Our Team

Shiri Pasternak co-founded the Institute and held the role of Research Director from June 2018 to June 2021. Since launching in 2018, Yellowhead Institute has become a nationally recognized critical voice on issues affecting Indigenous people, in part, due to her contributions. The early days of the Institute included the all-encompassing work of developing operational frameworks and processes, while also co-creating a robust community-centred research program. As Research Director, Shiri co-authored and co-produced the Critical Rights Framework report and both Red Papers, Land Back and Cash Back. Land Back includes groundbreaking research Shiri led on the impact of injunctions on First Nations that has been cited extensively and put to use supporting land defenders in court and at the UN. She also authored one of our most-read briefs, Wet’suwet’en: Why Are Indigenous Rights Being Defined By An Energy Corporation? and facilitated many other Yellowhead projects and collaborations. Shiri’s contributions to Yellowhead are immense and continue to play an important part in Yellowhead’s work.

Shiri is an Assistant Professor in Criminology at Toronto Metropolitan University in Toronto. She is the author of the award-winning book Grounded Authority: the Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2017. Her current research involves studying the risk of Indigenous rights in the natural resource extraction economy. She is now a Co-Investigator on a SSHRC Partnership Grant that pilots projects on Indigenous jurisdiction and infrastructure that think beyond extractivism.

Judith Sayers was a founding advisor on the Yellowhead Institute board from June 2018 to June 2022. Judith helped the organization imagine its governance structure, objectives, and approach generally, rooted in a commitment to sovereignty, justice, and care. In addition, she contributed two policy briefs, Aboriginal Title in British Columbia Examined Under the New Liberal Agenda and A Response to “Decolonizing Clean Energy?”: The Case of the BC Indigenous Clean Energy Initiative, and a chapter to the Yellowhead special report, The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada: Lessons from B.C.

Judith is the President of the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council and Adjunct Professor in the School of Business and Environmental Studies at the University of Victoria. Judith practiced law for 18 years and served fourteen years as Chief of the Hupacasath First Nation. As Chief of her First Nation, she focused on capacity building and sustainable development. Judith was instrumental in several sustainable development projects and put in place mechanisms to help protect the territory. She is on the Clean Energy BC Board and the Chair of the New Relationship Trust Foundation, Co-Chair of the Island Corridor Foundation, Co-Chair of the Joint Working Group on First Nations Heritage Conservation and is on the board of the BC Achievement Foundation. Judith has been recognized many times, including being awarded Clean Energy BC’s Lifetime Achievement Award, inducted into Canadian Council of Aboriginal Business Hall of Fame and receiving the Silver Award from the Canadian Environmental Association for Climate Change. She was recently admitted as a member of the Order of Canada.

John Cutfeet was a Yellowhead Research Fellow for two terms, from 2018 – 2022. With expertise in energy, extraction, and the Far North Act, John provided valuable guidance as a participant in our first Red Paper community workshop, and responded generously to media requests. He also co-authored the Yellowhead Brief, After the Far North Act: Indigenous Jurisdiction in Ontario’s Far North. John’s presence always offered the Yellowhead team and collaborators an atmosphere of kindness and perseverance.

John Cutfeet was band councillor for Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) First Nation, Ontario, with responsibility for lands and environment, from 1999 to 2007. John has long worked on issues related to mining, development and peace, and coordinating watershed work in Indigenous communities. John lives in KI and continues to engage in the traditional pursuits of living off the land.

Peter Di Gangi was one of Yellowhead Institute’s founding Board Advisors, active from 2018 – 2021. He provided valued guidance, encouragement and support during his term. In addition to his contributions as a Board Advisor, Peter also wrote one of the Institute’s early policy briefs, Fraser Institute: Property Rights for Everyone, Just not Indians.

Based in Ottawa, Ontario, Peter has been working with indigenous communities across Canada for over 35 years, focussing on historical, legal and cultural research. This has included work with the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Assembly of First Nations, and a variety of associations, tribal councils and communities in the Atlantic, Quebec, Ontario and B.C. It has also involved dealing with various institutions regarding the release and repatriation of information on behalf of First Nations

Peter has worked extensively with Anishnaabe communities on the North Shore of Lake Huron and Manitoulin Island, and with the Algonquin communities of the Ottawa Valley. He is currently Director of Policy and Research for the Algonquin Nation Secretariat, Timiskaming, Quebec.

Damien Lee was a Yellowhead Associate Fellow who provided valued contributions, leadership, and guidance during his 5 years with Yellowhead. This includes contributing the Special Report, “Between Membership & Belonging: Life Under Section 10 of the Indian Act” as well as several Yellowhead Briefs. Damien also acted as the lead of the Global Indigenous Solidarity Grant which has supported Indigenous students at TMU through increased learning opportunities across nations.

