The Researcher

Not even a decade ago, my mom Kathy began a mission to find her birth family. As a result of the 60s Scoop, my mom was taken from her birth family and placed in a Caucasian home causing a disruption to kinship ties and cultural continuity. 

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My relationship to my Cree identity has therefore been shaped by both inheritance and rupture. I write from within a process of reclamation rather than uninterrupted cultural transmission. I do not position myself as a cultural authority within Cree traditions, nor do I claim to represent Cree knowledge broadly. Rather, I situate my research within my specific lineage and lived experience of identity disruption, return, and responsibility.

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My engagement with arts-based and relational research methodologies emerged initially through community-based disability advocacy work, where I studied PhotoVoice as a participatory visual method to amplify the experiences of individuals living with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. This work introduced me to storytelling and image-making as forms of collective knowledge production and mobilization.

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My understanding of Indigenous research principles deepened through mentorship and collaboration within Coast Salish territories, where I witnessed and assisted in holding space at a retreat for family members and survivors connected to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. Observing women gather to tell their stories, create art, and witness one another shaped my understanding of storytelling as relational, accountable, and held within community.

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My academic formation has occurred within Western institutions, and I remain attentive to the privileges and constraints of that training. Rooting this project in Indigenous-informed principles reflects both my Cree lineage and my commitment to relational accountability, story as living knowledge, and research as a practice of witnessing rather than extraction. This work represents an ongoing process of learning, reconnection, and responsibility.