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William Dumas
Story Team
William Dumas is an asiniskaw īthiniw Knowledge Keeper and acclaimed storyteller from O-Pipon-Na-Piwin Cree Nation (OPCN). He has been an educator all his life and is passionate about Cree language and culture. He is Co-Leader of the Story Team for the Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak project. Dumas is experienced as a Northern educator and administrator, having worked as a coordinator for the Culture and Language Program for Nisichawayasi Nehetho Culture and Education Authority, as a First Nations Language & Culture Specialist (Cree) at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre (MFNERC), Cree Language and Culture Consultant in the Mystery Lake and Frontier School Divisions, as the Director of Education for Fox Lake Education Authority in Nelson House, and as the Executive Director for Northern Nishnabe Education Council. Dumas is the author of the award-winning picture book Pīsim Finds Her Miskanow (2013), which is the first book in the Six Seasons of Asiniskaw Īthiniwak series. He is also the author of The Gift of the Little People (2022).
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Warren Cariou
Story Team
Warren Cariou was born into a family of Métis and European ancestry in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. He has published works of fiction and memoir as well as critical writing about Indigenous storytelling, literature and environmental philosophy. He has also created two films about Indigenous communities in western Canada’s tar sands region, and he has written numerous articles, stories and poems about Indigeneity and petroleum. His visual art project, Petrography, uses tar sands bitumen as a photographic medium. He is a Professor of English at the University of Manitoba, where he directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture. He is a Co-Leader of the Story Team for the Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak project.
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Doris Wolf
Curriculum Team
Doris Wolf is an Associate Professor in the University of Winnipeg’s Department of English and Faculty of Education- Access Program. She researches and publishes in the areas of Canadian Indigenous children’s texts and Indigenous content in early and middle years education and curriculum. Wolf has collaborated on the Six Seasons project since 2014 when she organized an intensive, week-long Summer Institute how to use Pīsim Finds Her Miskanow in Early and Middle Years classrooms.
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Mavis Reimer
Production Team
Mavis Reimer is Project Director of the SSHRC Partnership Project, Six Seasons of the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak: Reclamation, Regeneration, and Reconciliation. She is Dean of Graduate Studies and Professor of English at the University of Winnipeg. She was the Canada Research Chair in Young People’s Texts and Cultures between 2005 and 2015, lead editor of Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures between 2009 and 2015, and President of the International Research Society for Children’s Literature between 2011 and 2015. She is the founding director of the Centre for Research in Young People’s Texts and Cultures (CRYTC) at the University of Winnipeg and founding President of the Association for Research in Young People’s Cultures.
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Scott Hamilton
Archaeology Team
Scott Hamilton is a faculty member in the Department of Anthropology at Lakehead University. He specializes in the pre-contact archaeology and post-contact ethnohistory of northern Plains and Subarctic. His research also includes community-based heritage research with northern Ontario First Nations communities, and has recently expanded to address the utility of new technologies in archaeology.
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Roland Bohr
History Team
Roland Bohr is the Director of the Centre for Rupert’s Land Studies at the University of Winnipeg, where he also teaches North American Indigenous history. Bohr’s interdisciplinary research specializes in Indigenous material culture of the fur trade period and involves manufacturing functional reproductions of Indigenous bows and arrows, based on information obtained from examining surviving Indigenous artifacts in museums, working with Indigenous Elders and analyzing fur trader’s journals and travel accounts.
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Linda DeRiviere
Research Evaluation and Policy Development Team
Linda DeRiviere is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Public Administration from the Department of Political Science at The University of Winnipeg. She has taught a variety of courses in evaluation methods and public policy. She has published policy and evaluation papers on a wide range of topics, including Indigenous issues involving women’s health, gender-based violence against women and girls, early childhood education, child welfare policy, fetal-alcohol effects, youth homelessness, and community-university engagement. Her research is interdisciplinary, participatory, and community-based.
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Kevin Brownlee
Archaeology Team
Kevin Brownlee is a member of Norway House Cree Nation and the Curator of Archaeology at the Manitoba Museum. He was a co-leader of the Archaeology Team from 2017-2020. He was the lead author on the volume documenting the archaeological and anthropological record of the Nagami Bay Woman (Kayasochi Kikawenow: Our Mother From Long Ago). Kevin’s interest in pursuing a career in archaeology was based on his deep interest in understanding his Cree heritage. The ingenuity of his ancestors helps motivate him in his work, and he uses archaeology to inspire youth to be proud of their ancient past. Kevin will be the co-leader of the Archaeology team and will guide the fieldwork, the analysis of found objects, and the research into material culture. He will work with the Anthropology Department at Lakehead University and assist them in training graduate students working on the project. Analysis conducted by the archaeology team will be woven into the narratives and into the supplementary notes in the picture books, teachers’ guides, and digital texts. Kevin will oversee the development of the exhibits to be mounted by the Manitoba Museum. Brownlee has collaborated on the Pīsim and Six Seasons research projects with Reimer and others since 2008 and on the Kayasochi project and many others with Dumas since 1993.
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Myra Sitchon
Research Evaluation and Policy Development Team
Myra Sitchon was a Co-Team Leader for the Research Evaluation and Policy Development Team From 2017-2020. Myra has a diverse professional and academic background in Indigenous community-based initiatives, policy development, Crown-Indigenous consultations, heritage resources management, education, archaeology, skeletal biology and forensic anthropology. Her scholarly work with the Asiniskaw Īthiniwak (Rocky Cree) communities in northern Manitoba examines the range of legal traditions, meanings and values tied to land and identity through Cree philosophies, reasoning, language and resource use. Myra works with Rocky Cree communities to empower youth with this knowledge in reclaiming their culture, identity and history and to promote reconciliatory relationships through Cree culture and language education. Myra holds an Hons. B.Sc. in Biological Anthropology from the University of Toronto and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Manitoba.
