Dr. Chantal Fiola, UIC

Chantal Fiola, Urban and Inner-City Studies (Photo supplied)

Chantal Fiola is Red River Métis Anishinaabe with family from St. Laurent and Ste. Geneviève, MB. She is the author of Rekindling the Sacred Fire: Métis Ancestry and Anishinaabe Spirituality, which won her the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer and the Beatrice Mosionior Aboriginal Writer of the Year Award (2016). She has a Ph.D. in Indigenous Studies (Trent University), an M.A. in Sociology and Equity Studies in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (University of Toronto), and a B.A. (Hons) in Women’s and Gender Studies (University of Manitoba). Prior to coming to the University of Winnipeg, she had been teaching in the Native Studies Department at the University of Manitoba since 2012. Dr. Fiola is on the Board of Directors (secretary) for the Native Women’s Transition Centre. She is Midewiwin and participates regularly in Anishinaabe ceremonies.

Dr. Fiola’s doctoral research examined Red River Métis relationships with traditional Indigenous spirituality, how these relationships continue to be influenced by colonization, as well as how participation in ceremony impacts self-identification. She has just been awarded SSHRC funding, through the Manitoba Research Alliance, to conduct a two-year study to build upon her doctoral research. With a team of community researchers, Dr. Fiola will explore Red River Métis relationships with traditional Indigenous spirituality in five selected Manitoba Métis communities. She is interested in understanding whether Métis communities are using participation in ceremony as a form of decolonization to promote self-determination.