Resurgence: Engaging with Indigenous Narratives and Cultural Expressions In and Beyond the Classroom

Katya Adamov Ferguson (she/her/hers) is a settler educator and artist of Ukrainian and Russian ancestry from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Katya is also an arts-based researcher engaging with creative and critical methods to support place-based inquiries and deeper understandings of land-based issues. She is committed to creating partnerships and supporting Indigenous resurgence. Christine M’Lot (she/her/hers) is an Anishinaabe educator and curriculum developer from Winnipeg, Manitoba. She currently teaches high school at the University of Winnipeg Collegiate and is the associate publisher at Por­tage & Main Press. To learn more about her past and current education projects, visit her website at Christinemlot.com. KC Adams (Ininnew/Anishinaabe/British) is a registered Fisher River Cree Nation member living in Winnipeg. KC is a relational maker, educator, activist, and mentor who creates work that explores technology in relation to her Indigenous culture. Adams is an award-winning, nationally and internationally known maker with a B.F.A. from Concordia University and an M.A. in Cultural Studies, Curatorial Stream from the University of Winnipeg. KC has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, residencies and three biennales. Sonya Ballantyne (she, they) is a Swampy Cree writer, filmmaker, and speaker based in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Her work explores contemporary and futuristic portrayals of Indigenous women and girls. Her award-winning projects include the documentary Nosisim (2024 Barry Lank Award) and the graphic novel Little by Little (In The Margins, 2025 Top Ten Title). Sonya is also the author of the children’s book Kerri Berry Lynn, contributor to anthologies such as Pros and (Comic) Cons and Women Love Wrestling, and co-director of The Death Tour, which was screened at Cannes in 2023 with a world premiere at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2024. Charlene Bearhead (she/her/hers) is an educator and Indigenous education advocate living in Treaty 6 Territory in central Alberta. She was the first Education Lead for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the Education Coordinator for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Charlene was recently honoured with the Alumni Honours Award from the University of Alberta and currently serves as the Director of Reconciliation for Canadian Geographic. She is a mother and a grandmother who began writing stories to teach her own children as she raised them. Adaptations of these stories have now been published as the Siha Tooskin Knows series, which she co-wrote with her husband, Wilson. Wilson Bearhead (he/him/his) is a Nakota Elder and Wabamun Lake First Nation member in Treaty 6 Territory (central Alberta). A recent recipient of the Canadian Teachers’ Federation Indigenous Elder Award, he co-wrote the Siha Tooskin Knows series with his wife, Charlene. Currently Wilson is a board member for the Roots of Resilience Education Foundation. Wilson’s grandmother, Annie, was a powerful, positive influence in his young life, teaching him all of the lessons that gave him the strength, knowledge, and skills to overcome difficult times and embrace the gifts of life. Lisa Boivin is a member of the Deninu Kue First Nation and the author/artist of two illustrated books, We Dream Medicine Dreams (shortlisted for the 2022 Rocky Mountain Book Award) and I Will See You Again (AICL's Best Books of 2020, nominated for First Nation Communities READ Award). She is an interdisciplinary artist and a PhD candidate at the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine. Lisa uses images as a pedagogical tool to bridge gaps between medical ethics and aspects of Indigenous cultures and worldviews. She is writing and collaging an arts-based thesis that addresses the colonial barriers that Indigenous patients navigate in the current healthcare system. Lisa strives to humanize clinical medicine as she situates her art in the Indigenous continuum of passing knowledge through images. @redbioethics Rita Bouvier, a Métis educator, formally served 37 years in public education as a classroom teacher and in various leadership capacities locally, nationally, and internationally. She was awarded an Eagle Feather from her Awasis peers in 2006, the Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation Arbos Award in 2007, and the Indspire Award for Education in 2014. Rita’s poetry collection nakamowin’sa for the seasons (Thistledown Press, 2015) was the 2016 Saskatchewan Book Awards’ winner of the Rasmussen, Rasmussen, and Charowsky Aboriginal Peoples’ Writing Award. Nicola I. Campbell is the author of Shi-shi-etko, Shin-chi’s Canoe, Grandpa’s Girls, and A Day with Yayah. Nłeʔkepmx, Syílx, and Métis, from British Columbia, her stories weave cultural and land-based teachings that focus on respect, endurance, healing, and reciprocity. Nicola's books have been among the finalists for numerous children’s literary awards. Shin-chi’s Canoe won the 2009 TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award and was a 2008 Governor General's Award for Illustration finalist. Sara