Keynote Speakers

Deborah Lee is a Cree & Métis librarian whose family is from the Lac Ste. Anne, Onoway and St. Albert areas of central Alberta, not far from Edmonton. She has a B.A. (with Distinction) in 1994 and an M.L.I.S. (2000) from the University of Alberta, in her home territory. Deborah has been promoting Indigenous Librarianship since positioning herself during her studies at the SLIS at U of A. This includes working in Reference at the National Library of Canada for several years and later, following her dream to be an academic librarian, as both the Indigenous Studies Portal Team Leader and Librarian and the Indigenous Studies Liaison and Engagement / Community Initiatives Librarian at the University of Saskatchewan. She has also been very engaged with Indigenous librarians in Canada over the years and was fortunate to have interviewed more than two dozen members of this community of colleagues during her sabbatical in 2014. So far, she has two publications that have resulted from this work. All our relations!​

Chris Andersen became a faculty member of the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta in 2000 and received his PhD in 2005 from the Department of Sociology, also at the UofA. In 2014, he was awarded Full Professorship. He is the former Director of the Rupertsland Centre for Métis Research and is currently the Dean of the Faculty. Dr. Andersen is the author of two books including, with Maggie Walter, Indigenous Statistics: A Quantitative Indigenous Methodology (Left Coast Press, 2013) and “Métis”: Race, Recognition and the Struggle for Indigenous Peoplehood (UBC Press, 2014). In 2015, the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association awarded “Métis” the “2014 Prize for Best Subsequent Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies” and in 2016, it was shortlisted for the 2015 Canada Prize. With Jean O’Brien, he also co-edited the recently published Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies (Taylor & Francis, 2017). Andersen was a founding member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Executive Council, is a member of Statistics Canada’s Advisory Committee on Social Conditions and is editor of the journal aboriginal policy studies. In 2014 he was named as a Member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.

Camille Callison (B.A. Anthropology, M.L.I.S. First Nations Concentration) is from the Tsesk iye (Crow) Clan of the Tahltan Nation, the Indigenous Services Librarian/Liaison Librarian for Anthropology, Native Studies & Social Work and a Member of the Indigenous Advisory Circle at the University of Manitoba. Camille is the Canadian Federation of Library Associations/Fédération canadienne des associations de bibliothèques (CFLA-FCAB) Indigenous Representative; a member, Copyright Committee and Chair of the Indigenous Matters Committee. She is a member of IFLA Indigenous Matters Standing Committee and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO Memory of the World Committee and Sector Commission on Culture, Communications & Information