Director, Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Culture and Heritage Division, Government of the Northwest Territories, Yellowknife.
SFU PhD Student 2010-2015
IPinCH Fellow 2011-2013
My PhD dissertation focused on the representation of Indigenous heritage and the methods use to conduct collaborative Indigneous resesarch in public museums. I conducted fieldwork at four museums (Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, The Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre, Denver Museum of Nature and Science and the Royal British Columbia Museum) to explore the history of museum/Indigenous collaboration as well as examine specific examples of exhibits that have been created in partership with Indigenous communities. My senior supervisor is IPinCH Project Director, George Nicholas and committee members include IPinCH associates Barb Winter and Eldon Yellowhorn. 
I began working at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in July 2014, which was the outcome of a lifelong passion for archaeology and museums. I became interested in looking at the tensions between archaeology and Indigenous peoples while pursuing my undergraduate degree in Native Studies and Anthropology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario. I followed this interest up at the University of Northern British Columbia with an MA thesis entitled “Sharing the Past: Community-Based Archaeology and Aboriginal People in Canada”. From 2006-2010, I had the privilege of working at the University of British Columbia’s Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, where I witnessed various collaborative projects between Canadian and international Indigenous peoples and their heritage in a museum context.
I served as the Student Representative on the IPinCH Steering Committee from 2011-2012, and created the IPinCH Facebook page and Twitter feed. I am a member of the Cultural Tourism working group and have worked as a research assistant for the Digital Information Systems and Cultural Heritage working group
Sarah's Blog Posts
Remix, Copyright, A2K, and Indigenous Intellectual Property Rights, Jun 6 2011
Since last September, I have been a Research Assistant for the Digital Information Systems and Cultural Heritage working group for the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage (IPinCH) project. More »
Social Networking, May 17 2011
As part of my research assistant work for IPinCH, I have the privilege of helping expand the IPinCH community through the use of social networking. I am excited about this work for several reasons, which I thought I would share. More »