Dr. Damien Lee is a cis-gendered racially-white man who belongs with Anishinaabeg of the northern shore of Lake Superior. He was adopted as an infant into Fort William First Nation in accordance with Anishinaabe law, and raised as Anishinaabe by his family. Dr. Lee’s research focuses primarily on the resurgence of Indigenous legal and governance systems; he is also considered an expert on First Nations band membership issues. Mentored by Anishinaabe knowledge holders Doug Williams and Marlene Pierre, Dr. Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Arts, Department of Sociology at Toronto Metropolitan University and holds the Canada Research Chair in Biskaabiiyang and Indigenous Political Resurgence.

Matthew Wildcat was an inaugural Research Fellow from 2018 – 2022.

Matthew Wildcat is an instructor in Political Science and Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Wildcat’s primary research interest is on the history of Indigenous political orders on the prairies and contemporary Indigenous institutions. His areas of expertise include, First Nation Governments, First Nation service delivery, Indigenous Political Institutions, Prairie Indigenous politics, Indigenous political traditions.

Sa’ke’j Henderson was an inaugural Research Fellow from 2018 to 2020.

Sa’ke’j is a noted international human rights lawyer and an authority of protecting Indigenous heritage, knowledge, and culture. During the constitutional process (1978-1993) in Canada, he served as a constitutional advisor for the Mi’kmaw nation and the NIB-Assembly of First Nations. In addition, he was one of the drafters and expert advisors of the principles and guidelines for the protection of Indigenous Heritage and Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in the UN Human Rights fora.

His books include Aboriginal Tenure in the Constitution of Canada (2000), Treaty rights in the Constitution of Canada (2007); Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage (2000), Mi’kmaw Society v. Canada in UN Human Rights Committee (ebook 2005); and Indigenous Diplomacy and Rights of Peoples: Achieving Recognition (2008). For his achievements, he has been awarded the Indigenous Peoples’ Counsel (2005), the National Aboriginal Achievement Award for Law and Justice (2006), and Honorary Doctorate from Carleton University (2007) and fellow, Royal Society of Canada (2013).

Anne Spice (she/they) is a Tlingit member of Kwanlin Dun First Nation, a queer Indigenous feminist and anti-colonial organizer, and acting Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Ryerson University. Her work is in the tradition of feminist activist ethnography, and supports Indigenous land defense against settler state and extractive industry invasion. She has been actively supporting the Indigenous land re-occupation on Wet’suwet’en territories since 2015, and her work dwells in the intersection of traditional land use, Indigenous geographies, histories of Indigenous resistance, poetry and art. Her writing has been published in Environment and Society, Jacobin, The New Inquiry, and Asparagus Magazine.

Working at the intersections of critical Indigenous studies, political economy, sociology, geography and urban studies, Dr. Tomiak’s research examines the material and discursive dimensions of ongoing struggles against the dispossession and erasure of Indigenous people, communities, and nations in and from urban space. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on Indigenous self-determination and resistance to settler colonialism in a variety of contexts, including community building, governance and knowledge production. She is particularly interested in analyses that centre Indigenous resurgence and contextualize agency within the interrelationships between settler colonialism, capitalism and heteropatriarchy.

Joseph Russell Diabo is a son of a Kahnawake Mohawk Iron Worker, and is a member of the Mohawk Nation at Kahnawake. Russ has been active in Indigenous politics from a young age. Russell pursued Native Studies, receiving a BA from Laurentian University, and an MA in American Indian Policy Studies from the University of Arizona. He went on to hold positions with the National Indian Brotherhood and the Assembly of First Nations and was a founding executive member of the Aboriginal Peoples’ Commission of the Liberal Party of Canada. Russell is also the founder and author of an online newsletter called the First Nations Strategic Bulletin and was instrumental in founding the Defenders of the Land Network in 2008 with the late Arthur Manuel. He has over 40 years of policy analysis, community planning, and advocacy experience around Aboriginal Title and Treaty Rights.

Kris is Gwich’in and a citizen of the Vuntut Gwitchin First Nation in Old Crow, Yukon. His partner Shawna and their children Armayah and Jackson are Gitxsan of the Lax Skiik (eagle clan) Wilp (house) of Sakuum Higookw. Kris is a lawyer practicing law in the Yukon and British Columbia providing community-focused legal advocacy, strategic advice and negotiation support to Indigenous peoples in their pursuit of self-determination.

Tanya played a key role in Yellowhead’s beginnings. Celebrated as a prominent leader, Tanya was invited as a panelist speaking on Indigenous Strategies for Transformative Change at the launch of Yellowhead Institute. Tanya’s efforts are focused on working towards creating space for an authentic existence of Indigenous people. As a lawyer, she represented survivors of Residential Schools and she recently worked with the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She speaks often on Indigenous issues and is a member of the National Collective for Walking with our Sisters.