I am an interdisciplinary researcher, artist, food forester, and community organizer living and working in the UNESCO designated Beaver Hills Biosphere, within Treaty 6 territory – the homelands of the Niitsitapi (Blackfoot), Tsuut’ina (Sarcee), Nakawē (Saulteaux), and Métis nations.

I was born in Jasper National Park, the world’s second-largest dark sky preserve and the largest conservation park in the Canadian Rockies. There, my childhood involved countless hours immersed in the vast forests and river systems of that rugged terrain.

During my teen years, my family moved frequently — a period of flux that forged in me a relentless curiosity about the distinct character of diverse peoples, places, and lifeways. These interests led me to undergraduate studies in anthropology and then a graduate degree in political ecology. My thesis work centered on the social-ecological dynamics and conflicts inherent in resource extraction on unceded Indigenous territory in Northern British Columbia. This research specifically examining how local subsistence practices and embodied knowledge of place related to forest ecosystem health, and how that dynamic was impacted by industrial mining, settler-colonial state governance, and Indigenous stewardship.

Eventually, I left academia to pursue a career in public health and nonprofit community services. This has afforded me the opportunity to collaborate on and design a wide range of community-based projects supporting vulnerable populations, including culture-based addictions services, urban outreach programs, innovative outpatient neuro-rehabilitation programming, and integrated wellness supports within rural schools.

Currently, I serve as a co-founding director and restoration coordinator with the Beaver Hills Watershed Stewardship Society, as well as coordinating director of the Rural Futures CoLab – a non-profit research and community engagement initiative focused on locally adaptive responses to the challenges of contemporary rural life.

I am also a proud steward of 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.

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