Marni Amirault is of Acadian and English/Irish descent. She has a Master of Arts in cultural anthropology from the University of Alberta. Her academic background focused on issues surrounding the representation of Indigenous peoples in Canadian media: stereotypes, self-representation and media control, for example.

She has worked with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities on community-based research projects since 2001. Moving home to Nova Scotia after her master’s introduced her to issues around sexual health and HIV and AIDS. She began her work with the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network (CAAN) in 2009. She is currently a Community-based Research Manager (Knowledge Translation) for the AHA Centre – a project of CAAN.

In this role, she supports HIV community-based research (CBR) efforts between Indigenous and academic communities across Canada. She lives by the ocean in Mi’kmaq Territory (Nova Scotia, Canada).

Greta Bauer is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry at Western, and an Affiliate Member of Women’s Studies & Feminist Research. She came to Western in 2005, after completing her PhD at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health.

Dr. Bauer’s primary research interests are in the impacts of social marginalization on health, and in quantitative research methodology for studying communities that experience marginalization. Her ongoing methods research seeks to incorporate intersectionality and multidimensionality frameworks into population health research.

For more than a decade, she has been a leader in community-based research on both HIV and LGBT health, with a strong focus on transgender health.

Marjorie Beaucage is a Two-Spirit Métis Auntie, filmmaker, art-ivist and educator, a land protector and a water walker. Born in Vassar, Manitoba, to a large Métis family, Marjorie’s life’s work has been about creating social change, working to give people the tools for creating possibilities and right relations.

She has been a grandmother for Walking with Our Sisters, the Elder for OUT Saskatoon and the Elder-In-Residence for the University of Saskatchewan Student Union. As a current board member of Chokecherry Studios, she is giving back to future art-ivists as they stand up for themselves and their community through art, songs, writing – creating possibilities of wellness with ceremony and story medicine.

Anita C. Benoit is an Assistant Professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto and an Adjunct Scientist at Women’s College Research Institute, Women’s College Hospital.

She will contribute expertise related to the use of Indigenous methodologies with epidemiology. She also has experience in HIV and determinants of health research for Indigenous peoples.

Miranda Black is an Indigenous alumnus of Toronto Metropolitan University with a BA (Honors) in Urban and Environmental Sustainability and a MASc in Environmental Applied Science and Management. Her lineage is Mohawk of the Bay of Quinte and mixed ancestry.

Miranda is an advocate for Indigenous Human Rights and recognizes that her work must always align with the values of her elders and ancestors.

Amy Bombay is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and the School of Nursing at Dalhousie University. Amy is Ojibway and a member of Rainy River First Nations and completed her MSc and PhD in Psychology and Neuroscience. Her primary areas of inquiry have focused on exploring the relationships between historical trauma, contemporary stressor exposure, cultural identity, and mental health among Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Her research exploring the different pathways by which Indian Residential School experiences are transmitted across generations has garnered extensive media interest and has been influential in influencing policy and practice related to Indigenous health. 

Growing up in Southern Alberta, Lane is guided by the values instilled by a rural upbringing in ranching and agriculture. His approach to community work is one of constant collaboration, recognizing the powerful ideas that can emerge from different perspectives and mutual support.

He is Blackfoot and a member of Piikani Nation, hoping to contribute to sexual health care and research that honours Indigenous ways of knowing and is affirming of identity, desire, and lived experience. He received his bachelor’s degree in Sexuality Studies from York University, and is grateful for the encouragement and support of his Nation in the pursuit of his studies. Lane is the Two-Spirit Program Lead at the Community Based Research Centre.

Catherine Booker’s current work at the Feast Centre supports Indigenous and allied researchers as their research coordinator ‘Auntie’. She received her MA in Cultural Studies and Critical Theory from McMaster University in 2022. Her previous work at McMaster supports Indigenous students in Health education student services.

She is from down the river, with mixed Munsee, Gael, and Black ancestry from the Dawn settlement. Her current research interests include Indigenous narratives of health, the power, privilege and responsibilities of intersecting identities in Canada, storytelling as research methods, sexual futures and decolonial love.

Julie Bruneau is professor in the Department of Family and Emergency medicine and holds the Canada Research Chair in Addiction medicine at Université de Montréal. She is an addiction medicine clinician/researcher with expertise in the epidemiology of drug use and HIV/hepatitis among people who use drugs.

Her reseach program examines the factors associated with and strategies to prevent new HIV and HCV infections, and to increase access to health care for people who use drugs. She has also devoted her clinical career to decrease stigma and increase access to quality health care for people who use drugs, including though a partnership with an addiction treatment service for Indigenous peoples in Quebec.

As a PI of the Quebec Atlantic node of the Canadian Research Initiative on Substance Misuse and co-PI in the CanHepC network, Dr. Bruneau will facilitate links to these networks and their extensive knowledge translation partnerships. She will provide expertise on the epidemiology of PWID overall and Quebec.

Jordan Carrier a nêhiyaw-iskwêw (Plains Cree Woman – uses she/her pronouns), currently resides in the lands protected by the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Agreement in Hamilton, Ontario. She is originally from Regina, Saskatchewan and is a member of Piapot First Nation in Treaty Four. She is a mom, wife, sister, daughter, kokum and community Auntie.

Jordan holds a Diploma from Mohawk College in Native Community Care, a Bachelor of Education in Aboriginal Adult Education from Brock University and a second degree (Hons BA) in Indigenous Studies from McMaster University. She is currently working towards a Master of Arts in Social Justice and Community Engagement at Wilfrid Laurier.

Jordan has worked in the urban Indigenous community of Hamilton for almost 20 years. Holding such positions as an Indigenous Youth Worker at a secondary school and in Indigenous Student Services at McMaster University. In her most recent career journey, she was the Director of Community Engagement with the National Consortium for Indigenous Medical Education and is currently the Outreach Lead with Castlemain for the First Nations Child Welfare and Family Services and Jordan’s Principle Settlement. She also volunteers with many grassroots initiatives within the City of Hamilton.

Curtis Cooper trained at the University of Saskatchewan (MD 1994). He received certification in Internal Medicine in 1997 and in Infectious Diseases in 1999 while at the University of Manitoba. He completed an HIV Research Fellowship and Masters of Epidemiology in 2002 while at the University of Ottawa.

