practice and Research and Project Evaluator for the European Science Council and the Norwegian Science Council. In 2012 recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.
Thompson Nguyen – Mapping Toronto’s Queer Asian Heritage
Thompson Cong Nguyen is a queer Vietnamese Canadian designer based in Toronto. He is an alumni of the Bachelor of Architectural Studies program at Carleton University where he majored in Design. During his studies he has always questioned how the built environment can inform the stories we tell and are told. It was not until working in architecture that he was able to understand how he might take the question a bit more seriously. Thompson currently works at ERA Architects where the office faces daily questions of heritage, conservation and value on a wide range of projects across Canada. He feels very fortunate to be surrounded by incredible professionals that he can learn from. Thompson is also an active member on the Board of Directors at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. He loves storytelling and wants to see as many different voices on stage as possible.
Karen Aird – Living With the Past: Rethinking Indigenous Cultural Landscapes
A member of Saulteau First Nations in Treaty no. 8 territory of BC, Karen Aird is a heritage consultant residing in Kamloops, BC. For almost 21 years Karen has worked on many First Nations-related projects that convey a strong Sense of Place in Indigenous Landscapes, encompassing the stories, legal traditions and the intangible and tangible elements into Indigenous cultural heritage planning. She is also the Cultural Heritage Planner for the Treaty 8 Tribal Association, the Tse’K’wa Heritage Society and the Treaty 8 Coordinating Lands Office.
Alain Fournier – Living With the Past: Rethinking Indigenous Cultural Landscapes
Alain’s first contact with First Nations was in 1967 in BC, followed by contact with the Inuit of Nunavut in 1970. Since 1983, he has cumulated over thirty years of experience working as an architectural consultant with Inuit and First Nations. He has worked in the Canadian North’s Inuit Nunangat territories (Nunavik, Nunavut and Nunatsiavut) and has also worked with the Cree of Eyou Istchee, the Mi’gmaq, the Innu, the Anishnabeg and the Mohawks. He has designed and built over two hundred and fifty projects (250) of all types in collaboration with Inuit and First Nations.
Rick Fehr – “They call it Wishkubimin or sweet corn:” Threads of Food Heritage Continuity in Southwestern Ontario
Rick Fehr is originally from Wallaceburg, Ontario, and is an Assistant Professor in Geography and First Nations Studies at Western University. His research focuses on the intersections and contentions between settlers and Indigenous peoples in early 19th century Southwestern Ontario, on Walpole Island’s traditional territory that is now the municipality of Chatham – Kent. The intent is to develop a comprehensive understanding of historic Indigenous land‐use activities to help inform future land use planning decisions while acknowledging historic, contemporary, and future Indigenous presence on the land.
Jared Macbeth – “They call it Wishkubimin or sweet corn:” Threads of Food Heritage Continuity in Southwestern Ontario
Jared Macbeth is the Project Review Coordinator for the Walpole Island First Nation External Projects Program which deals with Consultation and Accommodation requests within the community’s Traditional Territory. The main focus of his research is to investigate how language in land use policy can be altered to promote better working relationships between First Nations and municipalities.
Jesse Robertson – Heritage at the Treaty Table: Negotiating Indigenous Heritage in the British Columbia Treaty Process
Jesse is interested in the history of Aboriginal‐settler relations in British Columbia, and in the way that history is represented in contemporary public discourse. Jesse was born in Victoria, BC, and completed his undergraduate at the University of King’s College, Halifax, NS. A recent graduate of the MA program in Public History at Carleton University, Jesse’s research explored how discussions of the past have been framed within the British Columbia Treaty Process. More recently, Jesse participated in the 2015 Stö:lõ Ethnohistory Field School, where he worked with the Matsqui First Nation to produce a history of settlement on the Matsqui Main Reserve. Beyond the academy, Jesse is an avid hiker, cook, and cribbage player. He currently lives in Ottawa.
Kahente Horn-Miller – ‘Off the Page’ and Into Practice: Revisiting the Haudenosaunee Sky Woman Narrative
Dr. Kahente Horn-Miller (Kahente means “she walks ahead”) (Kanien:keha’ka/Mohawk) received her doctorate in 2009. She is a mother to four daughters. Currently she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Canadian Studies at Carleton University.
