Curators
Joan McLeod
Joan McLeod Shabogesic is a proud NBisiing Nishnabekwe. Ms. McLeod Shabogesic is of the heron/crane doodem. She was employed as the Nipissing Land Manager for 37 years until her retirement in April of 2019. Joan was involved with and settled three land claims that increased the Nipissings’ land holdings but also established lucrative settlement trusts. Land repatriation, management and land claim research provided her with opportunities to delve into the historical documentation of the NBisiing People. Retirement has provided her with opportunity to continue her research of the Nbisiing People. Her post-secondary education was with the Nipissing College attaining a Bachelor of Arts in History from Laurentian University. In June of 2020, she was conferred by Nipissing University an Honourary Doctorate Letters.
Naomi Hehn
Naomi Hehn is the Director/Curator at the North Bay Museum. She moved to North Bay, within the traditional territory of the Nbisiing Nishnaabeg and the lands protected by the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850, in 2012 after graduating from the University of Toronto with a Master’s degree in Museum Studies.
Over the past few years, Naomi has been working with representatives from Nipissing First Nation, Dokis First Nation, and Nipissing University to preserve and share local history through the Near North Archives (CUSP) network and database.
Naomi looks forward to working with the team to develop a travelling exhibit which will help bring the stories of the Nbisiing and Illilo (Cree) guides to life.
Kirsten Greer
Kirsten Greer currently lives and works on the traditional territory of the Nbisiing Nishnaabeg, and the lands protected by the Robinson Huron Treaty of 1850. She is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Geography and History at Nipissing University, and the Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Global Environmental Histories and Geographies. Her CRC program addresses specifically reparations “in place” from Northern Ontario to the Caribbean through interdisciplinary, integrative, and engaged (community-based) scholarship in global environmental change research. As a critical historical geographer, she is interested in human-environment relations in the past; the environmental histories and legacies of the British Empire; and the historical geographies of science. Over the years, Greer has been working in relationship with Dokis First Nation and Nipissing First Nation to reclaim the old histories and geographies of the region. She has published extensively on the historical geographies of science, including her first book, Red Coats and Wild Birds: How Military Ornithologists and Migrant Birds Shaped Empire (2019) with the University of North Carolina Press. In 2019, she visited the Carnegie Museum of Natural History with Katie Hemsworth to examine the natural history collections and links to Nbisiing and Mushkegowuk histories. For this project, she is co-leading the travelling exhibit, research, and HGIS prototype. She is of Scottish-Scandinavian descent, from the unceded lands of Tiohtià:ke/Montréal.
PROJECT TEAM
Carrie Allison
Carrie Allison is the facilitator and creator of the Lake Nipissing Beading Project. She created, organized and facilitated a similar project, The Shubenacadie River Beading Project. The Shubenacadie River Beading Project is an activist/community project, beaded in the company and guidance of the water protectors of the Stop Alton Gas group, their allies, and other members of the community who wish to be involved. This community-based project stands in solidarity with water protectors and the Stop Alton Gas group; who are actively occupying space along the Shubenacadie River to protest the destruction of the rivers’ ecosystem by the environmental threat Alton Gas poses.
Carrie Allison is a nêhiýaw/cree, Métis, and European descent visual artist based in K’jipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia). She grew up on the unceded and unsurrendered lands of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. Allison’s maternal roots are based in maskotewisipiy (High Prairie, Alberta), Treaty 8.
Allison holds a Master in Fine Art, a Bachelor in Art History, and a Bachelor in Fine Art from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University. Her work has been exhibited nationally in The Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto, Urban Shaman, Winnipeg, and Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick. She has had solo exhibitions at Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery, the Owens Art Gallery, The Museum of Natural History, and The New Gallery. Allison has received grants from Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Arts Nova Scotia and Canada Council for the Arts and is the 2020 recipient of the Melissa Levin Award from the Textile Museum of Canada. Allison’s work has been shown in Canadian Art, Esse and Visual Arts News.
Grace Armstrong
Grace is the Exhibition and Digitization Assistant at the North Bay Museum, within the traditional territory of the Nbisiing Nishnaabeg. She is a recent graduate of the Fleming Museum Management and Curatorship program. Prior to this she studied at the University of King’s College in Halifax, Nova Scotia where she obtained a combined Honours degree in Contemporary Studies and Philosophy.