He is currently an Associate Professor with the University of Ottawa, Infectious Diseases Consultant with the Ottawa Hospital Division of Infectious Diseases, Scientist with the Ottawa Health Research Institute, Director of the Ottawa Hospital and Regional Viral Hepatitis Program and President for the Canadian Foundation for Infectious Diseases.

As a clinical researcher, his research activities encompass viral hepatitis, HIV and vaccine development. His work is focused on the development of new therapeutic agents and the delivery of treatment that maximizes safety, adherence and effectiveness.

Jessy Dame is a very proud Two-Spirit, Métis, Certified Registered Nurse. Jessy’s family is from Treaty 1 and 2 territory, which is known today as Winnipeg and St Rose-du-lac. Jessy has worked within Neonatal/Postnatal health.

He currently works casually within a queer sexual health clinic in downtown Vancouver and as the Two-Spirit Program Manager at the Community-Based Research Centre. Within this position, Jessy is able to work with and for the Two-Spirit community to create resources and advocate for services.

Dr. Bernice Downey is a woman of Saulteaux/Ojibwe and Celtic heritage, a mother and a grandmother. Her family is from Lake St. Martin, First Nations in MB. She is a medical anthropologist with research interests in health, health literacy and Indigenous Traditional knowledge and health/research system reform for Indigenous populations.

Bernice is currently cross appointed to the School of Nursing and Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences and is the Indigenous Health Lead for the Faculty of Health Science at McMaster University. Most recently, she was awarded the Heart & Stroke Foundation – Canadian Institute of Health Research – Chair in Indigenous Women’s Heart and Brain Health.

Bernice’s professional experience includes, Chief Executive Officer of the National Aboriginal Health Organization and Executive Director of the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada. She was one of two Indigenous leads for the WHO Commission on the Social Determinants of Health, Canadian Reference Group. She was a Research Associate of the Well Living House – Centre for Research on Inner City Health at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.

She was a member of the Canadian Institute of Health Research – Institute of Aboriginal Health, Advisory Board for six years. Bernice also successfully led the development of the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute. She is an experienced administrator, facilitator, and an organizational and systemic influencer of change. She is also a life-long advocate in the work towards addressing the serious health inequities among Indigenous populations in Canada.

Denielle Elliott is a socio-cultural anthropologist at York University where she is the deputy-director of the Tubman Institute.

Her research explores the (1) anthropology of state science and scientists; (2) settler colonialism / urban Indigeneity; (3) the anthropology of biomedicine; and (4) multimodal ethnographic methods. Her work consistently interrogates state power as it works through biomedicine, science, and other statecraft practices in colonial and postcolonial contexts.

She is currently working on two projects: an arts-based ethnography of traumatic brain injuries and a second project that explores Canadian scientists and transnational microbiology research. She is a founding member of the Centre for Imaginative Ethnography, and co-editor of A Different Kind of Ethnography (UTP, 2016).

She is also the author of Reimagining Science and Statecraft in Postcolonial Kenya: Stories from an African Scientist (Routledge, 2018). She has also published papers in Cultural Studies Review, Contemporary Drug Problems, Catalyst, Medicine Anthropology Theory, among other journals and edited books.

Dr. Keith Fowke is Professor and Head of the Department of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, University of Manitoba. His laboratory focuses on defining cellular immune mechanisms of natural resistance to HIV infection and control of the infection if it does occur.

Current studies include preventing HIV infections by reducing inflammation at the genital tract, understanding how to block the negative effects of elevated immune checkpoint inhibitors in HIV infection to restore the immune response to full capabilities, and determining the effect of solvent use on the immune system and implications on HIV susceptibility.

Bonnie Freeman is Algonquin/Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and is an Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at McMaster University. She brings many years of practical experience.

Her research focuses on how Indigenous culture and youth activism contributes to the intrapersonal connection to health, well-being and resiliency. She also engages in the exploration of Indigenous methodology as a way of engaging with epistemology by means of land and waterways.

Dr. Chelsea Gabel, PhD is an Associate Professor in the Indigenous Studies Department and the Department of Health, Aging and Society at McMaster University. She is Métis from Rivers, Manitoba and a citizen of the Manitoba Métis Federation. Dr. Gabel holds a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Well-Being, Community Engagement, and Innovation.

She is the Scientific Director of the Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health (IIPH) with the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR). She is the former lead of the Indigenous Mentorship Network of Ontario and co-lead of the Network Environments for Indigenous Health Research (NEIHR) National Coordinating Centre (NCC) which acts as a secretariat, supporting the nine funded NEIHRs across Canada.

Dr. Gabel’s current research focuses on Indigenous policy, Métis health and well-being, data governance, arts-based research, ethics, digital technology and the importance of intergenerational relationships.

Laverne Gervais has been working in HIV/AIDS for 4.5 years predominately with Indigenous women living with the virus. She has coordinated Ka Ni Kanichihk’s Aboriginal Women Responding to the HIV/AIDS Crisis and currently manages the Manitoba Mino Pimatisiwin Model of STBBI Care project. Laverne has participated and received HIV research training through Visioning Health Winnipeg and CHIWOS MB focusing on Indigenous women’s health.

In addition to research training, Laverne has also participated in CAAN’s Community Readiness Assessment Training and HIV is Not A Crime Advocacy Training with the Canadian HIV AIDS Legal Network. Through Ka Ni Kanichihk, she is also involved in the Manitoba Collective Impact Network.

William Gooding is an Indigenous-European mixed-race person of Quechua (the Cajamarca region of Peru) and Irish descent. William earned a Bachelor’s Degree in English and History from the University of British Columbia, a Master’s of Social Work from Ryerson University and is presently completing a PhD in Social Work at McMaster University.

As an HIV+, queer, mixed-race researcher who has deep appreciation for his own Indigenous past and present, William’s research has focused on supporting IPHA leadership, on theorizing Indigenous and non-Indigenous interdisciplinary allyship, and on exploring the workplace conditions for Indigenous peoples living with HIV and/or Hep C across the world.

A key area of interest for William is theorizing through text, visual and filmic representations to examine the variable and contextual intersections of Indigeneity, race, queerness, disability and HIV as they relate to wellbeing and desire.

William is honoured to be able to work collaboratively with Indigenous community members, scholars, Elders and youth to further the integration of Indigenous knowledge and methods into the academy and more broadly into the health sciences with an aim of better supporting Indigenous communities and individuals living with and affected by STBBI.

Dr. Saara Greene is interested in the social determinants of health and the impact they have on women; specifically, mothers. Her current research focuses on the impact of housing instability and homelessness on families with children who are affected by HIV.

