Artist and Contributor Bios
Jaime Black
Canada-based Jaime Black is a multidisciplinary artist of mixed Anishinaabe and Finnish descent. Black describes her art practice as engaged with “memory, identity, place and resistance, and grounded in an understanding of the body and the land as sources of cultural and spiritual knowledge.” She has taught in Opaskwayak Cree Nation in The Pas, Manitoba, developed art curriculum for Urban Shaman, an Aboriginal artist-run center, and has long been involved in the Indigenous arts community in Winnipeg and beyond. Through her art she attempts to inspire dialogue around social and political events and issues, and to create space for reflection. She is particularly interested in feminism and Indigenous social justice, and the possibilities for articulating linkages between and around both. Her REDress Project, confronting the scourge of violence against Indigenous women and girls, has been featured in venues across Canada and the United States, including at the National Museum of the American Indian/Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C.
Toni Shapiro-Phim
Toni Shapiro-Phim is a cultural anthropologist and dance ethnologist whose research, writing, community work and teaching focus on the cultural contexts of the arts in discrete regions of the world, particularly in relation to violence, genocide, migration and refugees, conflict transformation, and gender concerns. She is a professor of Creativity, the Arts, and Social Transformation and assistant director of the Program in Peacebuilding and the Arts at Brandeis University. Co-editor of "Dance, Human Rights and Social Justice: Dignity in Motion," she has contributed to "Annihilating Difference: The Anthropology of Genocide; The Choreography of Resolution: Conflict, Movement, and Neuroscience; and Coexistence in the Aftermath of Mass Violence: Imagination, Empathy, and Resilience," among other publications. Her documentary film, "Because of the War," was awarded the 2018 American Folklore Society Elli Köngäs–Maranda Prize for “superior work on women’s traditional, vernacular, or local culture and/or feminist theory and folklore.”
Claudia Fox Tree
Professional educator and social justice activist Claudia Fox Tree, M.Ed. (Arawak/Yurumein), teaches courses and workshops on transforming curriculum and culturally responsive teaching practices. She also leads conversations "un-erasing" Native American First Nations People. She gives voice to Indigenous experiences (past and present) and asks allies and co-conspirators to come on the journey with her. She is currently pursuing a Ph.D in Education with a focus on anti-racism and anti-colonialism.
Polly O. Walker
Polly O. Walker, Ph.D (Cherokee), is Associate Professor Emeritus of Peace and Conflict Studies at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. Previously, she was a research fellow in the Australian Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and Lecturer in the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies Unit, University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. She has contributed to a wide range of professional journals and edited volumes. Chair of the Indigenous Education Institute, Polly is a member of the Cherokee Southwest Township. Her research focuses on Indigenous approaches to peace, cross cultural conflict resolution, transforming conflict between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and the role of ritual and arts-based initiatives in these processes.