Her role in this project is to assist with editing and research. She has enjoyed learning more about taxidermy, ornithology and Nbisiing craftsmanship throughout the course of this project.
Glenna Beaucage
Aanin. Boozhoo. Glenna Beaucage Ndoon Zhinkaaz. I am blessed to have spent my lifetime living on the north shore of Lake Nipissing as have all of my generations of family before me. From my very humble beginnings in a log cabin on an island in the West Arm of Lake Nipissing, to a family of fishers, tourist guides and camp workers, hunters, trappers and harvesters to my still humble living at Nbisiing Shkongan. I am the manager of our Culture and Heritage Sector and before that, was librarian for many years. My full interest has been in working with my community in reclaiming our culture, heritage and language, placing our imprint back on Lake Nipissing, despite the many attempts of surrounding communities to displace us from our territory. I learned to bead as a teenager, from watching my mom and grandmother. My grandmother tanned hides and I have a piece of her handmade equipment pieces. I bead and do leatherwork for personal uses for family needs. When I retire I plan to spend more time with cultural arts, hopefully.
Ysabel Castle
Ysabel Castle is an MESc student at Nipissing University, and also has a BA in Environmental Geography from Nipissing University and an Environmental Technician diploma from Canadore College. She works as a lab instructor and a research assistant for the geography department at Nipissing, with a focus on GIS and Remote Sensing techniques, and a wide range of interests encompassing the history and natural environment of North Bay and surrounding areas. Her role in this project is to find and map natural history specimens from the Carnegie Expeditions using data from iDigBio.
Katie Hemsworth
Katie Hemsworth (she/her) is a settler scholar and a current postdoctoral fellow at Nipissing University’s Centre for Understanding Semi-Peripheries. She was born and raised on Anishinaabeg territory in Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the lands outlined in the Robinson Superior Treaty of 1850. She completed a PhD in Human Geography (Queen’s University) and her scholarly interests include community-oriented research, geographies of sound and listening, and historical geographies of settler colonialism. At Nipissing University, Dr. Hemsworth acknowledges her responsibility to uphold Robinson Huron Treaty responsibilities that have been neglected by the uneven colonial systems she both inherited and inhabits. For the “Our Guides Were Really Going Places” museum exhibit, she sees her role as a listener, research facilitator, and advocate for place-based and multi-sensory storytelling, particularly in ways that challenge the colonial histories of her own discipline of geography.
Megan Jee
Megan Jee is a GIS Technician supporting the interdisciplinary research of Nipissing University’s Centre for Understanding Semi-Peripheries (CUSP). She is excited to be contributing to a digital output of the Nbisiing Guides Project, which will include an interactive recreation of the Carnegie Museum expedition routes from North Bay to James Bay. This output will immerse viewers in the expeditions from the perspectives of the expedition teams, geographically and chronologically, using a geotagged series of archival photographs and recorded details, including stories from individual guides and their families. Megan is a graduate of Nipissing University’s Masters of Environmental Science Program, with an undergraduate background in environmental geography and geomatics.
William Knight
Dr. William Knight is Curator of agriculture and fisheries at Ingenium: Canada's Museums of Science and Innovation. William's research interests are fisheries, fish culture, and the history of acclimatization. He obtained his PhD in Canadian history at Carleton University in Ottawa. He is also managing editor of Scientia Canadensis. Dr. Knight is overseeing research on the role of canoeing in the expeditions, which extends research into a birch-bark canoe (2003.0033) in the Ingenium collection. The project seeks to verify, correct, and expand on the canoe’s history and provenance outlined in the Ingenium catalogue record. The project is a collaboration between Omàmiwininì Pimàdjwowin (also known as the Algonquin Way Cultural Centre) of the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn and is potentially the first step in a larger initiative to link the history of canoe building in other Anishinaabe communities, particularly Dokis and Nipissing First Nations. Connecting canoe building with expedition guiding also connects different cultural material practices, and the ways in they became historically entwined: in this case, museum-based natural history expeditions, canoes, and contemporary museum collections.
Casey Monkelbaan
Casey Monkelbaan received her Honours Specialization in History as well as a Major in Gender Equality and Social Justice at Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario in 2020. She also completed a Master of Arts in History degree at the same institution in 2021. Casey has an interest in working in a museum setting after volunteering and working at the North Bay Museum in the past and assisting with customer service, transcription, and research.