Dr. Greene is particularly interested in highlighting how the intersecting issues of racism, sexism and poverty result in marginalizing HIV-positive women and their children.

Dr. Trevor Hart is the Director of the HIV Prevention Lab and Director of TMU’s new HOPE Centre for Gender and Sexual Minority People: the first and only Centre in Canada dedicated to combining health research aimed at understanding disparities in sexual and gender minority health, with the identification, testing, and implementation of counseling and other practice solutions for better health outcomes.

Currently, he is conducting a CIHR-funded randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluating a new HIV prevention intervention designed to reduce HIV risk, social anxiety, and problematic substance use among gay, bisexual, queer, and other men who have sex with men (GBM). This ongoing study is called Sexual Confidence.

Dr. Hart is also a Site PI of the CIHR-funded Engage cohort study, which involves researchers in HIV prevention and community-based organizations across Canada. This project is a longitudinal study of prevalent and recent infections of HIV and other sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections (STBBIs) among 2,100 GBM in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. Recently, the Engage team received CIHR funding to conduct a new study on how biomedical treatments for bacterial sexually transmitted infections are changing the incidence of sexually transmitted infections and related sexual behaviours among GBM.

Dr. Hart received his doctorate in clinical psychology from Temple University. After graduate school, he completed a post-doctoral fellowship at Emory University School of Medicine, through which he received training at the Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He then worked for four years as an Assistant Professor at York University before joining the Department of Psychology at Ryerson in 2007.

He has received several awards for his advancements to research and clinical work, including membership in the College of New Scholars, Arts, and Scientists of the Royal Society of Canada, Fellow of the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapies (ABCT), a Toronto Metropolitan University Social Innovation and Action Research Award, and membership in the international Sigma Xi Honor Society of scholars and scientists

Celeste Hayward is the Executive Director of the Alberta Community Council on HIV. Originates from the Wet’suwet’en Nation in the northern interior of BC, in the Bear Clan.

Celeste has spent the twenty years of her career working in community-based organizations, and the past ten years working in provincial community-based organizations advocating and supporting local organizations, representing collective voice.

What makes it possible for people with HIV to live longer and better lives? Some insights might be found among Canada’s Aboriginal communities. Among many Aboriginal groups, HIV rates are rising, and yet many who have the virus live comparatively stable, happy and long lives.

Randy Jackson has become an expert in understanding the long-term wellness among HIV-positive Aboriginal men. Dissatisfied with existing research, which tended to focus excessively on pathologizing Indigenous people, Jackson worked with the communities he was studying to find a different perspective. Health-care providers acknowledged the challenges of HIV in their communities, but also identified resilience among those who accessed their services. They wanted to understand this resilience better.

Jackson continues to study how indigenous ways of knowing the world and being in the world can influence resilience. By better understanding the role of culture in the lives of people living with HIV, Jackson reveals parts of the bigger picture of the sociological facets of human health.

Jackson teaches courses in Aboriginal Health and Wellness, and also in the Community-Based Research methods that are at the heart of his own research. This community-based approach has broad implications and potential, providing new insights into the ways resilience – not just physical, but also spiritual, emotional and mental – can be grounded in Indigenous knowledge, community and worldviews.

Jack Janvier is an infectious disease specialist based out the Peter Lougheed Center in Calgary, Alberta. He also does HIV care at the Southern Alberta Clinic for HIV. He has a Bachelor of Science degree (1997) and a Doctor of Medicine degree (2001) from the University of Saskatchewan.

He did his internal medicine training at the University of Saskatchewan and then received his infectious diseases training at the University of Calgary. He has been working full time in Calgary since 2009. He has been involved on the advisory board of HIV Community Link’s Strong Voices Aboriginal Program for about 5 years.

He has also been involved in an advisory role for collaborative teams looking at tackling the HIV epidemic in Aboriginal populations in Saskatchewan.

Richard Jenkins hails from the Cree-Metis community of Moose Mountain, Alberta. As a gay Two Spirit cis-gendered man, he embraced his identity openly at the age of 19, sharing it with friends, family, and the community. Richard’s professional journey involves extensive work as a community developer and health promotions advocate in various critical areas within Indigenous communities across Canada.

With a diverse skill set, Richard has contributed to initiatives in addictions, long-term care, HIV/AIDS, sexual orientation and gender identity, family and community healing, child welfare, health policy and programs, and urban Indigenous development. His dedication spans employment with organizations such as Nechi Institute, Friendship Centres at all levels, Alberta Health Services, and the Federal Government.

Richard’s commitment extends to volunteering at local, provincial, national, and international levels. Notably, he made history as the first Canadian Board member of the World Indigenous Nation’s Higher Education Consortium (WIN-HEC/2002-04). In recognition of his contributions, Richard received the Community Development Award at the Alberta Aboriginal Role Model Awards in the mid-2000s.

A pioneer in advancing Two Spirit advocacy, Richard served as the first Director General for the 2 Spirits in Motion Society. He played a foundational role in establishing the organization during the 1st Canadian Forum on Two Spirit Peoples, HIV/AIDS, and Health in Edmonton, Alberta, in 2003.

Michael Roderick Keshane is a First Nations independent filmmaker and artist from Keeseekoose First Nation, and the Coté First Nation Reserve.

His work explores the sense of peace that First Nations people find through maintaining the cultural traditions of their ancestors in the face of uncertain futures and harsh realities.

Dr. Alexandra King, MD, FRCPC, is an Internal Medicine Specialist with a focus on HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C (HCV) and HIV/HCV co-infections. Alexandra is a Nipissing First Nations woman (Ontario, Canada).

Alexandra is the inaugural Cameco Chair in Indigenous Health and Wellness at the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatchewan, Canada). She works with Indigenous communities and relevant stakeholders to understand the health and wellness needs of First Nations and Métis peoples in Saskatchewan and the structural changes that are needed for improved Indigenous health outcomes.

She also leads work that enhances Indigenous health education, advocates for improvements and funding, ensures sustainability of effective services and supports, and facilitates knowledge and resource mobilization to support improved Indigenous health and wellness. Alexandra teaches Indigenous health and has mentored students at both Simon Fraser University (British Columbia, Canada) and the University of Saskatchewan, focusing on wellness intervention research with Indigenous people.

