Miranda Black is the Project Manager of Water Allies, an initiative of New College, University of Toronto, that focuses on bringing forth anti-racist, decolonial conversations on water protection. Miranda has recently graduated from X University with a Masters in Environmental Applied Science and Management where she focused her thesis research on the history of treaties in the Toronto area and governance practices that have kept Indigenous nations seen only as a consultation group, rather than as sovereign nations who have the ability to manage lands and resources using Indigenous Knowledge. To quote one qualitative research participant from this thesis, "Indigenous nations don't want to be part of someone else's bad management of the Great Lakes ... we think we can do a better job, just like we did for thousands and thousands of years prior to colonialism." She is of Mohawk of the Bay of Quinte ancestry and has been involved with protecting Indigenous lands and waters throughout "Canada."

Alan Colley, also known as Whooping Crane and member of the Wolf Clan, is the founder and nature guide of Toronto Aboriginal Eco Tours (TAET), a company that bridges Aboriginal culture and environmental understanding. TAET’s mission is to create a sustainable relationship with Toronto, Turtle Island (North America), and Mother Earth for generations to come. Colley’s goal is to bring together the community in a way that allows Elders, adults, youth, and children to connect and make a difference with actions based on the ground principles of the Seven Grandfather Teachings, Thirteen Grandmother Moon Teachings, and Medicine Wheel Teachings.

Kat Dervenis is the Environmental Educator Youth Coordinator at Ecosource. Growing up in a mixed-race family and low-income neighbourhood, Dervenis realized at a young age that minority groups are disproportionately affected by environmental injustices. This sparked her interest in intersectional activism and bottom-up community action to achieve environmental justice. In 2019, Dervenis worked for an Indigenous-run non-profit in southern Belize where she collaborated with Mayan villages to create a cacao cooperative. She also supported Ecosource’s Local Food Team in 2020 at the Iceland Teaching Garden. Dervenis is currently completing a master’s degree in Geography with a focus on the co-production of knowledge between community organizations in southern Ontario and academic institutions as it relates to agroecosystems research.

Sherry Fukuzawa is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She is a founding member of the Indigenous Action Group (IAG) where she fosters and facilitates community-engaged learning (CEL) and community-led research in partnership with the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. The IAG is currently implementing a CEL course at UTM entitled “Anthropology and Indigenous Peoples in Turtle Island.” The IAG is also running a mixed methods longitudinal study on the influence of community-engaged learning with a local Indigenous community on students’ academic learning, personal growth, and civic activism.

Brad Isaacs (he/him) is an artist and independent curator of mixed Mohawk and settler ancestry, currently based in Toronto. He holds an MFA from the University of Western Ontario and has exhibited at galleries such as the McMaster Museum of Art, the Ottawa Art Gallery, and Hamilton Artists Inc. His recent work continues an ongoing practice examining simulations of nature and includes photographs, collages, drawings and paintings based on fishing equipment and ephemera, and the materials and colour patterns of fishing lures. He frames fishing as a space in which to interrogate dominant cultures of hunting, relationships with nature, and ideas of masculinity.

Stephanie Keeler is an experienced environmental educator and enthusiast. She completed her degree in Biology and Geography at the University of Guelph, and has spent several years submersing herself in Ontario’s biodiversity in the forests of Algonquin Park. She is now Community Program Coordinator at The Riverwood Conservancy, connecting city communities with urban nature.

Kandy Kennedy (Haudenosaunee), is a co-founder of Eagle Spirits of the Great Waters, Indigenous arts and cultures. Originally from Oneida Nation of the Thames, Bear Clan, she resides in Mississauga. Kennedy holds a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Studies from Memorial University, and a Master of Education in Environmental Studies and Indigenous Studies from the University of Toronto. She is an environmentalist, community advocate, and a strong voice for her beliefs in Indigenous equality. Kennedy was awarded a Community Builders Fellowship (2020) from the University of Toronto School of Cities, and continues to lead Social Justice Fellowships at the University of Toronto.