Mark Peck
Mark Peck is the Manager of the Schad Gallery of Biodiversity at the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Director of the Environmental Visual Communications Program (EVC), a joint graduate certificate program with the ROM and Fleming College. Mark is involved with exhibit and gallery development, public programing and is a contributing author/photographer to; Niagara Birds, The Atlas of the Breeding Birds of Ontario, The Extraordinary Beauty of Birds: Design, Pattern and Details, and The Birds of Nunavut.
In addition to his duties at the ROM, Mark is a Regional Coordinator for the 3rd Ontario Breeding Bird Atlas, the Program Councillor for the Toronto Ornithological Club, an enthusiastic contributor to several citizen science programs and the proud father of two wonderful daughters,.
Cindy Peltier
I am Nishinaabe-kwe with connections to Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory and Nipissing First Nation. I am an Associate Professor and inaugural Chair in Indigenous Education in the Schulich School of Education at Nipissing University. My research is community-based and focuses on the intersections between Indigenous peoples’ health and education. Grounded in Indigenous ways of knowing, being, and doing, my work seeks to employ appropriate methodologies to ensure cultural safety. With successful funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, my priority continues to be sharing research findings in ways that will be meaningful for Indigenous peoples and communities.
My role on this project involves working with educators and pre-service teachers to transform the knowledges shared into curriculum for K-12 students.
Randy Restoule
Randy Restoule has been the Consultation Coordinator at Dokis First Nation for 4 years, previously he has worked for Dokis in the position of Economic Development Officer for 6 years. His experience includes operating a manufacturing business for 4 years and he is a certified Computer Network Engineer.
His work experience includes policy development, GIS systems, environmental assessments, forest management and fisheries surveying. Randy has conducted much research in the history of Dokis and it’s people which will be used in part to support several specific land claims against the Government of Canada.
Stephen P. Rogers
Stephen Rogers is the Collection Manager for the Section of Birds at CMNH. The collection is ranked approximately ninth or 10th largest in the United States. Rogers received his MS in zoology from Michigan State University in 1981. He also has practiced taxidermy for more than 40 years. Rogers’ interests focus on the history of scientific preparation and taxidermy, as well care and preservation of natural history collections. For this project Rogers is using the book published by Mr. Todd on the Birds of the Labrador Peninsula and Adjabcent areas to retro-georeference localities in which birds were collected on the many expeditions the Carnegie Museum took to Canada, which was greatly aided by the guides Mr. Todd and his collaborators worked with.
Katrina Srigley
Katrina Srigley lives and works on Nbisiing Nishnaabeg territory. She is a Professor in the Department of History at Nipissing University, co-editor of the award-winning collection Beyond Women’s Words: Feminisms and the Practices of Oral History in the Twenty-First century (Routledge 2018), and author of the award-winning monograph Breadwinning Daughters: Young Working Women in a Depression-era City (U of T 2010). Her Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC)-funded projects, developed in partnership with Nipissing First Nation, examine the history of Nbisiing Nishinaabeg territory through Nishinaabeg ways of knowing, recording, and sharing the past. Professor Srigley is currently co-authoring a book with Glenna Beaucage (Cultural and Heritage Manager, Nipissing First Nation) titled Gaa Bi Kidwaad Maa Nbisiing/The Stories of Nbisiing. --
Kiethen Sutherland
Kiethen Sutherland is an Illilo/Cree from the Mushkegowuk Territory (James Bay). He grew up in Kashechewan First Nation, a small Cree fly-in community located on the shores of the Albany River. Kiethen than move out from the community to get an education. He moved to North Bay in 2013 to begin his post-secondary education journey. He Graduated with a BA in history in 2017 and Graduated with a Master of Environmental Studies degree in 2020. Kiethen is currently enrolled in the Bachelor of Education Program as Nipissing University. He has interest in learning and sharing history of the Mushkegowuk people and is heavily involved in preserving the Cree language and culture.
Paige Wong
Wachay miseway! My name is Paige Linklater-Wong and I am from Moosonee, Ontario. My grandfather is the late Joseph Linklater, from Attawapiskat First Nation and my grandmother is the late Marion Hester from Waskaganish, Quebec. I graduated from Nipissing University with a major in Indigenous Studies in 2018 and I will also be graduating in April of 2022 from the Masters of Environmental Studies program. I am currently completing an arts internship at Aanmitaagzi studio. I am a mother to my wonderful 12-year-old son named Joe and we take care of one small dog named Wabusk.