Erika Finestone is a doctoral candidate in social-cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto, and an Indigenous Studies instructor at The University of Victoria. Her community-based research focusses on the development and maintenance of urban Indigenous kinship networks in Victoria, B.C. in the context of ongoing and disproportionate Indigenous child-removal. Over three years of research, Erika has been privileged to witness how urban Indigenous families work with and against the state to resist extractive child welfare interventions, thereby protecting connections to kin, community, and territory. Erika also co-facilitates a workshop in which Indigenous and non-Indigenous caregivers are offered space to creatively express and honour personal experiences of family resiliency. In her role as a project manager with the Indigenous Education Department at University of Victoria, Erika supports initiatives that build capacity for anticolonial education in Canada. As a settler of Polish and Romanian descent and Jewish ancestry, Erika’s journey towards this work grew through engaging more deeply with her own people’s story of survival and resistance during and after the Jewish Holocaust. Her work is energized by an intention to listen open-heartedly to stories of survivance and, carrying that knowledge, will continue to work collaboratively with communities to alter colonial power relations and support Indigenous lifeways.

Daniel Bagheri Sarvestani

Daniel Bagheri Sarvestani, is a PhD student at the University of Kansas, and a Canadian Human Rights advisor. He has been volunteering and working internationally for the better part of the past 7 years. Through his field work, Daniel has developed connections with tribal indigenous communities in Western Asia (Iran), Central America (Costa Rica, Panama, and Honduras) and North America (Canada).  His work currently focuses on the application of Indigenous Peoples Rights Discourses in the context of the Maya Ch’orti communities of North-Western Honduras, under the supervision of Professor Brent Metz  (University of Kansas).