Inductee Spotlight – Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane

INDUCTEE SPOTLIGHT – Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane

Karen Pheasant-Neganigwane is a dancer, scholar, writer, artist, and orator from Wiikwemikoong, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, but did you know…?

• A daughter of residential school survivors, Karen’s path to activism and scholarly work started as a youth during the height of the civil rights era of the 1970s. The social project of Rochdale College (Toronto) provided the embryonic opening for her inquisitive spirit;
• Shortly after an engaging ceremony with a great Indigenous philosopher and scholar, Dr. Joe Couture, in the early 1980s, she left Toronto;
• She has spent the past 40 years being mentored by iconic Indigenous scholars from the Great Lakes of her people to Treaty Three, Treaty Six, and currently in Treaty Seven;
• Her Western education includes a B.A. in Political Science and English Literature, and graduate studies in Educational Policy Studies from the University of Alberta. She is completing a PhD in Educational Policy Studies/Indigenous Peoples Education with the University of Alberta;
• Karen is an Assistant Professor at Mount Royal University in the Treaty Seven region in the Department of General Education, Office of Teaching and Learning, and the Department of Humanities–Indigenous Studies;
• A life-long powwow dancer, Karen is the author of the award-winning book Powwow: A Celebration Through Song and Dance, which takes readers on a journey through powwow’s history and today’s thriving powwow culture.

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