All knowledge is produced through relationships. 

 

The dimension through which I most often relate to knowledge is through the act of witnessing story.

 

I was drawn to the field of oral history because I learn best about other times, places, or ways of being through the stories of an individual ‘s life.

 

I began my career as an oral historian at the Columbia Center for Oral History Research (CCOHR). My first project for CCOHR was directing the Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project, and my last, directing the Aryeh Neier Oral History project. In between, for CCOHR and other New York City cultural institutions, my work focused on bringing Indigenous voices to large-scale projects, including the Obama Presidential Oral History, the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, and for the Whitney Museum of Art, a collection of oral histories connecting the museum’s physical site to Lenape story and history.

 

As an educator, I designed my first class, Indigenous Oral Tradition and Anti-Colonial Oral Histories, for OHMA in 2021. I taught this class again in 2022 and 2024. I designed my second course, a core requirement, a theoretical look at the “roots and branches” of oral history, in 2022.

  

Beyond my work for Columbia, I have published 5 books, including working with a judicial and cultural icon Murray Sinclair, former Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) to complete his memoirs through the practice of Oral History (Who We Are: Four Questions For a Life and a Nation, Penguin Random House, 2024). I am currently guest editing the Oral History Review: Special Issue on Indigenous Oral History (forthcoming, fall 2026).

 

I have trained and advised within the North American Academic community broadly, offering training and workshops at Bard College, Haverford and Princeton among other institutions.

 

In 2021, I recorded a talk for TEDx College Park, on “Why We Need to Amplify Indigenous Voices.”

 

This desire to amplify Indigenous stories is rooted in my own life experiences.  I grew up in Seaton Village, Toronto, the eldest of three girls. My father Douglas is Nehiyaw-Anishinaabe (Peguis Nation).  Our mother Joanie, immigrated to Montreal from the UK with her family at the age of six. 

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