I’m an interdisciplinary researcher, food forester, 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. As an adolescent my family moved frequently, which resulted in a relentless curiosity for the unique character of different people, places, and lifeways.

Such interests led to undergraduate studies in anthropology and then graduate research in political ecology 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 practices, identity, embodied knowledges of place, and ecosystem health as impacted by Indigenous stewardship, industrial mining, and settler-colonial state governance.

I eventually left academia to pursue a career in public health and non-profit community services that has now spanned more than 25 years. This work has provided opportunities to collaborate and design numerous community-based projects impacting vulnerable populations, including out-patient neuro-rehab programming, addictions services, urban outreach, and integrated wellness supports in rural schools.

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

My family and I also steward 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.