Faculty
Taiaiake Alfred
Professor
Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is a Full Professor in IGOV and in the Department of Political Science. He specializes in studies of traditional governance, the restoration of land-based cultural practices, and decolonization strategies. He is a prominent Indigenous intellectual and advisor to many First Nation governments and organizations. He has been awarded a Canada Research Chair, a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in the field of education, and the Native American Journalists Association award for best column writing.
Educated at Concordia and Cornell, Taiaiake has lectured at universities and colleges in Canada, the United States, England, and Australia. His writing includes numerous scholarly articles, essays in newspapers, magazines and journals, stories, book-length research reports for First Nations and government clients, as well as three published scholarly books, Wasáse (Broadview, 2005), a runner-up for the McNally Robinson Aboriginal Book of the Year in 2005; Peace, Power, Righteousness (Oxford University Press, 1999/2009); and Heeding the Voices of Our Ancestors (Oxford University Press, 1995).
Taiaiake's current research involves studying the effects of environmental contamination on Indigenous cultural practices, with a special focus on the Mohawk community of Akwesasne. In the context of the United States' Natural Resources Damages Assessment process, he works as a consultant with a number of Indigenous communities to assess cultural injury due to industrial and nuclear contamination of the natural environment, and to design land-based cultural restoration plans. His previous research and consulting work centered on retraditionalization, structural reform, and leadership training for First Nations governments and organizations. He also spent many a number of years as a researcher, writer, negotiator and advisor for First Nations governments in land claims and self-government processes.
Taiaiake is a Bear Clan Mohawk . He was born in Montréal in 1964 and was raised in the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory. Aside from his service in the US Marine Corps as an infantryman during the 1980s, he lived in Kahnawake until 1996. He now lives on Snaka Mountain in Wsanec Nation Territory on the Saanich peninsula with his wife and three sons, who are all Laksilyu Clan of the Wet'suwet'en Nation.
You can follow Taiaiake on Twitter: @Taiaiake. Access recent writings and an archive of downloadable PDF versions of Taiaiake's academic research papers, as well as future writings and blogs on his website: http://taiaiake.posterous.com/.
Jeff Corntassel
Associate Professor
Jeff Corntassel (Cherokee Nation), received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Arizona in 1998, and is currently Associate Professor and Graduate Advisor in Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria. Professor Corntassel's research and teaching interests include global Indigenous rights and Indigenous political mobilization/self-determination movements.
In 2008 Jeff was awarded the Faculty of Human and Social Development Award for Teaching Excellence. Jeff's first book, entitled Forced Federalism: Contemporary Challenges to Indigenous Nationhood (2008, University of Oklahoma Press), examines how Indigenous nations in the U.S. have mobilized politically as they encounter new threats to their governance from state policymakers. Jeff's next book is a co-edited volume (with Professor Tom Holm) entitled The Power of Peoplehood: Regenerating Indigenous Nations (Forthcoming, University of Texas Press) which brings together native scholars from Canada and U.S to discuss contemporary strategies for revitalizing Indigenous communities. Other works in progress focus on notions of sustainable self-determination, practicing insurgent education, and a comparative critique of state apologies/truth and reconciliation efforts as they impact Indigenous nations in Canada, Australia, Guatemala and Peru. Jeff's research has been published in: Alternatives, American Indian Quarterly, Global Governance, Human Rights Quarterly, Nationalism and Ethnic Studies, and Social Science Journal.
Waziyatawin
Associate Professor, Indigenous Peoples Research Chair
Waziyatawin is a Wahpetunwan Dakota from the Pezihutazizi Otunwe (Yellow Medicine Village) in southwestern Minnesota. She received her Ph.D. in American history from Cornell University in 2000 and earned tenure and an associate professorship in the history department at Arizona State University where she taught for seven years. Waziyatawin currently holds the Indigenous Peoples Research Chair in the Indigenous Governance Program at UVic. Her interests include projects centering on Indigenous decolonization strategies such as truth-telling and reparative justice, Indigenous women and resistance, the recovery of Indigenous knowledge, and the development of liberation ideology in Indigenous communities. She is the author or editor of five volumes including: Remember This!: Dakota Decolonization and the Eli Taylor Narratives; Indigenizing the Academy: Transforming Scholarship and Empowering Communities; For Indigenous Eyes Only: A Decolonization Handbook; In the Footsteps of Our Ancestors: The Dakota Commemorative Marches of the 21st Century; and, her most recent volume, What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland.
