I did my PhD research-creation thesis “Unsettling Settlers’ Colonial Privilege Through Performance: Movement, Sound, Play, Participation, Laughter” in Cultural Studies at Queens University.

Developed over a two year period it is a live, day-long event for communities to come together to play, laugh, think, respond with their bodies as well as their minds to the ongoing revelations of past and present attempts at appropriation, assimilation and annihilation by Canadian governments, churches, and settlers, share food together, and discuss what they learned and unlearned playing the game and what they could actively do in their communities and themselves to move towards decolonization.

I was a Horizon postdoctoral fellow with Nadia Myre, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Arts Practices at Concordia where I continued developing the game, and then with a Kingston City Heritage Grant continued to work on it, testing it with a variety of different groups. The next iteration will be played by non-Indigenous participants in the LodgePole Arts Alliance second National Indigenous Producers Gathering “The Art of Visiting” Oct 6-9 2025 https://lodgepolearts.ca