Dorothy Christian

Dorothy Cucw-la7 Christian is Secwepemc and Syilx from the interior plateau regions of what is known as British Columbia.  She is happy to be a good relative to her Coast Salish cousins while she lives, works, and plays on their lands.  Her research centralizes land, story, cultural protocols and how Indigenous Knowledge informs and guides interrelationships with Canadian Settler society.  Her curiosity in how cultural knowledge influences Indigenous production practice started when she was working for the national broadcaster VisionTV to bring Indigenous stories to the national screen. This prompted her to enroll in graduate school.

Another interest is how Indigenous peoples can have a peaceful coexistence with Settler Canadians who populate their ancestral homelands.  This is more than an “interest” because Dorothy sees and experiences this quest as critical to the survival of the planet. Dorothy became passionate about exploring the possibilities of transforming the status quo after her involvements in Indigenous communications behind the scenes at the so-called 1990 OKA crisis on Haudenosaunee lands and the 1995 Gustafsen Lake standoff on Secwepemc territories. Her trajectory of study to finding ways to live together started long before equity, diversity, inclusion and intercultural became the latest buzz words in academia.  

While she writes scholarly chapters and participates in community on many levels, Dorothy remains involved in the Indigenous visual storytelling culture in Canada.  She serves as a Board member of the Indigenous Screen Office in Toronto and has curated programs for the 2018 and 2019 ImagineNative film festival, the largest Indigenous film festival in the world.    

At GPS Dorothy Cucw-la7 strives towards making academic life less stressful for Indigenous MA and PhD students/candidates by collaborating with the Indigenous Student Services and other student-centered departments.  She is new to her role in GPS and is investigating the myriad of intersections within the university that can be decolonized or indigenized to enrich the graduate student experience.  She continues to be a part of other Indigenous centered projects such as Michelle Pidgeon’s RESPECT project, which will impact the SFU experience for staff and faculty at SFU.

Learn more about Dorothy from People of SFU