BC Studies no. 218 Summer 2023

Chelsey Geralda Armstrong is an archaeologist and historical-ecologist specializing in settler-colonial and Indigenous land use in the Pacific Northwest of North America. She is assistant professor in Indigenous Studies and associate faculty in the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. Armstrong is director of the Historical-Ecological Research Lab based in Laxyuubm Ts’msyen and Gitxsan in the Skeena Region. 

Michael Blake is professor emeritus in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia. He has spent his career conducting archaeology with and for Indigenous communities of Meso-america and the Pacific Northwest. In Mesoamerica, he specializes in the origins and spread of maize agriculture, and in the Pacific Northwest, his research has similarly focused on generating and sharing knowledge about the connections between ancient and present plant production practices. 

Janette Bulkan is an associate professor in the Department of Forest Resources Management in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia. She works collaboratively with Indigenous Peoples, local communities, and civic groups on issues of rights and territorial management. She is interested in old and new forms of enclosures which are not only about territory but also proprietary access to resources that are then incorporated into complex anastomosing supply chains.

June Chow 周慕慈 is a graduate of the archival studies master’s program at the University of British Columbia. Her professional practice seeks to critique and correct systemic power imbalances in Chinese Canadian archives, most recently, at Library and Archives Canada for the community’s 100-year commemoration of the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act. She is currently special collections archivist with the Chinese Canadian Archive at Toronto Public Library and a collaborator on a UBC Research Excellence Cluster. 

Meagan Joan Curtis completed her PhD on agricultural food sufficiency at the University of British Columbia in 2023. She works as a consultant on a variety of natural resource management issues and recently began Origin Historical Consulting (Instagram @originhistoricalconsulting), which specializes in histories for businesses and organizations related to sustainability for the purpose of solving complex policy and communications challenges. 

Jennifer Douglas (she/her) is an associate professor at the School of Information, University of British Columbia, where she teaches in the Master of Archival Studies program. Her research areas include personal and intimate archives, person-centred archival theory and praxis, and archival arrangement and description. Her recent research has focused on the relationships between recordkeeping, bereavement, and grief work and on archives creation and concepts of care. She lives and works on the unceded territory of the Musqueam people. 

Tanja Hoffmann is a research fellow at the Heritage for Global Challenges Research Centre based at the University of York. She has worked with and for the q ̓ə́yc ̓əy [Katzie] First Nation for over twenty-five years. Most of Tanja’s research is guided by community priorities. As a result, her research interests are located where place-based and Indigenous Peoples’ heritages intersect with dynamics of climate change, de-colonization, economic development, and resource management. 

Mike Leon is a Katzie knowledge holder who has spent many years on the land, monitoring and representing the Nation. Mike enjoys sharing his knowledge with the younger generations and teaching them how to be caretakers for the sustainability of future generations. 

Roma Leon is a Katzie knowledge holder in traditional plant harvesting. She facilitates cultural programming, knowledge sharing, and land-based opportunities of learning for the Nation. She enjoys time in the territory monitoring and teaching community members how to harvest traditional plant foods. 

Imogene Lim 林慕珍 is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Vancouver Island University. Much of her current work involves communities on Vancouver Island associated with early Chinese Canadians. Family documents continue to serve as a source of inspiration and research; they are a reminder that she is a lo wah kiu descendant.

Naomi Louie is a recently graduated master’s of arts student from UBC’s Department of History. Her research focuses on North American immigration history: specifically, the influence of epidemic disease on migration and public health policy; Chinese and Asian Exclusion; and community responses to migration policy. She is currently working as a curatorial assistant on the Paper Trail Project at the Chinese Canadian Museum, collecting Chinese Exclusion Act certificates to archive them at UBC Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections, and to exhibit them at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver’s Chinatown.

Natasha Lyons, PhD, is a founding partner of Ursus Heritage Consulting and adjunct faculty in the Department of Archaeology at Simon Fraser University. She enjoys long-standing research partnerships with Katzie, Sq’éwlets, and Sts’ailes Nations of the Pacific Northwest and the Inuvialuit of the Canadian Western Arctic. Natasha co-publishes widely on ethical and heart-centred research practice, community heritage, human-plant relationships, and the digital humanities. https://www.ursus-heritage.ca/team/natasha-lyons

Sandra Peacock is an archaeologist and ethnobotanist interested in the classification, use, and stewardship of plants and landscapes by peoples past and present. She has worked collaboratively with First Nations communities in Alberta, Montana, and British Columbia for more than twenty-five years to document traditional plant knowledge and the archaeological evidence of ancient plant use. Her current research explores the archaeological evidence for wild root food collecting and processing in southern British Columbia. 

Michelle Stack, PhD, is the academic director of the Learning Exchange for the University of British Columbia and an associate professor in the Department of Educational Studies. Her central research interest concerns how people, knowledge, and institutions are categorized and the influence of these categorizations on our ability to grapple with inequity, particularly ableism and racism. Her current work focuses on co-operative colleges and universities as a way to provide opportunities for democratic decision making, and food, job, and housing security for students, staff, and faculty.