Dorothy Cucw-la7 Christian’s cultural roots are in Splatsin, one of the 17 communities of the Secwepemc Nation.  She is the eldest of 10, has one daughter and over 65 nieces, nephews, great nieces and nephews and as of May 2021 she became a great, great Auntie.  

Her research centralizes and privileges Indigenous knowledge systems, which illustrates the key roles of land, story, and cultural protocols.  Dorothy Cucw-la7 locates herself in the “cultural interface” (Nakata, 2002) – the place where Indigenous peoples have agency and meet Settler cultures without being bogged down and paralyzed by the usual colonial binaries. Her PhD research articulated some of the complexities of Indigenous research methodologies.  

The major themes of Dorothy’s work are:  Indigenous representation, Indigenous Visual Sovereignty and Aesthetics in Visual Narratives, Alliance building with white and people of color Settler cultures, and Reconciliation from her Secwepemc-Syilx perspective. 

She continues to serve in the Indigenous Film and Television sector as a Board Member of the Indigenous Screen Office in Toronto.  Dorothy has curated a 2018 program, The Voices From The Western Regions of Turtle Island, and she programmed the Victor Masayesva, Jr. Retrospective, Dawsoma:  Making Meaning at the ImagineNative film festival in Toronto -– the largest Indigenous film festival in the world.  

Lyana Patrick is Dakelh from the Stellat’en First Nation and Acadian/Scottish. She has worked in communications and education for over two decades. She was Education Coordinator in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of British Columbia where she worked on curriculum development, managed education programs, and promoted knowledge translation of Indigenous research findings to health care providers and health sciences students. She has worked on evaluation projects connected to Indigenous health and education, including for the City of Vancouver where she helped design community engagement for a municipal poverty reduction strategy. She received a Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship to pursue a PhD in the School of Community and Regional Planning where in 2019 she became the first Indigenous PhD graduate.

Lyana is currently an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences where her work focuses on the intersection of Indigenous health, planning and justice. She incorporates film and other multimedia in her work and is committed to public scholarship as a creative and collaborative process of exploration with Indigenous communities.