Niigaan Sinclair, President (he/him)

Niigaan Sinclair is Anishinaabe (St. Peter’s/Little Peguis) and a professor at the University of Manitoba, where he holds the Faculty of Arts Professorship in Indigenous Knowledge and Aesthetics in the Department of Indigenous Studies. Niigaan is also an award-winning writer, editor and activist who was recently named to the “Power List” by Maclean’s magazine as one of the most influential individuals in Canada. He is also the co-editor of the award-winning Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (Highwater Press, 2011), Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories (Michigan State University Press, 2013) and The Winter We Danced: the Past, the Future and the Idle No More Movement (Arbeiter Ring Press, 2014). In 2018, he won Canadian columnist of the year at the National Newspaper Awards for his bi-weekly columns in The Winnipeg Free Press and is a featured member of the Friday "Power Panel" on CBC's Power & Politics. A former secondary school teacher, he won the 2019 Peace Educator of the Year from the Peace and Justice Studies Association based at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.

Aubrey Hanson, President-Elect (she/her)

Aubrey Hanson is descended from Red River Métis, German, Icelandic, French, and Scottish peoples and is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta. She is an Associate Professor in Curriculum and Learning at the Werklund School of Education, where she currently serves as the Director of Indigenous Education. Aubrey’s scholarly work spans Indigenous literary studies, curriculum studies, and Indigenous education, dwelling in how Indigenous literary arts can precipitate relationships between non-Indigenous learners and Indigenous resurgence. Aubrey is the author of Literatures, Communities, and Learning: Conversations with Indigenous Writers (WLUP, 2020) and has served in leadership/service roles for the Alberta Métis Education Council, the Indigenous Literary Studies Association, and the Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education.

David Gaertner, Past President

David Gaertner is a white settler and Assistant Professor in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of The Theatre of Regret: Art, Literature, and the Politics of Reconciliation in Canada, the editor of Sôhkêyihta: The Poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe, and co-editor if Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island. David is also the co-director of CEDaR, a community-oriented space for explorations in new media and immersive storytelling. His new book, a co-edited collection on Indigenous Twitter, is forthcoming from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. He lives on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the kʷikʷəƛ̓əm First Nation with his wife and 3 children.

Matthew Tetreault, Early Career Representative (he/him)

Matthew Tétreault is Métis and French-Canadian from Ste. Anne, Manitoba. He is an incoming assistant professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. He holds a PhD from the University of Alberta, where his dissertation, a literary history of the Red River Métis was awarded a Governor General’s Gold Medal for excellence. He has published work on Métis poetry and national literature, and his latest work can be read in the collection National Literature in Multinational States. Matt is also the author of What Happened on the Bloodvein, a collection of interrelated short stories, and Hold Your Tongue, a novel exploring francophone Métis experiences in southeastern Manitoba.

Patrizia Zanella, Early Career Representative (she/elle/wiin)

Patrizia Zanella (she/elle/wiin) is a white settler scholar from Switzerland who currently works on Indigenous language revitalization and translingual poetics thanks to a PostDoc.Mobility project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. She is an Associate Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba, where she takes Ojibwe and Cree language courses, and is affiliated with the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures at The University of Winnipeg. Her work has been published in Studies of American Indian Literatures and the Gender Issues series of Seismo Verlag. Patrizia is invested in multi-/translingual futures that foreground linguistic justice and is grateful to be in wínipék to witness the abundance of Indigenous-led language reclamation projects on Treaty One Territory and the homeland of the Red River Métis. 

Olivia (Liv) Abram, Outreach Coordinator (she/her)

Olivia (Liv) Abram is a settler doctoral candidate whose research focuses on practices and pedagogies of ethical reading, viewing, and listening practices in relation to engagement with Indigenous literatures. Through her work, she explores the decolonial potential of slow, humble, and self-reflective settler engagement with Indigenous literature. She examines written and oral narratives, but also multimodal and experiential story, such as those in graphic narrative, song, and place-based teachings. Her dissertation is titled “Read, View, Listen: Ethical Settler Engagements with Indigenous Literary Expression in Academic, Educational, and Public Contexts.” Her work has recently appeared in Refractions: A Journal of Postcolonial and Cultural Criticism and Victorian Review, and is forthcoming in Biography.

Leah Alfred-Olmedo, Graduate Student Representative (she/her)

Leah Alfred-Olmedo is a half-Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwagu’ł, ‘Namgis, Mamalilikala, Ma’amtagila,) half-settler student from northern Vancouver Island, now living and working on the land of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ peoples. She holds two master’s degrees, in music and in literature, and is currently in the first year of a PhD in literature at UBC. Her proposed dissertation research examines the intersections of monster studies with Indigenous story and the ways in which they both complement and complicate one another. She currently works as the Indigenous writing consultant at UBC’s Centre for Writing and Scholarly Communication and as a member of City Opera Vancouver’s artistic advisory committee.

Pauline Wakeham, Secretary (she/her)

Pauline Wakeham is a white settler who lives and works on the territory of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak, and Chonnonton (Neutral) peoples, along the shores of the Deshkan Ziibi. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of English and Writing Studies at Western University. She is the author of Taxidermic Signs: Reconstructing Aboriginality (U of Minnesota Press) and the co-editor of Reconciling Canada: Critical Perspectives on the Culture of Redress (U of Toronto Press).

Ryan Stearne, Treasurer

Bio coming soon.