Suudhl Cindy Boyko, Co-Management
Suudhl Cindy Boyko has served as the Haida Nation co-chair on the Gwaii Haanas Archipelago Management Board for the past twenty years, where she has overseen the signing of the Gwaii Haanas Marine Agreement and establishment of Gwaii Haanas National Park reserve, National Marine Conservation Area and Haida Heritage Site, the raising of the Legacy Pole at Hlk’yahGawGa Windy Bay and signing of the Gina ’Waadluxan KilGuhlGa Land-Sea-People Management Plan. Cindy sat as an elected representative on the Council of the Haida Nation for nine years and, prior to that, was manager of the Haida Gwaii Watchmen Program. She is also a member of the Haida Gwaii Institute’s Advisory Council.
Dr. Hilary Thorpe, Co-Management
HHilary has spent the past two decades working in the fields of natural resource management and co-governance. After finishing her Ph.D. in Forestry at the University of Toronto, she moved to Haida Gwaii and began a postdoctoral fellowship in the Faculty of Forestry at UBC. During this time, she also served as the Academic Director for the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society, a nascent local organization that eventually transformed into the Haida Gwaii Institute. Hilary joined Parks Canada in 2012 as a marine planner for Gwaii Haanas National Marine Conservation Area Reserve and Haida Heritage Site, providing technical support to the Archipelago Management Board, the joint Haida Nation–Government of Canada body that co-manages Gwaii Haanas. In that role, Hilary co-led development of the Gina ‘Waadluxan KilGuhlGa Land-Sea-People Management Plan. More recently, Hilary worked to advance Parks Canada’s National Marine Conservation Area (NMCA) Policy and Management Directive. She is currently the Manager of NMCA Establishment for the Pacific Region, where her team is working with the province of B.C. and several Indigenous governments to advance new NMCA proposals. Hilary is passionate about teaching and lifelong learning and has served as an instructor for the Haida Gwaii Institute and its predecessor since its inception. She lives in Revelstoke with her partner and their children.
Dr. Ella-Kari Muhl, Co-Management
Dr. Ella-Kari Muhl is a political ecologist and interdisciplinary sustainability practitioner with an interest in issues of equity, the co-production of knowledge, and the sustainable governance of marine resources. She received her MSc from the University of Cape Town (South Africa) and her PhD degree from the School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo (Canada). Her doctoral research involved the co-development of indicators for ecosystem-based management, and the development of participatory scenarios of sea otter return in Haida Gwaii. She has worked as a consultant and researcher on marine conservation and coastal issues in Canada, Australia and South Africa.
Dr. Bruce McIvor, Law and Governance
Dr. Bruce McIvor is a partner at First Peoples Law LLP. His work includes both litigation and negotiation on behalf of Indigenous Peoples across Canada. Bruce is recognized nationally and internationally as a leading practitioner of Aboriginal law in Canada. His collection of essays entitled Standoff: Why Reconciliation Fails Indigenous People and How to Fix It was published in the fall of 2021 by Nightwood Editions. Bruce is a member of the Manitoba Métis Federation.
Giovanna de Oliveira Andreotti, Strategies for Creating Change in Complex Systems
Giovanna de Oliveira Andreotti is a UBC alumnus with a bachelor’s in Psychology and a further interest and certification in educational psychology and climate psychology from CIIS. She is also a commercial dancer, choreographer, and dance teacher, working in television and film alongside her journey in academia. She is a member of the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures, an arts and research collective where her work revolves around intergenerational relationships, climate change, and education.
Stacey Austinson, Strategies for Creating Change in Complex Systems
Stacey Austinson is a First Nations relations consultant and entrepreneur of St’at’imc and W̱SÁNEĆ ancestry. Stacey is an advocate for indigenous resurgence, empowerment, and equality. She specializes in indigenous planning, strategic leadership advisory, community and nation engagement and facilitation, relations building and internal and external reconciliation approaches.
Her unique perspective, is partially attributed to the invaluable immersion in First Nations leadership teachings, cultural knowledge and ways of being and knowing at the senior leadership and management levels. She has been entrusted to take on diverse responsibilities in her career from Negotiation Advisor to Acting Executive Director to the St’át’imc Chiefs Council to Implementation Manager of the historical St’at’imc BC Hydro Settlement Agreement.
Her approach, experience, knowledge and education had earned her positions to lead and advise a number of initiatives, projects, strategies, collaborations, discussions and negotiations in nation-to-government, nation-to-corporate, nation and community spaces. Specifically in rights and title, nationhood, stewardship, culture and heritage, health and education.
Stacey has worked at the interface of indigenous and western knowledge systems for over 20 years.
Beyond her Associate Arts Degree from Thompson Rivers University, Stacey has been (is) very deliberate in structuring and personalizing her own higher education strategy with certifications and training in Nation Rebuilding, Project Management, Research Ethics, Ethical Relations with Indigenous Communities, Indigenous Focused Public Relations, Aboriginal Law and Governance and Co-Management. She continues to curate her own unique skill and knowledge tool kit.
Stacey is a proud graduate of the Haida Gwaii/UBC Co-Management of Natural Resources micro certification program. And very honored to co-facilitate the Strategies for Creating Change in Complex Systems.
Dr. Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti, Strategies for Creating Change in Complex Systems
Dr. Vanessa de Oliveira Andreotti is the Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Victoria. She is a former Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change, and a former David Lam Chair in Critical Multicultural Education. She has extensive experience working across sectors internationally, particularly in areas related to global justice, global citizenship and Indigenous and community engagement. Drawing on different critiques of colonialism and human exceptionalism, her research examines the interface between historical, systemic and ongoing forms of violence, and the material and relational dimensions of unsustainability within modernity. Vanessa is one of the founding members of the Gesturing Decolonial Futures Collective and the author of Hospicing Modernity: Facing Humanity’s Wrongs and the Implications for Social Activism.
Dr. Dan McCarthy, Strategies for Creating Change in Complex Systems
Dr. Dan McCarthy is an Associate Professor in the School of Environment and Resources and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo and the Director of the Waterloo Institute of Social Innovation and Resilience. Dr. McCarthy’s research explores the utility of complex systems-based approaches in developing knowledge of, and effectively intervening within, linked social-ecological systems to foster resilience, sustainability and innovation and deep systems transformation. Dr. McCarthy has extensive experience in community-based, participatory, and Indigenous research contexts as well as over a decade of research and curriculum development experience around the concept of social innovation and systems transformation.