Alexandra sits on numerous local, national and international boards and committees, including the International Group on Indigenous Health Measurement, the World Indigenous Peoples’ Conference on Viral Hepatitis, Ontario HIV Treatment Network (OHTN), The Association of Faculties of Medicine of Canada: Indigenous Health Committee, Canadian Foundation for AIDS Research (CANFAR), the Canadian Network on Hepatitis C, Sanctum 1.5 and the Canadian Indigenous Research Network Against Cancer. She has chaired and presented at conferences across Canada and internationally.

Nathan Lachowsky Champions interdisciplinary and community-based approaches. He has conducted HIV/AIDS and sexual health research across Canada and Aotearoa New Zealand. Nathan’s principal area of research focuses on social and behavioural epidemiology and the importance of developing and analyzing public health data to inform public health practice, health service provision, and policy.

While fundamentally trained as an epidemiologist, he conducts interdisciplinary research within a social justice framework in order to achieve health equity for marginalized communities. Nathan’s population foci include sexual and gender minority, youth, Indigenous, and ethnoracialized communities.

Denise Lambert shares her life with her 5 children – Chelsea, Sierra, Jolene, Naomi, Nathan and 2 grandsons – Noah and Grayson. She lives near Kikawiskan Sakahikan. Of Cree, Stoney and French descent, Denise challenges legislated identity boundaries, focusing on unity of Indigenous Peoples. Denise started AIDS/HIV awareness within correctional facilities in Alberta in 1987.

As a cofounder of several AIDS service organizations, advisory committees and working groups Denise has developed a comprehensive skill set to addressing Indigenous health issues from policy and practices levels. Currently, Denise is a PhD student in Indigenous Studies at the University of Alberta.

Rachel Landy is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Victoria, supervised by Dr. Cathy Worthington. As a postdoctoral fellow Rachel is working with the DRUM & SASH team to support the development of holistic shared models of care for HIV and other STBBI with First Nation and Métis communities in Alberta. 

Rachel completed her PhD at Memorial University of Newfoundland where she collaborated with an Indigenous community-based organization in Labrador to develop, implement, and evaluate arts-based HIV education programming with Indigenous youth and Elders.

Born and raised in Apex Hill, Nunavut, Naulaq LeDrew is Inuk and was brought up with 8 siblings and many cousins. During her formative years in Apex Hill, Naulaq learned from her family how to live traditionally, developing a deep respect for the land and all that it provides that is grounded in Inuit knowledge and understandings.

Naulaq has supported the Urban Inuit community in Toronto for many years and has been elected to be an Inuit community knowledge keeper. As part of her responsibilities in community, Naulaq has presented at universities and symposiums on the topic of Inuit well being, has provided ceremonial openings for organizations and has served lightening qulliq (oil lamp) for Ontario’s Ministers.

Her favourite pastime is sewing seal skin and creating art and crafts that celebrate her Inuk heritage. Naulaq is happily married to Randall LeDrew, and between them they have 7 children and grandchildren.

Carmen Logie is an Associate Professor, Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto, Canada Research Chair in Global Health Equity and Social Justice with Marginalized Populations (2018-2023), and Ontario Ministry of Research & Innovation Early Researcher (2016- 2021).

She is also an Adjunct Scientist at Women’s College Hospital. She is particularly interested in culturally syntonic approaches to understanding and addressing intersectional stigma and its sexual and reproductive health impacts, with a focus on HIV and other STBBI. She has a Canada Foundation for Innovation Digital Storytelling and Multi-media Lab.

She is currently conducting mixed-methods and intervention sexual and reproductive health and rights research with: Indigenous and Northern adolescents in Northern Canada; transgender women in Ontario, Quebec and British Colombia; sexual rights movements (HIV-related, LGBTQ, sex worker, abortion rights) in Brazil; and urban refugee and displaced adolescents in Uganda.

Area of expertise
Indigenous health; Sexual and reproductive health across the lifespan; sexual diversity; sex trade work; HIV/AIDS; the construction of female sexuality and the cultural determinants of health

Research interests: Indigenous health; Sexual and reproductive health across the lifespan; sexual diversity; sex trade work; HIV/AIDS; the construction of female sexuality and the cultural determinants of health.

Mona Loufty is a Full Professor, Infectious Diseases Specialist, and Senior Clinician Scientist at Women’s College Hospital and the University of Toronto. She is also the director of research at Maple Leaf Medical Clinic and the founder and director for the Women and HIV Research Program.

Candice Lys grew up in a very large Métis family in Fort Smith, NWT and now resides in Yellowknife. She holds a PhD in Public Health Science, is a community-based sexual and mental health researcher and is a Research Associate at Aurora College.

She is the Co-Founder/Executive Director of FOXY (Fostering Open eXpression among Youth) and SMASH (Strength, Masculinities, and Sexual Health). FOXY and SMASH are peer-led, trauma-informed, arts-based sexual and mental health programs that use the arts to facilitate discussion, education, and healing among Northern and Indigenous youth.

In 2014, FOXY was the first organization to be awarded the entire $1 million Arctic Inspiration Prize. Candice is recognized as the 53rd Ashoka Fellow from Canada and has earned the Meritorious Service Medal (Civil Division) from the Governor General of Canada for her work with FOXY and SMASH. She is a life partner to Remi, and a mom to a little human Luca and a rambunctious beagle named Maple 

Bridget Marsdin (she/her) returned to McMaster University after several years of working in community organizations dedicated to social justice. She has extensive frontline experience in sexual health, HIV/AIDS, STBBI (sexually transmitted and blood-borne infections), reproductive justice, trauma, sexual violence, gender-based violence, harm reduction and community-based research.

She is a 2024 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship recipient and is completing her PhD in social work, where she is involved in several community-based initiatives. Bridget’s doctoral study focuses on community participatory research with Six Nations of the Grand River to explore Haudenosaunee cultural responses to sexual health and wellbeing.

Carrie Martin is a Mi’gmaq woman from Listuguj, who has spent the past 20 years working in the field of Indigenous women’s health, with a particular focus on HIV. She completed a B.A. in Applied Human Relations and a Graduate Diploma in Community Economic Development at Concordia University, and her B.S.W. at McGill University. Carrie’s leadership is well established; she was the Harm Reduction Coordinator at the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal for 12 years (until March 2018), and a tireless advocate for Indigenous women living with HIV.

