Emiliana Cruz, Professor at CIESAS-CDMX

Emiliana Cruz is a researcher at Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Mexico City. Her diverse and interdisciplinary interests concern education, Indigenous women, linguistic policies, linguistic landscape, documentation and linguistic revitalization. Her work reflects extensive experience in community collaboration, which has allowed her to design and adapt linguistic anthropology methodologies for the study and recognition of Indigenous languages. Cruz has published on the ethnography of language and landscape among the Chatinos of San Juan Quiahije, as the recent volume Theoretical reflections around the role of fieldwork in linguistics and linguistic anthropology: Contributions of Indigenous researchers from southern Mexico, in collaboration with native speakers from Mexico and the Department of Linguistics at UT, Austin. Her approach to teaching and advising demonstrates a commitment to developing knowledge and practices that promote Indigenous language revitalization in Mexico.

 

Hayden King (Anishinaabe, Beausoleil First Nation on Gchi’mnissing, Huronia Ontario), Executive Director, Yellowhead Institute

King is Anishinaabe from Beausoleil First Nation on Gchi’mnissing. Hayden is the executive director at Yellowhead Institute, adviser to the Dean of Arts on Indigenous Education, and an assistant professor of Sociology at X University, in Toronto, Ontario. Hayden has taught at McMaster and Carleton Universities as well as the First Nations Technical Institute, held senior fellowships at Massey College and the Conference Board of Canada, and served in advisory roles to provincial and First Nation governments and Inuit organizations. He is the co-founder of the language-arts collective Ogimaa Mikana Project, the co-host of the Red Road Podcast, and a mentor in the Jane Glassco Northern Fellowship. Hayden’s research, analysis and commentary is published widely.

 

Christina Leza (Yoeme-Chicana), Associate Professor of Anthropology and Indigenous Studies, Colorado College

Christina Leza (Yoeme-Chicana) is a linguistic anthropologist and activist scholar at Colorado College, where she is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology. She is also a member of Colorado College’s Advisory Committee on Indigenous/Native American Support, an advisor for the Native American Student Union, and an Indigenous Studies professor and program advisor. Leza’s research interests include Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous rights, grassroots activism, and the U.S.-Mexico border. Her most recent work focuses on Indigenous activist responses to the U.S.-Mexico border enforcement.

Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (member of Kettle & Stony First Nation), Assistant Professor, QNS, Anishinaabe Knowledge, Language and Culture, Queen’s University

Dolleen Tisawii’ashii Manning (member of Kettle and Stoney Point First Nation) turns her work as an interdisciplinary artist and scholar towards interests in Anishinaabe ontology, phenomenology, critical theory, indigenous imaging practices, mnidoo interrelationality, epistemological sovereignty, and the debilitating impact of settler colonial logics. Her scholarly and artistic work seeks to better understand the ways that Anishinaabe knowledge systems, such as customary knowledges often implicitly conveyed in gesture, speech, and everyday ways of being, resist canonical academic values and textual dependent modes of address. By bringing these ways of knowing into rigorous debate with contemporary discourses in continental philosophy and critical theory, Manning takes up what she terms Mnidoo-Worlding. Formerly a postdoctoral fellow at Michigan State University and Assistant Professor at York University, Manning teaches at Queen’s University in the Department of Philosophy and the Cultural Studies program.

 

Moderators

Ryan Rice (Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawake), Associate Dean, Faculty Arts & Science, OCAD University, & Curator, Indigenous Art, Onsite Gallery

Ryan Rice (Kanien’kehá:ka of Kahnawake) is a curator, Associate Professor, and the Associate Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science at OCAD University, Toronto. His institutional and independent curatorial career spans 30 years in community, museums, artist run centres, and galleries. Rice’s writing on contemporary Onkwehón:we art has been published in numerous periodicals and exhibition catalogues, and he has lectured widely. He is currently working on three solo exhibitions including Jordan Bennett: Souvenir for Onsite Gallery and Pageant: Natalie King for Centre, while his touring exhibition Bait: Couzyn van Heuvelen recently ended in Summer 2021. Rice was recently appointed Curator, Indigenous Art at Onsite Gallery (OCAD) and is currently developing two public art projects as the Indigenous Public Art Curator with Waterfront Toronto for two public art opportunities.

Linda Grussani (Algonquin Anishinabekwe, Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg), Ph.D. Candidate, Cultural Studies, Queen’s University

Linda Grussani (Kitigan Zibi Anishinabeg/Italian ancestry) is a curator and art historian born and raised on unceded Anishinàbeg Akì in the Ottawa area. Grussani has spent two decades working to change the colonial structure from within by advancing the presence and representation of Indigenous Peoples in settler-colonial cultural structures of the Canadian-nation state imposed on Anishinàbe Akì. Grussani has held the positions of Curator, Aboriginal Art at the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) and Director, Indigenous Art Centre for Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC). She has also worked in the Indigenous art department at the National Gallery of Canada. Grussani currently sits on the Inuit Art Foundation’s Board of Directors, the Indigenous Education Council for OCAD University, and the Indigenous Collections Symposium Working Group for the Ontario Museums Association. Grussani is currently a doctoral candidate in the Cultural Studies program at Queen’s University, Chair of the Indigenous Archives Gathering Steering Committee for Archive/Counter-Archive, and a member of the North American Cultural Diplomacy Initiative.