Laurier expert alert: National Indigenous Peoples Day

June 14, 2021
For Immediate Release

Waterloo – National Indigenous Peoples Day is June 21. The following Wilfrid Laurier University experts are available to comment on a variety of topics related to Indigenous peoples and Indigenous rights:

Gus Hill is associate dean and associate professor of the Indigenous Field of Study in Laurier’s Faculty of Social Work. He is an expert in Indigenous health and wellness, community capacity-building, community-based Indigenist research, and wholistic social work practice. His recently published book Indigenous Healing: Voices of Elders and Healers is available through JCharlton Press. Contact: ghill@wlu.ca

Allen Jorgenson is a professor and assistant dean at Martin Luther University College. He is an expert on comparative theology and theologies of religious pluralism, including how contemporary theology can be informed by Indigenous worldviews. Jorgenson is available to comment about reconciliation efforts between Christian denominations and Indigenous peoples. Contact: ajorgenson@luther.wlu.ca

Susan Neylan, an associate professor in Laurier’s Department of History, is an expert on the history of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations in Canada and is available to speak about the relationship between Indigenous people and the church in British Columbia in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is the author of The Heavens are Changing: Nineteenth-Century Protestant Missions and Tsimshian Christianity and the co-editor of New Histories for Old: Changing Perspectives on Canada's Native Pasts. Contact: sneylan@wlu.ca

Miguel Sioui is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies. He is an expert on Indigenous knowledges, Indigenous land-use and environmental management, particularly in eastern and northern Ontario, northern Quebec, the Northwest Territories and Yucatan, Mexico. Through his research, he is building connections between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities, researchers and governments in order to develop responsible, respectful and sustainable environmental management strategies. Sioui is of Huron-Wendat descent. Contact: msioui@wlu.ca

Karen Stote is an assistant professor in the Women and Gender Studies program. Her research has focused on colonialism and the history of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada. For her first book, An Act of Genocide: Colonialism and the Sterilization of Aboriginal Women, she documented the coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Canada within the larger context of colonialism, the oppression of women and the denial of Indigenous sovereignty. She is currently studying the coerced sterilization of Indigenous women in Saskatchewan from 1970 to 2015 and the formation of family planning policy and practice in that province. Contact: kstote@wlu.ca