Biography

Dr. Amy Parent’s Nisga’a name is Noxs Ts’aawit (Mother of the Raven Warrior Chief named Ts’awit). On her mother’s side of the family, she is from the House of Ni’isjoohl and is a member of the Ganada (frog) clan in the Village of Laxgalts’ap in the Nisga’a Nation. On her father’s side of the family, she is of Settler ancestry (French and German). Dr. Parent is a scholar, speaker, mentor and educator. She is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Education & Governance (Tier 2) in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University (Ph.D., UBC). She is also Co-Chair of the Indigenous Research Leadership Circle with the Tri-Council Agency (Canadian Institutes of Health Research, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) and the Inaugural Associate Director for the SFU Cassidy Centre for Educational Justice. In 2023, she received the B.C. Historical Foundation Certificate of Merit with the N’isjoohl rematriation delegation team, which recognized our collective work in bringing our family’s memorial pole back to its rightful place in the Nisga’a Nation after being stolen for 94 years. In 2024, she was named the Confederation of University Faculty Associations of British Columbia “Distinguished Academic of the Year.” "Dr. Parent remains committed to her responsibilities at local, national and international levels, advocating for Indigenous research governance, rematriation, and self-determination. Her work has been widely recognized, with over 700 media features, including news articles, television appearances, radio interviews, and magazine publications.

Please visit Dr. Parent’s website for a full biography and further details on her research projects, publication, teaching exemplars and media engagement.

Research & Teaching Interests

• Indigenous knowledge systems and methodologies
• Nisga’a rematriation, language revitalization and educational governance
• BC First Nations research jurisdiction, governance, and matriarchal leadership for self-determination
• Indigenous doctoral programming, supervision and mentorship
• Land based education
• Indigenous visual sovereignty and critical Indigenous theory
• Indigenous graphic novels, visual representations and storytelling in the curriculum