Who We Are

We are a First Nation-led think tank rooted in community networks and committed to Indigenous self-determination.

Dr. Hayden King
Executive Director
@Hayden_King

Hayden is Anishinaabe from Beausoleil First Nation on Gchi’mnissing in Huronia, Ontario. He is the Executive Director of the Yellowhead Institute and Advisor to the Dean of Arts on Indigenous Education at Ryerson University. King has been teaching Indigenous politics and policy since 2007 at McMaster, Carleton and Ryerson Universities. Hayden’s analysis and commentary on Indigenous nationhood and settler colonialism in Canada is published widely. He is a prolific thinker and contributor to the national conversation on Indigenous issues.

Dr. Shiri Pasternak
Research Director
@shiripasternak

Shiri is an Assistant Professor in Criminology at Ryerson 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 a Principal Investigator with scholars at York University and Carleton University, as well as community partners MiningWatch and the Indigenous Network in Economies and Trade, in a SSHRC Partnership Development Grant called, “Reconciling Sovereignties: New Techniques for ‘Authorizing’ Extraction on Indigenous Territories.”

Dr. Damien Lee
Associate Fellow
@damienlee

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 Ryerson University and holds the Canada Research Chair in Biskaabiiyang and Indigenous Political Resurgence.

Dr. Eva Jewell
Associate Fellow
@ebaans_

Dr. Eva Jewell (Ma’iingan dodem, she/hers) is Anishinaabekwe from Deshkan Ziibiing (Chippewas of the Thames First Nation) in southwestern Ontario with Haudenosaunee lineage. Dr. Jewell’s scholarship supports community-based, mixed methods inquiry on topics of culture, governance, and language resurgence in her First Nation; with interest on the role of women/femmes in Anishinaabe governance structures. Dr. Jewell joins Ryerson University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology following her postdoctoral fellowship in Indigenous Methodologies at Brock University’s Social Justice Research Institute, where she worked with Niagara region’s urban Indigenous community on perspectives of gender, work and care.

Dr. Megan Scribe
Associate Fellow
@megan_scribe

Megan Scribe (Ininiw iskwew, Norway House Cree Nation) is an interdisciplinary Indigenous feminist researcher, writer, and educator. Scribe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson University. Her research establishes connections between violence in the lives of Indigenous girls and settler colonialism. She is a longtime Community Council Member for Aboriginal Legal Services’ Diversion Program and a member of the Planning Committee for the annual Strawberry Ceremony.

Lindsay Nixon
Associate Fellow
@notvanishing

Lindsay Nixon is a Toronto-based Cree-Métis-Saulteaux SSHRC doctoral scholarship recipient, a McGill University Art History Ph.D. candidate, and an assistant professor in Ryerson University’s Department of English. They previously held the position of Editor-at-Large for Canadian Art and twice served as the Arts and Literary Summit programmer for MagNet. Nixon’s first book nîtisânak (Metonymy Press, 2018) won the prestigious 2019 Dayne Ogilive Prize and a 2019 Quebec Writer’s Federation first book prize, and has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and an Indigenous Voices Literary Award. Nixon is the co-founder of gijiit: a curatorial collective that focuses on community-engaged Indigenous art curations, gatherings, and research dealing with themes of gender, sex, and sexuality. They are a REVEAL Indigenous Art Award recipient, and have been awarded national Magazine Awards in the Essay category for “Stories Not Told” and in the Best-Editorial Package category for “#MeToo and the Secrets Indigenous Women Keep.” For their work as lead editor for the summer 2017 issue of Canadian Art, an issue on the theme of “Kinship,” they were also nominated for a National Magazine Award in the “Best Editorial Package” category. Nixon’s writing has appeared in The Walrus, Malahat Review, Room, GUTS, esse, Teen Vogue, CV2/Prairie Fire, The New Inquiry and other publications.

Anne Spice
Associate Fellow
@anne_spice

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.

Yumi Numata
Operations and Communications Manager

Yumi is a first generation, Japanese-Chinese Canadian. She believes that how we work and the processes we use to engage each other are integral aspects of building a sustainable future. Equity, storytelling and capacity building are three areas of focus that have, and continue to inform her work. Yumi is especially interested in facilitating impact through strategic communications expertise that is grounded in empathy and intentional process development. She completed an undergraduate degree at the University of Toronto in Equity Studies and a Master’s degree at New York University in Media, Culture and Communications.