WANDA NANIBUSH:

Wanda Nanibush, Assistant Curator, Canadian and Indigenous Art, is an Anishinaabe-kwe curator, image and word warrior, and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation, located in Southern Ontario. Nanibush has a Master’s degree in visual studies from the University of Toronto. Over the past two decades, Nanibush has served in a wide range of capacities from programmer and festival coordinator to Aboriginal arts officer and executive director. During that time, she worked with organizations such as ImagineNATIVE, LIFT, Optic Nerve Film Festival, Reframe Film Festival, the Ontario Arts Council, Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, and the Association for Native Development in the Performing & Visual Arts (ANDPVA). Her curatorial credits include the exhibitions Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971-1989 (AGO), Sovereign Acts II (Leonard & Bina Ellen Art Gallery), and the award winning KWE: The work of Rebecca Belmore (Justina M. Barnicke Gallery). Nanibush has published widely on the subject of Indigenous art as well as women’s issues, and is currently at work on her first book, titled Violence No More: The Rise of Indigenous Women. She is also working on an AGO exhibition of works by Gershon Iskowitz Prize-winning artist Rebecca Belmore, set to open in 2018.

LEE MARACLE

Lee Maracle is the author of a number of critically acclaimed literary works including Sojourner’s and Sundogs [collected work of novel and short stories]; Celia’s Song [her latest novel]; Ravensong [novel], Bobbi Lee [autobiographical novel]; Daughters Are Forever, [novel]; Will’s Garden [young adult novel]; Bent Box [poetry]; and I Am Woman [creative non-fiction]. Maracle is the co-editor of a number of anthologies including the award winning publication, My Home As I Remember. She is also co-editor and contributor of Telling It: Women and Language across Culture [conference proceedings]. Maracle is published in anthologies and scholarly journals worldwide.

Maracle was born in North Vancouver and is a member of the Sto: Loh nation. The mother of four and grandmother of seven. Maracle is currently an instructor at the University of Toronto. She is also the Traditional Teacher for First Nations House and instructor with the Centre for Indigenous Theatre and the S.A.G.E. [Support for Aboriginal Graduate Education] as well as the Banff Centre for the Arts as a writing instructor. In 2009, Maracle received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from St. Thomas University. Maracle recently received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work promoting writing among Aboriginal Youth. Maracle received the 2014 Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts.Maracle has served as Distinguished Visiting Scholar at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, and the University of Western Washington. A new collection of her work will be released in late-2015, titled Memory Serves and other Words [creative non-fiction].

VANESSA WATTS

Vanessa Watts is Mohawk and Anishnaabe Bear Clan from Six Nations of the Grand River.  She is currently the Academic Director of Indigenous Studies at McMaster University with a cross-appointment in Sociology.  Vanessa received her Ph.D. in Sociology at Queen’s University.  Her research examines epistemological and ontological interventions on place-based, material knowledge production.  These interventions extend into human and other-than-human agency as productive of Indigenous knowledge systems.  Vanessa is particularly interested in the role of Indigenous feminism in knowledge production and how sexualities are generative of Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee ways of knowing.  

Vanessa teaches in areas of Contemporary Indigenous Issues, Residential Schools, Material Knowledge Production, Indigenous Sovereignty, Indigenous Knowledge and Methodologies, Indigenous feminisms, Gender and Sexuality and Indigenous Public Policy.