Ph.D. candidate in Political Ecology at the University of Victoria, studying memory as a tool of resistance in the face of corporate abuse.
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My research investigates how concentrations of political power and corporate tactics may shape public perception and memory, and, consequently, how the public responds to deforestation in BC.
My inquiries are grounded in a political ecology framework, which locates ecological degradation at the crossroads of multiple relations of power, while utilizing ethnographic methods to discern relationships between memory, meaning, and personhood in local landscapes and political systems. Storytelling and testimony are key to my research; both have long been championed as tools for justice-seeking and self-determination.
The Cheslatta T'en were forced from their unceded territory in the Nechako River Valley when dams for Alcan's Kemano smelter flooded it. This ethnohistory asks how memories of the land shape resistance, resilience and agency 66 years after displacement.
Photo: Maia WiklerDocumenting cross-border salmon stories and the threats mining poses to wild salmon in northern British Columbia. National Geographic–supported projects also include Wild East (2024) and Ancient Forests as Living Memory for the Ma’amtagila (2026).
How are acts of resistance to displacement informed by cultural meanings and memories of the land?
What does resilience look like on the ground, 66 years after dispossession?
How is agency expressed within the ever-pervasive system of colonization?
How do people come to grips with altered landscapes?
Guest lectures, research collaborations and teaching.
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