Evan Chamakese
Community Coordinator
Raised with a firm understanding of nehiyaw culture on the Pelican Lake First Nation, he has a clear concept of traditional values and the Cree way of life.
With 10 years of experience as an educator, youth advocate, recreation director, coach, instructor, and volunteer with several national youth based organizations such as Outward Bound, Motivate Canada, True Sport and Canadian Roots Exchange, his focus now is to reconnect indigenous youth to the land and to their elders, by challenging them to discover new personal limits, build confidence and foster leadership through direct use of traditional knowledge and ancestral skills.
Evan is a former member of the AFN National Youth Council, duly elected FSIN male youth representative, current board member of Wild Sky Adventure Learning. In his spare time he enjoys, golfing, canoeing, and spending time on the land.
Emily Unger
Communications Coordinator
Emily is the Communications Coordinator, for Kitatipithitamak Mithwayawin: Indigenous-Led Countermeasures to Coronavirus (COVID-19).
A recent Environmental Studies graduate from the University of Manitoba, Emily works to combine her passion for environmental and social justice with storytelling and communications, through various multimedia methods including photography videography and graphic design.
Her work and volunteer interests revolve around community engagement, environmental justice and sustainability. When she’s not at work, Emily enjoys reading, cycling and camping
Michael Tyas
Senior Videographer
Michael is a senior videographer and jack-of-all-trades at the Environmental Conservation Lab.
His work with Wa Ni Ska Tan involves professionally recording interviews with elders and land users so that the research can be disseminated to a wider audience.
He co-directed and filmed the feature-length documentary One River, Many Relations (2014) about Fort Chipewyan, a community downstream from the Alberta oil sands and the B.C. Bennet Dam. The film explores entirely from a grassroots community perspective the impacts of industry and energy production on their territory.
Fun Fact: Michael learned video production skills in Cape Town, South Africa.
Valene Bill
Outreach Coordinator
Valene graduated with a degree in education from the University of Saskatchewan.
She has spent the past few years working with various Indigenous communities and organizations across Canada organizing national youth conferences, exchange programs and community events for Canadian Roots Exchange, YMCA Youth Exchanges and her home community of Pelican Lake First Nation.
Her work and interests revolve around cultural, recreational and educational programs that lead to communal and individual well-being.
Kimberley Wilde
Project Coordinator
Hello, everyone. My name is Kimberley Wilde. Here are some things you might like to know about me.
My family has settler (Irish, Welsh, Scots, English) roots in Saskatchewan (Moosomin) and Alberta (Cyprus Hills), and one Anishinaabe-French root in Ontario.I have lived in Manitoba for almost 40 years, and many other places before that – Ontario, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Haida Gwaii, Colville Lake – Sahtu region, NT. I have a wonderful son who is 33, and is my light. He has a great sense of humor, and is a very good writer.
I have a master’s degree in Native Studies from U of M, having worked (ok, really we spent a lot of time in coffee shops visiting) with Omushkego Elder and storyteller Louis Penninshish (Bird). I love stories, and Louis. His story is way more interesting than mine. I worked as the office manager at the Department of Native Studies for many years. I have most recently worked as Project Coordinator for another big SSHRC grant held by dr. peter kulchyski: Canadian Consortium on Performance and Politics in the Americas. With this grant, I had the opportunity to travel to Montreal, New York, Santiago (Chile), and Mexico City, and meet some very lively and interesting people.
In the photo, I am standing under a tree in Montreal writing a poem in the voice of the tree, about what it is like to have someone stand beneath the branches and write a poem. My hair is longer now.
Shavon Dayrock
Community Outreach Coordinator
Shavon Dayrock is a Community Outreach Coordinator for the Digital Health Project. A member of Hollow Water First Nation, Shavon finds many opportunities to work with her community on health and wellbeing initiatives that involve language and culture, education, leadership, healing, sovereignty, and resilience.
Shavon has also worked in the past with the Southeast Resource Development council’s (SERDC) health services team and has worked on various community led projects related to health and wellbeing in the SERDC communities.
Shavon has also worked closely with performance artist/theatre director Doris Difarnecio on the Geography of Memory project, a collaborative project with University of Manitoba and Hollow Water First Nation, and has most recently presented about this work, and about her community-based experiences during the pandemic at Kana Wain Dida: Looking After Each Other Virtual Gathering
Becky Filopoulos
Research and Publications Coordinator
Becky Filopoulos is a Student Researcher for Kitatipithitamak Mithwayain: Indigenous-Led Countermeasures to Coronavirus (COVID-19).
Becky graduated from the University of Manitoba with a degree in Environmental Studies, focusing in restoration and Botany, and is currently a Masters of Environment and Geography student working with the Digital Health Project under Kitatipithitamak Mithwayain.
Her background includes working with prairie and forest ecosystems, as well as community engagement and education. She loves learning about medicinal plants and hopes to promote a greater respect for the environment by guiding people to understand issues and finding sustainable solutions.
Outside of work Becky participates in various art and photography projects around Winnipeg and is a singer/songwriter in a local band.
Moneca Sinclaire
Community Outreach Coordinator
Moneca Sinclaire is Nehinan (Cree) originally from Northern Manitoba and is a post-doctoral Student Researcher for post-doctoral researcher for Kitatipithitamak Mithwayawin: Indigenous led countermeasures to Coronavirus (COVID-19) and other pandemics then, now, and into the future.
Moneca graduated from the University of Toronto, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education with a Ph.D. in Leadership, Higher and Adult Education, Toronto, Ontario, where her dissertation was an arts based where she created 4 podcasts about Indigenous Peoples and Type 2 Diabetes.
Her background includes working within the health field from Food Sovereignty to Indigenous student mental health to heart health, as well as community engagement and education. She loves collecting medicines and learning about medicinal plants whenever the opportunity presents itself.
Outside of work Moneca is a mother, aunty and friend to many young people. She considers herself a sustainable artist who works with recycle materials to create beauty out of what people generally see as ‘junk’. She works with many different age groups from youth to senior folks demonstrating and teaching ways to use everyday objects to create new objects.
Alexandra Curran
Student Researcher
Shanna Lorenz
App Development Team
Shanna Lorenz is an Associate Professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles, where she teaches classes on performance, racial, and environmental justice in the Americas.
Her ethnographic and digital humanities research focuses on the cultural survivance of indigenous and immigrant communities in the United States, Brazil, Mexico, and Canada. She holds PhDs in Performance Studies (NYU) and Music (University of Pittsburgh).
Craig Dietrich
App Development Team
Craig’s online work includes Tenants in Action (TIA), an app that facilitates slum-housing reports to LA city agencies; the Mukurtu Archive and Plateau People’s Web Portal, for which he was the first lead developer; Scalar, which he co-created with the Alliance for Networking Visual Culture (ANVC); and Tensor, an iTunes-like app for managing content from cultural archives.
His offline production includes Walking Wall Street, a project that has seen Dietrich find Wall Streets in towns and cities across America; and Occupy Roundtable, which he hosted in various Los Angeles lecture-halls.