In March 2018, she transitioned to the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network as the Indigenous Women’s Research Coordinator. She has also started her Ph.D. at Concordia University to formalize her role as an Indigenous academic researcher. Engaging with many other Indigenous and allied researchers, she builds well-needed capacity in the Indigenous community for grant and research development. Carrie is the proud mother of a 3-year-old boy.

Catherine Martin, is a member of the Millbrook Mi’kmaw Community, Truro, NS. She is an independent international award winning film producer and director, a writer, facilitator, communications consultant, community activist, teacher, drummer, and the first Mi’kmaw woman filmmaker from the Atlantic region.

She is a past Chair of APTN and served on the board for the first five years of its inception. She has contributed to policy and institutional change to make cultural and arts more accessible to First Nations artists. Her contributions to film, television and digital media in Atlantic Canada were recognized with a WAVE Award from Women in Film and Television Atlantic.

She was honoured with a National Peace Award from VOW ( Voices of Women) in November 2016 for her years of work as a peace activist. Catherine has contributed to the development of many programs to advance the education of Mi’kmaq and Aboriginal women and youth in the Atlantic Region and across the country, including the Certificate in Community Health at Dalhousie for women in Mi’kmaq, Maliseet, Innu, and Inuit communities, the Indigenous Black and Mi’kmaq Law Program also at Dalhousie, and the Indigenous Women in Community Leadership program at the Coady  International Institute at St. Francis Xavier University, and Professor for CBU’s  BA Community Program. 

From 2015 to 2019 Catherine was  appointed as the 14th Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. Catherine is a board of governor for Kings College School of Journalism. She was awarded the Senate 150 medal and the Order of Canada  2017. She is now the first Director of Indigenous Community Relations at Dalhousie University.  

Information on Nancy’s Chair. 

The Nancy Rowell Jackman Chair in Women’s Studies (Nancy’s Chair) was established at Mount Saint Vincent University in the mid-1980s. Endowed by well-known Toronto-based feminist and philanthropist Nancy Ruth, the Chair raises awareness of women’s issues by bringing to campus distinguished scholars in women’s studies and activists who have contributed to the advancement of women. The presence of the Chair adds substantially to the intellectual strength of women’s studies at Mount Saint Vincent and in the Atlantic region. Duties associated with the Chair include teaching, research, and public presentations on campus and around the Atlantic provinces. 

My program of research is aimed at preventing chronic diseases, which are disproportionately higher among Aboriginal peoples relative to their non-Aboriginal counterparts within Canada.

Working directly with communities, I identify and address key community and societal level determinants, that are often linked to lifestyle factors, that ultimately cause chronic diseases. For instance, cost and availability of nutritious and culturally appropriate foods, which limits food choices, puts people at risk for debilitating, costly, and preventable, chronic diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and certain cancers.

A key feature of my work focuses on the importance of community engagement and using Indigenous ‘ways of knowing’ (methodologies) to inform the research process – from design to dissemination.

Renée Masching (PKU) is a First Nation woman with bloodlines from Six Nations of the Grand River in Southern Ontario and Ireland. She grew up in a family of Eastern and Western European descent. Professionally Renée’s energies are dedicated to Indigenous health-related work.

Her formal Indigenous HIV/AIDS involvement began in 1995 and she is honoured to contribute with dedication and determination. Renée earned degrees at McMaster University finishing a Bachelor’s in 1995 and a Master’s in Social Work in 2003 with a research award from CIHR.

Renee’s research interests focus on community-based research frameworks, Indigenous knowledge and community health with an emphasis on HIV/AIDS, HepC and STI. Renee lives with her husband, sons and pets by the ocean in Mi’kmaq Territory and identifies as she/her.

Albert McLeod is a Status Indian with ancestry from Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation and the Metis community of Norway House in northern Manitoba. He has over thirty years of experience as a human rights activist and is one of the directors of the Two-Spirited People of Manitoba. 

Albert began his Two-Spirit advocacy in Winnipeg in 1986 and became an HIV/AIDS activist in 1987. He was the director of the Manitoba Aboriginal AIDS Task Force from 1991 to 2001. In 2018, Albert received an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from the University of Winnipeg. 

Albert lives in Winnipeg, where he works as a consultant specializing in Indigenous peoples, cultural reclamation, and cross-cultural training.

Freddy Monasterio is a Cuban immigrant specializing in research coordination, project management, and grants administration in the creative and health fields. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Havana, as well as a Master’s in Global Development Studies and a PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University.

A strong advocate for social justice, Freddy’s work focuses on supporting Indigenous, immigrant, refugee, racialized, and other underrepresented communities through community-based research and interdisciplinary projects that foster cross-cultural collaboration.

In his current role as Research Coordinator at the Feast Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research, he applies his expertise to initiate, implement, and manage research initiatives that integrate Indigenous knowledge systems, promote multi-stakeholder collaborations, support diverse researchers and trainees, and translate findings into impactful policies and practices.

I am a full professor and director of the graduate program in sociology at York University. I’ve been involved in the HIV response since the late 1990s as an activist, researcher and, in the early years of the epidemic, as a community worker.

I have served on the board of directors of CATIE, the HIV & AIDS Legal Clinic (Ontario), and the Canadian HIV//AIDS Legal Network. I’ve been on the steering committee of AIDS ACTION NOW! since 2008. I was a founding member of the Ontario Working Group on Criminal Law and HIV Exposure and I’m a member of the Canadian Coalition to Reform HIV Criminalization.

Over the years I’ve tried to use my position in the university as a researcher to advance the political and advocacy goals of community-based HIV organizations. I’ve conducted and published social research on a range of HIV-related topics, often in collaboration with HIV activists, including, most recently on HIV criminalization. Most of my work is informed by an approach to sociology called institutional ethnography.

I am honored to be included in the Feast Team Centre for STBBI research and am excited by the opportunity to learn from and work with Feast team investigators, collaborators and knowledge users.

My current research seeks to interrogate the limitations of our knowledge on HIV/AIDS and sexual health. I seek to demonstrate the important contributions that critical social science inquiry can make to our understandings of infectious disease.

My substantive projects in HIV/AIDS work with a number of different populations (bisexuals, trans people, Haitians) in an effort to consider some of the blind spots of how we conceptualize and respond to the epidemic. It is in thinking about the juncture of these theoretical and methodological issues that my research addresses women’s lives and women’s health.

Shelia Nyman is a Syilx (Okanagan) Métis woman from the Lower Similkameen in the Okanagan Valley of British Columbia her spirit name is “Stands Strong like a Rock Bearwoman” and by the generosity of the Ancestors lives in the Interior of BC. Sheila worked extensively with women, mental health and well-being in and around Vancouver’s DTES from 1994 to 2007.