Florence Davidson (she/her) is a Haida/Settler Assistant Professor in Indigenous Education in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Previously, she was an educator working with adolescents in the K-12 system in British Columbia and Yukon Territory. Sara is the co-author of Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning through Ceremony­, which she wrote with her father, and Magical Beings of Haida Gwaii, which she wrote with her stepmother, Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson. When she is not reading or writing, Sara can be found walking with her dog, drinking tea, or listening to stories and learning something new. Louise Bernice Halfe, also known by her Cree name, Sky Dancer, is Canada’s ninth parliamentary poet laureate. She was raised on Saddle Lake First Nation and attended Blue Quills Residential School. Louise served as the first Indigenous poet laureate of Saskatchewan, and earned her Doctorate of Letters from Wilfrid Laurier University, the University of Saskatchewan, and Mount Royal University. Louise’s most recent titles include awâsis―kinky and dishevelled and a new edition of the Governor General’s Literary Award finalist Blue Marrow. Lucy Hemphill is a Kwakwaka’wakw mother from the Gwa’sala-‘Nakwaxda’xw Nation. She graduated from the University of British Columbia with a Bachelor of Arts in First Nations and Indigenous Studies in 2019. Lucy strives to reconnect to ancestral relational ways of being and is currently working to develop language revitalization and healing programs in her community. Lucy is the author of the Overhead Series, which includes three poetry titles: Clouds, Stars, and Trees. Wanda John-Kehewin (she/her/hers) is a Cree writer who uses her work to understand and respond to the near destruction of First Nations cultures, languages, and traditions. When she first arrived in Vancouver on a Greyhound bus, she was a pregnant nineteen-year-old carrying little more than a bag of chips, a bottle of pop, thirty dollars, and hope. After many years travelling (well, mostly stumbling) along her healing journey, she now writes to stand in her truth and to share that truth openly. A published poet and fiction author, her first novel for young adults, Hopeless in Hope, won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and was named to USBBY’s Outstanding International Books list. Eizabeth LaPensée (she/her or they/them), PhD, is an award-winning designer, writer, artist, and researcher who creates and studies Indigenous-led media, including video games. She is Anishinaabe with family from Bay Mills, Métis, and Irish. She is an assistant professor of media and information, and writing, rhetoric, and American cultures at Michigan State University and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. Victoria McIntosh, also known as Biktoryias, has a strong bond to stories and identifies as ikwe (woman, water carrier). Transitioning from artist to educator, she now merges both gifts into sharing what she sees in her life. Working with many different mediums and combining traditional storytelling with artworks, she strives to create deeper meaning and understanding of Indigenous teachings. Reanna McKay (Merasty) (she/her/hers) is Ininew from Barren Lands First Nation, completed her Master of Architecture at the University of Manitoba, and is an Architectural Intern at Number TEN Architectural Group. She also works with One House Many Nations as a Research Assistant on First Nations housing development, where her research focuses on reciprocity, Indigenous knowledge systems, and land-based pedagogy. David A. Robertson (he/him/his) is a two-time winner of the Governor General's Literary Award, has won the TD Canadian Children’s Literature Award, as well as the Writer's Union of Canada Freedom to Read award. He has received several other accolades for his work as a writer for children and adults, podcaster, public speaker, and social advocate. He was honoured with a Doctor of Letters by the University of Manitoba for outstanding contributions in the arts and distinguished achievements in 2023. He was nominated for the 2026 Hans Christian Anderson Award. He is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg. Russell Wallace (he/him/his) is an award-winning composer, producer, and traditional singer from the Lil’wat Nation. His music can be heard on soundtracks for film, television, theatre, and dance productions. His most recent album, Unceded Tongues, combines Salish musical forms with pop, jazz, and blues, and is sung in the St’át’imc language. Russell is a founding member of the Aboriginal Writers Collective West Coast and an alumnus of the University of British Columbia Creative Writing Program. Christina Lavalley Ruddy, a member of Algonquins of Pikwakanagan First Nation, is an artist, researcher, mentor, and advocate. She has spent her career working to empower Indigenous youth through education, language, and capacity building, in settings such as friendship centres and post-secondary institutions. In 2018, Christina received Lakehead University’s Indigenous Partnership Research Award, with Dr. Ruth Beatty, in recognition of her leadership in incorporating Indigenous knowledge into the Ontario mathematics curriculum.