Critical Indigenous Fish Philosophy

I am pursuing a PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. My work currently focuses on the relationships between people, fish and the environment in the Western Canadian Arctic in the past and present, in the context of environmental change. Using fishing as a lens, I employ a historical ethnographic approach to understand how human-environmental relationships in the Western Canadian Arctic have been shaped by various factors — including colonialism — over the last one hundred years.

Throughout 2012, I conducted ten months of ethnographic work in the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, which included interviews with various community members and extensive fishing trips through the spring, summer and fall. I have also conducted archival work in the Hudson’s Bay Archives (Winnipeg), Provincial Archives of Alberta (Edmonton) and Library and Archives Canada (Ottawa) in order to contextualize both Inuvialuit and non-Inuvialuit discourses of fish and fishing in the region.

My PhD research employs a detailed local case study in order to illustrate the various ways that fish, fishing and water are framed and experienced by various actors in the North. This case study can inform our understanding of future impacts from resource development and environmental change in the Canadian Arctic.

At a broader scale, I am particularly interested in people’s relationships to the environment, and how these are articulated in resource management, wildlife management and urban planning frameworks. As a Metis woman, I am also interested in how Indigenous narratives are framed and mobilized in relation to resource management and urban planning discourses in Canada.

Please feel free to peruse the pages of this site to learn more about my academic and social advocacy/community-based work.