She was involved in the early 90s in the organizing of the Women’s Memorial March and continues the connection in the world of stopping violence against women. From 2009 to 2013, she worked supporting former survivors of Residential Schools involved in the settlement process and Truth and the Reconciliation activities. Sheila received a Fellowship from the University of Victoria and completed her Master’s thesis in 2015, which explored the link between ancient Indigenous Ceremony/Traditional Healing and energy therapies such as Somatic Experiencing. She is a skilled intuitive trauma counselor who integrates traditional healing and knowledge into her work. Sheila has been mentored and initiated into “Indigenous Healing and Ceremony” by Spiritual leader and Pipe Carrier, Aline LaFlamme, who is known as “Many Buffalo Running.”

She has completed six “Spirit Quests” (vision quest, mountain fasts). She has learned and earned the responsibility to hold a people’s Pipe conducting healing ceremonies such as Moon Lodge and Sweat Lodge. Her connection with Grandmother Moon has inspired her interest in learning and understanding the inter-connections of the energy of our great mother, the Earth.

Sheila has participated on several research teams with FEAST Co-leads, Randy Jackson and Renée Mashing as well as with other members of the research team. Projects of note include: CANOC (SFU); Stable Homes Strong Families (CAAN/McMaster); The WATCH Study (McMaster); CHIWOS (Women’s College Hospital) and The Cradle Board Tool Kit. (BSW MSW RSW). All my relations. 

Doe O’Brien-Teengs is Omushkego Cree and Irish Canadian from Northern Ontario. She is a wife, mother and storyteller. She worked for 2-Spirited People of the 1st Nations (7 years) and the Ontario Aboriginal HIV/AIDS Strategy (14 years) in Toronto.

She is currently a PhD Candidate in Education at Lakehead University. She also teaches as a Sessional Lecturer in the Faculty of Education at Lakehead University in Orillia and is an Indigenous Knowledge Resource Teacher at the Royal Ontario Museum.

James grew up New York City and spent the last five years in Montreal where he completed his undergraduate degree at McGill University.

He is now based in Toronto where he is pursuing a Master’s in Public Health in Indigenous Health and Global Health from the University of Toronto. Outside of school, he enjoys being outside, reading, and running.

Michael Parsons has been a member of the Global Network of People Living with HIV (GNP+) since 1995 and a Métis member of CAAN (Communities, Alliances & Networks) since around 2000. He says, “I am a 2-Spirited man who was honored as 2-Spirited in a Bear lodge when I was gifted an AIDS Drum (warrior drum/pow wow drum).

I am a traditional man (I follow the old ways of my ancestors) and a ceremony maker. I was honored when gifted with a sweat lodge and further honored when my old pipe was turned into a community pipe. I carry the teachings for Métis and non-natives according to my Elder.

I have been an out APHA for many years and have done much training on HIV/AIDS within traditional Ceremonies getting the ceremonies ready to receive the positive people of the Atlantic into the healing ceremonies. I am also a social work student at Dalhousie.

Margo Pearce is a non-Indigenous person living/working on the unceded Coast Salish territories of the Xwmewkweýem, Skwxwú7mesh, and SeÌilweta1, Nations. She is a postdoctoral fellow (early career investigator) with the University of British Columbia and BC Centre for Disease Control and an Adjunct Professor at UBC School of Population and Public Health.

Since 2005, Margo has been a staff and co-investigator with the Cedar Project – an Indigenous governed cohort study involving young Indigenous people who use drugs in BC. The wealth of Indigenous expertise offered by the Feast Centre would be integral to ensuring this empirical research is relevant and useful to BCCDC and the Cedar Project and improves the wellbeing of First Nations individuals, families, and communities affected by HCV.

As a member of NARAC since 2015, Margo will continue to support the work of the AHA Centre as well as the Feast Centre. She will offer the Feast Centre her support based on her background in epidemiology and qualitative research methods, with an ongoing commitment to decolonizing health research.

Doris Peltier is the Community Engagement Coordinator with the FEAST Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research (a McMaster University & Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network partnership). She received an Honorary Doctorate from the Faculty of Sciences, University of Ottawa, June 2021.

She is currently winding down a five-year Intervention research study, titled Visioning Health II, a national study by and for HIV-positive Indigenous women in Canada. Other current and select involvements include: Community Advisory Council member with the Waakebiness-Bryce Institute for Indigenous Health at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health (University of Toronto); Women Living with HIV Advisory Group with World Health Organization (WHO); Board member with Prisoners with HIV and AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN).

Doris has been involved for more than a decade in Indigenous Community-based Research. She is fluent in Anishinaabemowin, which frames her worldview in her approach to Indigenous research.

Dr. Sharla Mskokii Peltier (Associate Professor, Orillia) was recently appointed Co-President of the Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education (CASIE).

As noted on the CASIE website, the Association’s purpose is to promote the study and dialogue of professors, students, researchers, and practitioners in the field of Indigenous education. CASIE is a constituent association of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education (CSSE).

Sharla says she is excited by the opportunity to contribute to this work via a collaborative, Indigenous-informed approach.

“I am particularly involved in bringing Indigenous perspectives forward as CSSE and CASIE address EDID (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Decolonization) initiatives. I am excited by the transformative processes underway at the CASIE executive, such as the President position being a shared/collaborative role and our adoption of a consensus approach that resonates with Indigenous community governance traditions. I am Anishinaabe and share the President’s work alongside Co-President Dr. Jennifer MacDonald, a dedicated non-Indigenous scholar and passionate ally,” she says.

In addition to fostering the exchange of ideas about ongoing research and development in Indigenous education, CASIE aims to provide a forum for discussing Indigenous education studies in the Canadian context, encouraging publications, and maintaining a commitment to the research priorities of Indigenous peoples and communities. There are over 170 members of CASIE from across Canada, from both academic and community contexts.

As an Associate Professor in Lakehead’s Faculty of Education, Sharla’s research and teaching centers Indigenous teaching-learning practices including storytelling, community land-based pedagogy, and relational Teachings.

Margaret Kisikaw Piyesis is a First Nations Cree woman of the Moose Clan and Bear Clan with family ties to George Gordon First Nation in Treaty Four territory of what is now known as Saskatchewan. Raised by residential school survivors who moved the family to the United States in an attempt to break a family cycle of abuse, Kisikaw Piyesis spent much of her upbringing away from her ancestral lands, grandparents, and extended family.   