As an active member of her community, Dr. Horn-Miller is a figurative bridge builder as she continues to research and write on issues that are relevant to her work and academic interests such as Indigenous methodologies, Indigenous women, identity politics, colonization, Indigenous governance, and consensus-based decision making for her community and the wider society. Her governance work and community-based research involves interpreting Haudenosaunee culture and bringing new life to old traditions. She continues to work with the research advisory for the Kahnawà:ke Diabetes Prevention Project along with writing and publishing in her areas of interest. It is the fruit of her endeavors as a Mohawk, an educator, and a mother that she brings into her interactions with Kahnawà:ke:ronon (people of Kahnawà:ke) and the academic community.
Academics for her is not only about theorizing the issues that Indigenous peoples face as a way to find solutions; it is also about putting these theories into practice. It is through her teaching that she challenges her students to learn about her culture and about themselves as humans, which in the long term will foster relationships between Indigenous and non-native peoples that will go beyond the written word and the classroom and research settings. “We have a lot important knowledge to share”, she says.
Deborah Pelletier – Indigenous Peoples & Heritage Conservation –Gathering Strength from the “Circle”, Perspectives from Two Members of the former Circle of Aboriginal Heritage and Knowledge at Library and Archives Canada
Deborah Pelletier’s life-long learning journey in learning begins with the teachings from her Metis family and community of the Red River area in Manitoba and the Village of Lebret in Saskatchewan. Her education continued when she enrolled in the Saskatchewan Urban Native Teacher Education Program (SUNTEP) at the University of Regina, where she received a Bachelor of Education Degree and later, at the University of Alberta, where she obtained a Masters Degree in Library and Information Science.
Ms Pelletier’s professional background includes work as a teacher, consultant in education, librarian, researcher, program manager, and an advisor in information
management. She has worked as a public servant for the most part of her career in the development of public policy and its implementation in programming and services in pursuit of universal and equitable access to Aboriginal heritage and knowledge and its representation and preservation in public service and community organizations.
She has consulted and engaged Aboriginal communities to define and communicate their interests and needs and to work collaboratively on the basis of mutual respect, sharing and decision-making.
Ms Pelletier has provided “food for thought” at national and international forums and has co-authored a number of informational and educational resources incorporating Indigenous content and perspective.
She continues to work with the federal government and is presently on secondment to the Education Branch, Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada (INAC).
Marie-Louise Perron – Indigenous Peoples & Heritage Conservation –Gathering Strength from the “Circle”, Perspectives from Two Members of the former Circle of Aboriginal Heritage and Knowledge at Library and Archives Canada
She holds an Education and Fine Arts degrees from the University of Saskatchewan, and a Master’s degree in ethnology from Laval University, in Québec.
She has been, respectively, high school teacher in French as a second language and visual arts, Francophone Archivist for the province of Saskatchewan, and public services staff member at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) in Ottawa. Starting in 1992 at this institution, she led a number of distant access and genealogy initiatives, and was active in implementing Aboriginal and multicultural heritage initiatives. She has also presented and published, in both English and French for national and international audiences, numerous papers on subjects including French/Métis folksongs and folktales, the use of archival documents in the classroom, distant access to archival services, the development of LAC’s Canadian Genealogy Centre, and the Perron-Laderoute-Marion-
St. Arnaud families.
From 2007 to 2011, Ms Perron was Chief of Staff to the Commissioner of Official Languages in Ottawa.
Now retired, Ms Perron pursues historical and genealogical research projects, as well as her passion for the visual arts in photography, digital image expressions, mixed media on canvas, and watercolours.
Rebekah Ingram – Indo-European Corruptions of Iroquoian Place Names
Rebekah R. Ingram is a PhD student in the School of Linguistics and Language Studies at Carleton University. Her past work includes contributions to the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian, the American Association of Geographers, and Babel language magazine. Rebekah is pleased to share knowledge with members of the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations Confederacy) within her current research, which focusses on indigenous languages in the historical context, representations of indigenous place names in cartographic discourse (maps), the morphology and syntax of indigenous place names and mapping of linguistic phenomena. Because of the interdisciplinary nature of her studies, she also works closely with the Department of Geography and Environmental studies and programming using the Nunaliit mapping framework, developed by Carleton’s Geomatics and Cartographic Research Centre, to create the Atlas of Historical Indigenous Place Names, currently under development.
Lindy Van Vliet – Burning the Whitehouse, Sir Isaac Brock, and PolandBall: An Analysis of Social Media as a Space for Government Narrative Critique
I completed my BA in History and Political Science at University of Waterloo in 2015 and a, currently pursuing a MA in Canadian Studies at Carleton University. I am most interested in how Canadians react, respond, and re-produce the national narratives put forward by government agencies on online sites and through internet memes. My interest in critiquing nation-building narratives emerged when I worked for Parks Canada as a heritage interpreter.