Indigenous Knowledge and Heavens

Dr. Karla Jessen Williamson

January 22, 2020

Dr. Jessen Williamson is an Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan, and the first Inuk to be tenured at any Canadian university. She is a kalaaleq, an Inuk from Greenland, who was born in an outpost camp, Appamiut, grew up on Maniitsoq, and underwent a schooling process in Greenland and Denmark, strongly influenced by assimilation. As a trilingual speaker, Dr. Jessen Williamson’s research focuses on insights into how the Western power structure is invested into institutions of learning and workforce. She uses the Inuit worldview, philosophy, and sensibility to express Indigenous decolonization efforts and deconstruct the Western encapsulation of Indigenous thoughts. Though an academic, Dr. Jessen Williamson is also a published poet. Dr. Jessen Williamson has two adult children with her late husband, Dr. Robert Williamson, and her three Greenlandic speaking grandchildren are growing up in Iqaluit, Nunavut.

Listen to Dr. Jessen Williamson's interview with MEDIA INDIGENA below: