Philip Cote
Young Spiritual Elder. Indigenous Artist, Activist, Educator, Historian & Traditional Wisdom Keeper.Moose Deer Point First Nation: Shawnee, Lakota, Potawatomi, and Ojibway. He is engaged in creating opportunities for art-making and teaching methodologies through Indigenous symbolism, traditional ceremonies, history, oral stories, and land-based pedagogy. A practicing Sundancer, and Sweat Ceremony leader, his art and teaching philosophy evolves from his practice of experiential learning and the transmission of Indigenous Knowledge. Philip has shared his knowledge with numerous institutions from York University, the Art Gallery of Ontario, University of Toronto, OCAD University and the TDSB. Philip is also a tour guide with “First Story”, since 2005 providing an Indigenous history of Toronto covering the last 13,500 years.
Clayton Shirt
Clayton Shirt is a Father, Husband and Knowledge Keeper. He is from the Wolf Clan of Saddle Lake Alberta, Treaty 6. Since 2017 Clayton has supported spiritual, emotional, personal and knowledge journeys of students and health researchers at the Waakebiness-Bryce, Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto. Clay also offers traditional knowledge available to Indigenous community members. He had been working as a Knowledge Keeper for more than 15+ years in the Native and multi-cultural community in Canada. He was taught in the old way, working for many years with the guidance of a number of First Nation Elders in Canada and the USA, and was taught to do traditional ceremonies, teachings, circles, one to one work and to help all people to “walk in a good way” though life.
Joanne Bear
Joanne Bear is an art therapist who has recently completed her Art Therapy diploma form Vancouver Art Therapy Institute (VATI). Joanne has a social justice background, experience working in community engaged arts, and in social work. Joanne intends to continue working through a social justice and social activist lens in her clinical practice. Joanne aspires to decolonize her work with Indigenous clients by aiming to dismantle institutional and systemic harm, by rejecting power structures, and by incorporating spiritual and cultural supports for Indigenous individuals. Joanne is originally from Muskoday First Nation and is of Cree descent. Joanne has worked as a research associate with Rebecca Caines, and is the author of a report about the Indigenous Advisory Circle and its work, entitled “(Un)Occupying Education and Mental Health Institutions Through Art” (2023).
Dustin Brass
Anīn nitišinihkas Dustin Brass, nīn anihšināpēk šikwa from the pisiw doodom, nitōnči Key First Nation, nitōnči ahki. I completed a Bachelor of Education degree in the Secondary Indian Education Program at First Nations University of Canada (FNUniv). After graduating from FNUniv, he became the first employee in the Regina Public School Division to serve as a school’s Aboriginal advocate and set precedent on many initiatives with the School Division. Since 2013, he has been an instructor in the Faculty of Indigenous Education at FNUniv. Over the past decade Dustin has imparted a variety of arts-based research methods and activities to support wellness with Indigenous youth and continues to facilitate arts-based and holistic learning methods in numerous First Nation communities, locally and across Turtle Island. In 2017, Dustin was the chair for the Indigenous Advisory Circle to the president at the University of Regina and in 2019-2020, became the Regional Lead for Saskatchewan with the National Centre of Collaboration in Indigenous Education (NCCIE). Currently, he is the Undergraduate Program Coordinator with the Indigenous Education Faculty at FNUniv.
Nancy Louit-Gonzalez
Aanii/ Kwe/ Tansi/ Sago/ Saqarik/ Hello. Nancy is a mother, daughter, sister, and an aunt. She identifies as a Two-Spirit Woman whose roots run deep to the highlands of Guatemala. She is a descendant of the Maya Ki’che original people. She has held many roles within Ontario over the past 16 years and they all required her to be an advocate, mentor, educator and a helper. Nancy has specifically been practicing traditional Indigenous counselling since 2015 in Ontario. She has supported Indigenous families in the areas of IPV, 60’s Scoop and she has worked directly by those impacted by the Residential School System in Canada. She has worked on and off reserve, worked the frontlines, street outreach, intensive case management and provided transitional housing supports. She is a First Nations Technical Institute and St. Lawrence College SSW graduate, and her field of study has been from a world Indigenous knowledge based wholistic healing social service work Practice. Nancy believes that healing and wellness for Indigenous peoples begins with culture and ceremonies as they are the heart of our communities and reclaiming them is essential to seek justice and truth. She actively engages in activities that promote personal growth and wholistic healing methods. She believes in supporting others in their healing journey, along with acceptance, understanding, love and compassion for where others are at in their healing. Her philosophy is of her ancestors; that every human is deserving to find their place within Creation and that one of the greatest gifts given to us is our human ability to heal. Nancy is passionate about creating connections through knowledge and wisdom sharing with our allies who walk alongside us. She is eternally grateful for the love, compassion, and traditional teachings that many Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers have passed down to her on her own healing path. Nancy also provides Traditional Indigenous Counselling in the post-secondary setting. Here she supports young and mature students on their educational journeys through counselling, connection to community, access to culture and ceremony. She is honoured and grateful that the students welcome her into their lives while they navigate their institutional academic journeys, and she appreciates the guidance and understanding they share with her. Nancy was a recipient of the 2024 Indigenous SSW Leadership award, granted by the Ontario Social Service Worker Association.