Today, Margaret stands strong in her Indigeneity, gives gratitude to the Creator for the teachers, healers, lessons and blessings on her journey, and is humbled by the magic of the Great Mystery. She knows who she is: she is a pipe carrier; she is a daughter, sister, mother, auntie, kokum, cousin; and she is a baby-catching medicine woman.  

In the colonized world, she is a leader as the Finance and Research Director of All Nations Hope Network and celebrates 20+ years of responding to HIV, HCV and colonial impacts in Saskatchewan’s Indigenous communities through culture, ceremony, humour, and Indigenous ways. 

Sherri Pooyak is of Cree ancestry from Sweetgrass First Nation, Saskatchewan and is a visitor on the Lekwungen and WSÁNEC Nations of the Coast Salish people also known as Victoria, as a Community-based Research Manager (CBRM) with the AHA Centre a project with the Canadian Aboriginal AIDS Network.

Sherri assists Indigenous communities in developing their research capacities specific to HIV and AIDS with Indigenous people and communities. She is also the first Indigenous Co-Chair at Island Health’s Human Research Ethics Board. And is a Sessional Instructor at the University of Victoria and First Nations University of Canada.

In her work with CAAN, she is the nominated principal investigator on the Weaving Our Wisdom grant, which is looking at using land-based methodologies that are aimed to optimize Indigenous people’s health who are living with HIV as well as on the Making It Work Project with the Pacific AIDS Network.

The Making It Work project is Making it Work is an Indigenous focused community-based research study that is looking at what services work well for people living with HIV, hepatitis C, and/or challenges with mental health and/or substance use. This project is looking to understand why, when and how certain services work, with a specific interest in the following program models.

Tracey Prentice is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the School of Public Health and Social Policy, University of Victoria, BC. She has a Ph.D. in Population Health, a Master’s in Socio-Cultural Anthropology, and a Graduate Certificate in Health Services and Policy Research.

Her Ph.D. Thesis won the Joseph de Koninck Award for Best Ph.D. Thesis in an Interdisciplinary Program at the University of Ottawa, and her work has been sighted as an exemplary example of research with Indigenous communities. As a non-Indigenous scholar with 15 years of experience, Tracey seeks out collaborative research projects that support Indigenous community leadership, self-determination, and strive for social change.

She is particularly interested in culture and gender as determinants of health and decolonizing, arts-informed and strengths-based approaches to health and wellness.

Sabina Rajkumar is a Bachelor of Health Sciences (Honours) student at McMaster University with a strong passion for research and public health advocacy. Her academic pursuits focus on addressing health disparities, particularly in Indigenous and underserved communities.

She has extensive research experience in clinical and public health settings, with a focus on cardiology, hematology, oncology, and infectious diseases. Her work spans projects on health disparities, chronic disease management, and innovative medical interventions. Driven by a commitment to evidence-based solutions, she strives to advance healthcare equity and improve patient outcomes.

Beyond research, Sabina is deeply engaged in leadership and advocacy initiatives, reinforcing her dedication to meaningful change in global health. Outside of her work at FEAST, she enjoys teaching, reading, and performing color guard for McMaster’s marching band.

Margaret Robinson is a bisexual and two-spirit scholar from Eski’kewaq, Nova Scotia, and a member of the Lennox Island First Nation. She holds a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Reconciliation, Gender, & Identity.

Her work examines the impact of intersecting oppressions and draws on critical, postcolonial, and queer theories, intersectionality, and third wave feminism. She also engaged the contemporary Indigenous artistic renaissance, Mi’kmaw oral traditions, and the representation of Indigenous and of sexual and gender minority people in creative works.

She has been a community-based researcher since 2009, incorporating participatory, action-based, feminist, and Indigenous research methods. She has led studies on decolonizing research funding in Canada, two-spirit people’s understanding of mental health, and cannabis use among bisexual women. In 2016 she led a team that developed and validated a measure of microaggressions and microaffirmations experienced by bisexual women.

She conducted her postdoctoral training at the Centre for Addiction & Mental Health and was previously a Researcher in Residence in Indigenous Health at the Ontario HIV Treatment Network in Toronto.

Chaneesa Ryan has degrees in Health studies, Indigenous studies and Gerontology. Chaneesa has worked with First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities from all four directions. Her work with these populations has included health research, and health prevention, promotion and harm reduction campaigns on sexually transmitted and blood borne infections, tuberculosis, cancer, infant and maternal health, reproductive health, midwifery, and mental wellness.

As a non-Indigenous ally, Chaneesa is dedicated to the process of reconciliation, honouring Indigenous knowledge, utilizing decolonizing methodologies and recognizing and reaffirming self-determination.

I am Professor of Philosophy at Mount Saint Vincent University and also hold an adjunct post in the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Dalhousie University. Both universities are in Halifax, the capital city of beautiful Nova Scotia. I live in a rural, wooded part of the province, about 35 minutes from Halifax, with my artist wife Regina Coupar.

My doctorate is in philosophy and from Oxford, where I studied with Richard Swinburne, David Brown, Maurice Wiles, and Anthony Kenny in the late 1980s. The book that emerged from this study, Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason (Cornell, 1993), introduced a new argument against the existence of a personal God known as the hiddenness argument. This argument has enjoyed a good deal of attention in philosophy.

But in a subsequent trilogy (also from Cornell) and in several later volumes, I’ve shown why, even if there is no personal God, we should remain open to other, more general religious possibilities. And I have argued for the viability of an associated form of religious faith grounded in imagination rather than belief. Much of the support for this hybrid stance in the philosophy of religion – part critical, part constructive – comes from our early stage of development as a species. This neglected developmental fact provides a basis for what I call early-stage relativism.

Put bluntly, it tells us that if we humans are at an early stage of species-level development, we should act like it — behaving in ways appropriate to that stage and not as though we’re already fully developed. Early-stage relativism seems to me to have important consequences across a range of philosophical concerns. For example, it supports these views: that a solidly naturalistic commitment in metaphysics is premature; that something other than belief should be central in inquiry and so in epistemology; and that theories in ethics able to handle developmental facts as manifested at the smaller human scale should be preferred to ones that cannot. In the last few years I’ve been busy exploring these broader consequences.

