Symposium on Indigenous land-based educational practices

Rebecca M. Webster is an enrolled citizen of the Oneida Nation in Wisconsin and the Executive Director of Ukwakhwa (Our Foods), a grassroots 501(c)(3) nonprofit based on her family’s 15-acre teaching farmstead on the Oneida Reservation. She is also Director of Graduate Studies and an Associate Professor in the American Indian Studies Department at the University of Minnesota Duluth. She is a skilled artist in raised beadwork and black ash basketry, mentored by community artists and with over two decades of experience in these traditional art forms. She is a multi-published author whose scholarly works focus on the issues Haudenosaunee people face as a result of colonization, assimilation, and removal, and the impacts on traditional governing structures, language, history, and agriculture.

Eriel Tchekwie Deranger is a member of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation (ACFN)  and President and founder of  Indigenous Climate Action (ICA) and The Woven Project  and 2024 winner of the global Climate Breakthrough award. Deranger is active in international Indigenous rights advocacy movements participating in various boards and UN bodies. Deranger’s work focuses on Indigenous rights, climate justice  and intersectional movements. She is recognized for her role as spokespersons for her community  in the international Indigenous Tar Sands Campaign.  Prior to this she was a Specific Land Claims and Treaty Land Entitlement Researcher for the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations. Deranger has written for various magazines and publications; featured in documentary films including Elemental (2012); and is regularly interviewed for national and international media outlets.

Katsi'tsakwas Ellen Gabriel – A graduate from the New York Film Academy in documentary film making in December 2021, provided Ellen with new tools in her advocacy to reclaim the narrative of stories of Indigenous peoples. In May of 1990 Ms. Gabriel graduated from Concordia University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, major visual arts. 

Ms. Gabriel was well-known to the public when she was chosen by the People of the Longhouse and her community of Kanehsatà:ke to be their spokesperson during the 1990 “Oka” Crisis; to protect the Pines from the expansion of a 9-hole golf course in Kanehsatà:ke, the colonial imposed name of “OKA”. 

Ms. Gabriel is a Steering Committee member with Indigenous Climate Action addressing the needs and solutions to the violations of Indigenous peoples’ human rights, the climate crisis and environmental rights.

In 2004, Ellen Gabriel was elected president of the Quebec Native Women’s Association a position which she held for 6 ½ years, until December 2010. 

In June 2024, Ms. Gabriel received an honorary doctorate from the Université de Québec à Montreal for her work in human rights.

Kristy Snell is an award-winning multi-platform journalist and associate professor at Concordia, where her work focuses on decolonizing journalism/practice, experiential pedagogy, and Indigenous education. As Academic Leader of the Institute for Inclusive, Investigative, and Innovative Journalism (I3J), Kristy has developed a long-term collaborative relationship between Concordia’s Department of Journalism and Kahnawà:ke Survival School, which introduces journalism to Kanien'kehà:ka high school students while educating Concordia students on culturally responsible journalism practices with Indigenous communities. Before coming to Concordia, Kristy spent 14 years as CBC Radio morning news anchor/editor for Montreal/Quebec. Kristy holds a Master of Education (MEd) specializing in Indigenous education from the University of British Columbia. She is a member of Standing Buffalo Dakota Nation in Saskatchewan.

Dr. Mel Lefebvre - I am a Two-Spirit (2S) Michif, Nehiyaw, French, and Irish mother and ancestral skin marker (traditional tattoo practitioner). I am also a community worker, artist, writer, and scholar in Concordia University's First Peoples Studies program. 

*For a more fulsome biography, see Dr. Lefebvre’s faculty profile. 

Ella Martindale is an instructor in the Indigenous Land-Based Education Microprogram at Concordia University. She is a community-based researcher and organizer with a focus on Indigenous methodologies. She is Quw’utsun Mustimuhw, and grew up on Nisga’a and Tsimshian territories. She is an intentional guest in Tiohtia:ke.

Ieronhienhá:wi McComber works as a language facilitator and program co-coordinator/animator of the Iakwahwatsiratatie Language Nest, a Kanien'keha (Mohawk language) immersion program for families. She is a second language speaker who learned Kanien'keha as an adult and committed to raising her 4 children as first language and bilingual speakers. She is one of the original founders of Iakwahwatsiratátie when it was first established in 2005 and volunteered in its operation while attending as a parent with 3 of her children until 2007. She worked on revitalizing the program in 2014 after her last child was born and worked with him by her side until he reached school age. Ieronhienhá:wi began Iakwahwatsiratátie in an effort to create a supportive language learning and speaking environment for both L2 & L1 speakers and their families. She is a graduate of McGill University’s B.Ed. program, the Ratiwennahní:rats Adult Immersion Program and is a current student in the Master’s of Indigenous Language Revitalization program at the University of Victoria, BC. She has over 25 years of teaching experience in daycare, elementary, high school, and university levels and promotes family participation in language learning while incorporating the Rotinonhsion:ni ceremonial calendar and culture into all educational curriculum.

Katsi’tsarónkwas Brooke Rice is a Kanien’kehá:ka Snipe Clan woman from Kahnawà:ke and founder of Tkà:nios – It Grows, a grassroots initiative dedicated to land-based learning, ancestral seeds, and traditional foodways. Her work strides towards food sovereignty and community wellness through intergenerational knowledge transference guided by 13 lunar cycles of Grandmother Moon. As cultural wellness weaver she collaborates with youth, Elders, Indigenous knowledge-sharers, and cultivators to restore relationships between people, food, and land. Brooke’s vision is to build a Haudenosaunee Agri-Food Center, advancing sovereignty, reciprocity, and regeneration across food systems.

Shannon Chief/Waba Mako is Wolf Clan from the Anishnabe-Algonquin Nation. She contributes at various levels to the decolonization and the restoration of her people’s sovereignty. The defense and protection of land, waters and language is a priority for the Anishnabeg. Waba is a Knowledge Keeper who prioritizes knowledge & language sharing to Anishnabe communities. Waba is the former AMC coordinator for the Anishnabe Moose Studies which has always been community-driven project from 2022 to 2025. Today, Waba is the Interium Executive Director for Tinakiwin, a newly non profit organization established to continue on the advocacy work within the Algonquin Territory.