Thursday, May 18, 2021

Conversation About Indigenous Oral History

A Roundtable with:

Dr. Tiffany Prete (University of Alberta)

Tiffany Prete is a member of the Blood Tribe in southwestern Alberta. She is the daughter of Margaret and Marvin Bevans, the granddaughter of Margaret and Morris Hind Bull and the granddaughter of Ruth and Oscar Bevans. She completed my bachelor’s of Elementary Education with distinction and her Master’s of Education (specialized in Indigenous Peoples Education) from the University of Alberta. She earned her PhD in Indigenous Peoples Education from the Department of Educational Policy Studies, at the University of Alberta. Her Doctoral work is titled: Indigenizing Educational Policy: Our Shared Responsibility, examined the effectiveness of Alberta Education’s First Nations, Metis and Inuit Policy Framework.

Currently, Prete is an adjunct faculty member in the Department of Educational Policy Studies, at the University of Alberta as well as a sessional instructor on her home reserve where I work with the Niitsitapi Educational Assistant Certificate Program at Red Crow Community College. Her current research study is titled: We are Niitsitapi (the Real People): Surviving Colonization, which is being funded through the generous contributions of the National Indian Brotherhood.

Dr. Allyson Stevenson (University of Saskatchewan),

Allyson is Métis scholar and adoptee from Kinistino, SK, raised in Regina. She joined the Indigenous Studies Department at the University of Saskatchewan as the Gabriel Dumont Institute Chair of Métis Research in July 2020. She obtained her PhD in History from the University of Saskatchewan in 2015. From 2016-2017 she was the inaugural Aboriginal postdoctoral fellow at the University of Guelph where she worked on developing a historical analysis of Indigenous women’s political organizing in Saskatchewan during the 1970’s. From January 2018 to June 2020, she was an assistant professor at the University of Regina in the department of Politics and International Studies and a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples and Global Social Justice. Her current research specializes in histories of Indigenous women’s political organizing, the Sixties Scoop, Metis history, and settler-colonialism. Her book, Intimate Integration: The Sixties Scoop and the Colonization of Indigenous Kinship was published with the University of Toronto Press in Dec. 2020. She is a mother to four amazing children and lives in her Metis family’s ancestral homeland after coming home in 1998. She is proud that her children are the seventh generation of Fidler descendants to reside in Flett’s Springs Sk.

Dr. Cheryl Troupe (University of Saskatchewan),

My research centres on twentieth century Métis communities in Western Canada, merging Indigenous research methodologies with Historical Geographic Information Systems to focus on the intersections of land, gender, kinship and stories. Much of this work focuses on mapping and the multi-faceted roles of Métis women in their families and communities and the significance of female kinship relationships in structuring these communities. I currently have office space in the Arts Tower and work from the Historical Geographic Information Systems Laboratory in Kirk Hall.

I have worked within my community for over twenty years in the areas of historical and community-based research, curriculum development, community engagement, advocacy and health policy and program planning. I am Métis, originally from north-central Saskatchewan, a citizen of the Métis Nation - Saskatchewan and a member of Gabriel Dumont Local #11 in Saskatoon. 

Dr. Winona Wheeler (University of Saskatchewan)

Winona is a member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty No. 5 territory (Manitoba) though her family hails from George Gordon’s First Nation in Treaty No. 4 territory (Saskatchewan). Of Cree/Assiniboine/Saulteaux and English/Irish descent Winona has been a professional historian and a professor of Indigenous Studies since 1988.