Most recently, I’ve also been thinking, with a much narrower focus, about classical Christian doctrine. Here my results are again both critical and constructive, though at this point only the former have been published, in my 2024 book from Oxford University Press: What God Would Have Known: How Human Intellectual and Moral Development Undermines Christian Doctrine.

I am Wayne Seward, a Coast Salish man from Snuneymuxw (Nanaimo BC). I currently work as the Indigenous Liaison Officer for William Head Institution, a minimum security facility located Southwest of Victoria BC.

My job is to assist Indigenous offenders with their Correctional Plan, keep them connected to their family and community and the staff. I also bring community members into the Institution for events as well as Elders, to share teachings and culture to the offenders. I am a man with many hats and do a lot of different things in my job as the Indigenous Liaison Officer.

I also work as a Cultural Support Elder for the Truth and Reconciliation process across Canada, and provide individual cultural support for people involved in the Indian Residential School settlement hearings throughout the span of the TRC hearings. I get called upon, when available, to different communities to assist families and/ or communities for cultural support.

I do a cleansing with cedar boughs and water. After brushing the people, I would get them to wash away the tears with the water that I have medicine in there as well. I am a spirit dancer in our longhouses and travel up and down the Island, the mainland and the west coast of Washington USA, to these longhouses.

I travel to different communities to support those gatherings. There is a lot of singing and dancing amongst other things, in which I cannot speak about as our people say that is all we have left and do not want to lose it. I love to sing for different events / gatherings.

I have been taught many songs and prayer songs by my grandfather and I always share the name of the songs and what they mean. My grandfather always told me to always remember that. Most people say that I have my grandfathers voice when I sing. I provided cultural support during the Stable Homes Strong Families Digital Story Telling workshop in Victoria a few years back.

Audrey Steenbeek is a professor at Dalhousie university school of nursing with a cross appointment with the department of community health and epidemiology. Dr. Steenbeek is a nurse epidemiologist that specializes in reducing the spread of sexually transmitted infections in remote Indigenous communities through the use of community-based research.

Additionally, she works on improving vaccine uptake in northern communities, developing culturally competent HIV education, addictions and mental illness. Dr. Steenbeek continues to have an active nursing practice in both the emergency department and in Nunavut.

Dr. Jaris Swidrovich (he/they) is an Assistant Professor and Indigenous Engagement Lead in the Leslie Dan Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Toronto. He is a queer, Two Spirit, Saulteaux and Ukrainian HIV PharmacistTM from Yellow Quill First Nation. His mother was a 60s Scoop survivor and his grandmother and great-grandmother both survived Indian Residential Schools.

Dr. Swidrovich is the Co-Scientific Director of the CIHR-funded Saskatchewan Network Environment for Indigenous Health Research (SK-NEIHR) called natawihowin (“art of self-healing” in Cree), which is a First Nations Research Network that supports researchers, students, and First Nations health leaders and communities in Saskatchewan and beyond. Dr. Swidrovich is the founder and chair of the Indigenous Pharmacy Professionals of Canada, and also sits on several other local, provincial, and national boards, including The 519, Pain Ontario, Pain Canada, the National Collaborating Centre for Indigenous Health, and is an Institute Advisory Board member for the CIHR Institute of Indigenous Peoples’ Health.

Dr. Swidrovich is an active and engaged citizen of the several communities he belongs to and has been recognized with several awards and honours, including the Governor General’s Gold Medal, the Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Medal for service to the community, and the National Patient Care Achievement Award from the Canadian Pharmacists Association.

Darrell H. S. Tan is an infectious diseases physician and clinician-scientist at St. Michael’s Hospital, and leader of the Options Collaboratory in HIV/STI treatment and prevention science (Options Lab).

He is a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in HIV Prevention and STI Research, Co-Lead of the HIV Prevention Core of the Canadian HIV Trials Network, and a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society. Dr. Tan’s research focuses on HIV/STI co-infections and biomedical HIV prevention in Canada.

As Nominated PI of the Pan-Canadian PrEP Cohort and a 5-year team grant on PrEP implementation in Ontario and British Columbia, he will provide access to large interprovincial datasets on pre-exposure prophylaxis as it is scaled up.

Jaylene Tyme is a proud Two-Spirit, sober Indigenous Trans woman and leader within the 2SLGBTQQIA+ and recovery community. A Sixties Scoop survivor, she was raised by settlers with ancestral family roots in Treaty 4 – Zagime Anishinabek First Nation, Kawacatoose First Nation, and Métis Nation, Green Lake, Saskatchewan.

As a member of Vancouver’s diverse and fabulous Drag community, Jaylene holds the title of Elder Princess 27 of the Greater Vancouver Native Cultural Society, Empress 35 of Vancouver BC, Czarina of the First Nations of Canada and presently serves as Chairperson of the International Court Council- 1st in line of succession-Heir Apparent to Queen Mother I of the Americas Empress Nicole the Great.

Jaylene is a research coordinator with the Community Based Research Centre (CBRC) Two-Spirit Program, contributes to Indigenous healing ceremonies for the Two-Spirit population of Federal Justice System Corrections and shares teachings for Canadian Government training on diversity, inclusion and reconciliation. In 2024, Jaylene joined the Council of Elders at the FEAST Centre for Indigenous STBBI Research.

She feels that it is important to celebrate the power of community by contributing to the energy of our world with passion, integrity, and positivity. Together, we have the opportunity to inspire and educate. Our identities are beautifully diverse and uniquely ours.

Laura Warren began her doctoral studies in epidemiology at the University of Toronto in September 2012. Her doctoral research focus is on dementia among Indigenous populations in Ontario. Laura completed her honours Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Guelph with a major in biology and a minor in statistics.

Her MSc degree in epidemiology was also completed at the University of Guelph. She also holds a MA degree in statistics from York University. Laura has worked in pharmaceutical research, Indigenous health research, aging research and HIV and sexual health research for several different organizations.

Dr. Catherine Worthington is Professor and Director in the School of Public Health and Social Policy, University of Victoria.

Her current work in HIV focuses on services development with and for First Nation and Métis communities; social inclusion (housing, employment, stigma reduction, comorbidities/disability); training and mentoring; and innovations in community-engaged research methods.

She is an academic lead for the DRUM & SASH HIV/STBBI Implementation Science team grant, and is on the leadership team for the CIHR Canadian Clinical HIV Trials Network (CTN), is co-director of the CIHR CBR Collaborative, and BC co-lead for the CIHR REACH 3.0 Centre.