Indigenous Peoples’ Experiences of Intractable Conflict: Self Development during a “Cold Peace Era” in Canada

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Michele A Sam is Ktunaxa ʔaqⱡsmaknik—a Ktunaxa human being. Her father’s heritage is Haudenosaunee and Italian with no claims to community, and she honours her fathers’ people by following her mothers’ lineage as is custom. Michele has familial ties across all 6 Ktunaxa/Ksanka communities and is an “official state identified band member” of ʔaq̓am along her mothers line. Michele returned home to the Ktunaxa homelands, as a 60s scoop survivor having been adopted and raised in Southern Ontario, by a Dutch Catholic immigrant family to Canada.

Michele’s lifework is guided by principles of: Nation Rebuilding, Good Governance, Restoration of Peoplehood, Cultural Continuity, (Re) Attachment to Lands and Waterscapes, Intellectual Sovereignty and Cognitive Justice, according to place based Indigenous Peoples’ ways of being, doing and knowing. Michele is first generation in her adoptive family and Ktunaxa family to have earned university degrees. She holds graduate and undergraduate degrees in Social Work, English Literature and Indigenous Learning, as well as completed course work, comprehensive exams and proposal defense for her PhD focused upon Indigenous Peoples’ place based re-attachment to landscapes and waterways in light of the genocide of Intergenerational Trauma and Stress, before leaving studies to return to her homelands in support of her children.

She has published on the role of research in: Indigenous Peoples’ Self-development; as a mechanism of Intractable Conflict and Strategic Regional Competition. She is a first generation home owner, a small business owner and leads the Indigenous Studies program at the College of the Rockies. When she’s not working, she can be found outside.