I’m a researcher, agroforester, and community organizer living and working in the UNESCO designated Beaver Hills Biosphere, in Treaty 6 territory – the homelands of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Tsuut’ina (Sarcee), Nakawē (Saulteaux), and Métis nations.

My childhood involved countless hours exploring the vast forests and river systems of the Canadian Rocky Mountains. During my adolescence our family moved frequently, which cultivated in me a relentless curiosity for the unique character of different people, places, and lifeways.

Such interests led to undergraduate and graduate studies in anthropology, focused on the social-ecological dynamics and conflicts involved with resource extraction on unceded Indigenous territory in Northern British Columbia, Canada. This research examined the relationship between local subsistence patterns, embodied knowledge of place, identity, and ecosystem health as impacted by industrial mining, settler-colonial state governance, and Indigenous stewardship.

I eventually left academia to pursue a career in public health and non-profit community services that has now spanned more than 25 years. 

Currently, I serve as restoration projects lead for the Beaver Hills Watershed Stewardship Society (BHWSS), and as the executive coordintor of the Rural Futures Lab – a non-profit research and community development initiative collaborating on locally adaptive responses to the challenges of contemporary rural life.

My family and I live in a 5-acre organic food forest cultivating a wide variety of perennial foods, fungi, medicinal plants, and climate resilient species of native food trees and shrubs. There may even be a few dogs and a flock of beloved chickens somewhere in that mix.