Nancy Johnson
Nancy Johnson is Ojibwe from Nipissing First Nation, Ontario. She is a graduate of the Image Arts New Media Program at TMU. Nancy is happy to be part of the Centre for Indigenous Student Services as having had access to a culturally supportive environment has been integral to her academic success. She acknowledges and advocates that an educational journey should be inclusive of traditional values and teachings, which CISS strives to provide to the Indigenous community at York. She coordinates the Cultural Programs throughout the year. She is currently enrolled part time in the MEd of Education, Urban Indigenous Cohort at York U.
Rebecca Caines
Dr Rebecca Caines is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar whose research crosses between creative technologies (including sound art, new media, and augmentation), and socially engaged art, with a special focus on improvisatory practices. Caines has completed large-scale community-based art and research projects in Australia, Northern Ireland, Canada, China, and the Netherlands. Her recent projects include “ImprovEnabled”, a national art and research project with co-researchers and partners across Canada, Northern Ireland and Australia and “multiPLAY”, focussed on new forms of digital community engagement with Canadian improvising artists. Caines’ work investigates the role of art and technology in social justice, contemporary understandings of community, and the fragile promise of ethical connection offered through dialogic approaches. Caines looks forward to helping to build the brand-new Creative Technologies program at York University’s Markham Campus, opening Fall 2023.
Marissa Largo
Dr. Marissa Largo (she/her) is a researcher, artist, curator, and educator whose work focuses on the intersections of community engagement, race, gender and Asian diasporic cultural production. Her forthcoming book, Unsettling Imaginaries: Filipinx Contemporary Artists in Canada (University of Washington Press) examines the work and oral histories of artists who imagine Filipinx subjectivity beyond colonial logics. Dr. Largo is the recipient of numerous awards and grants for her research and creative practice and her projects have been presented in venues and events across Canada, such as the A Space Gallery (2017 & 2012), Open Gallery of OCAD University (2015), Royal Ontario Museum (2015), WorldPride Toronto (2014), The Robert Langen Art Gallery (2013), Nuit Blanche in Toronto (2019, 2018, 2012 and 2009), and MAI (Montréal, arts interculturels) (2007). She also collaborates with community organizations that connect policy engagement with creative and social practice.
Shayne Martell
Tristan Martell
Indigenous hip-hop and grass dancer Tristan Blackbird Martell aka Bboy Tanmantiou is Cree from Waterhen Lake First Nation/Cambodian).
Hector Centeno
As an artist, Hector’s focus is on the aesthetic potential of immersive digital sound, visual and interactive experiences that seek to engage the audience into a reflection of existence, place relationship and the phenomenology of place. Among his artistic activities are national and international presentations of multi-channel sound art, interactive installation art, live sound and video performances, virtual reality experiences, virtual cinematography (virtual production), and virtual photography. As a software and interactive system developer and designer, he has worked on virtual and augmented reality interactive experiences, video game mechanics and simulation systems, hardware sensors and micro-controller interactive systems for art installations, and spatial audio software tools. As an academic, Hector has taught courses on theory and production techniques of digital media art at OCADU (Digital Futures), George Brown College (VFX, Interaction Design and Video Design) and Sheridan’s SIRT (Virtual Production).
Michael Darroch
Michael Darroch is Associate Dean, Academic and Associate Professor of Cinema and Media Arts in the School of the Arts, Media, Performance and Design at York University. He previously served as Associate Dean, Partnership Development and Interdisciplinary Studies in the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Windsor, where he taught courses in media art histories, visual culture, and urban ecologies in the School of Creative Arts. He has held a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Cultural Memory (University of London, 2015), a Humanities Research Group Fellowship (University of Windsor, 2016-17), and a McLuhan Centenary Fellowship (iSchool, University of Toronto, 2016-18). He is Co-Director of the research-creation hub IN/TERMINUS focused on participatory art interventions and exhibition curation in the Windsor-Detroit urban borderlands.