Councillor Veronica King-Jamieson has worked for over thirty years with Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (MCFN) in the Ontario Works in Social Services to give financial assistance, employment, training, and education for MCFN community members and the MCFN skills and literacy liaison program coordinator. She was the Program Coordinator for Pan/Parapan Am Games (2015) in Toronto, where she established protocols for Elder Groups from the six Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg nations and created a cultural village at Fort York in Toronto. Councillor King-Jamieson recently organized and moderated Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action sessions with Senator Murray Sinclair & Honorable Justice Harry LaForme. She is a founding member of the Indigenous Action Group partnership between MCFN and the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Minoya Magendrathajan insists that she has the best job in the world—using art to peek into children’s imaginations where societal constraints and the laws of physics don’t apply. She finds herself inspired by growing brains and will be attending the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education with plans to become an Ontario Certified Teacher. She currently holds a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology and psychology from McMaster University. Some of her favourite things include bright colours, studying the human brain, and spending time in nature with her puppy. One day, she hopes to build her own treehouse—with a built-in greenhouse and art studio. If she isn’t drawing somewhere along the Credit River, you can find Minoya at the bouldering gym, trying to face her fear of heights.

Adalyn Ordono recently completed Ecosource’s Youth in Action - Credit Connections Program. During that time, she worked on her community project, Subherbs & Co., which aims to educate Mississauga residents on how to grow food on balconies and operates as a seed growing and distribution network. Grateful for her time in the program, Ordono wishes to continue building meaningful relationships with members of the Mississaugas of the Credit.

Dana Prieto is an Argentine-Canadian artist and educator based in Tkaronto. Her site-responsive work examines our deep relations with colonial structures and infrastructures through a careful attention to the ground, and the different forms of living and dying within it. Dana’s practice is material, process, and place-focused, and often unfolds over extended periods of artistic research and interdisciplinary collaborations. For over ten years, Dana has worked with ceramic processes and soil-derived materials to reflect on the technologies of containment found in the places where she lives and works: looking at mines, bodies, nests, vessels, institutions, and land. Dana holds a Master of Visual Studies from University of Toronto and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from OCAD University. Her work has been presented in national and international galleries, public spaces and informal cultural venues.

Sean Procyk is a settler artist and playground designer. His practice focuses on creating immersive public engagements through site-specific installation, architecture, and community workshops. Each project responds to its regional context, with a particular focus on unsettling relationships between landscape, community, and ecology. Procyk’s work explores processes of ecological succession, land-based disturbance, human alienation, and collective action. He works primarily with found, reclaimed, and natural materials. Procyk’s works have been exhibited at Hamilton Artists Inc., Latitude 53, Stride Contemporary Art Gallery, Elemental Festival, Convergence Conference on Art and Technology in Banff, and Nuit Blanche Toronto.

Elder Garry Sault is an Ojibway Elder for the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. His people signed over twenty pre-Confederation treaties with the Crown, which covers most of the Golden Horseshoe. He is a veteran and served in the United States Navy. He resides on the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation with his wife of forty years and enjoys spending time with his grandchildren. Elder Sault is also a Storyteller and has welcomed Chiefs, Premiers, environmentalists, and many more to the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

Shrey Savale is a Waste Reduction Coordinator with Ecosource and a Youth in Action – Credit Connections (YIA – CC) program participant. Savale received his Bachelor of Environmental Studies at the University of Waterloo, where he discovered a passion for education and creative learning. Since then, Savale has worked at Ecosource under many roles including Sustainability Education Assistant, Waste Reduction Educator, and leading his own YIA community action project; a recycled-wood backyard garden bed program to support urban agriculture in his community. He joined the YIA program to expand his experience of community action projects and to learn how to bring Indigenous knowledge to a forefront of environmental actions.

Derek Stone is a lifelong naturalist and wildlife enthusiast, who pursued his degree in Environmental Studies and Resource Management at Trent University with a focus on ecology and public policy. Since then, Derek has engaged in multiple positions that focus on monitoring and restoring degraded environments, and enthusiastically engaging the public with nature. As The Riverwood Conservancy’s Conservation and Program Manager, Derek focuses on creating strong connections between nature and people, and embracing those connections to support both our environment and our community.

Amanda White (she/her) is a white settler artist/scholar living and working on the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, Anishinaabe, Huron-Wendat, and Haudenosaunee peoples. Amanda is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for Sustainable Curating, Department of Visual Art at Western University. She has a PhD (Queen’s) and an MFA (Windsor). Amanda works across mediums with a focus on plants, food, and environmental justice, with recent exhibitions and projects for: McIntosh Gallery, Museum London, Cambridge Galleries, Koffler Digital and PUBLIC Journal. Current collaborative and solo projects include studio work, a co-edited book, and a graphic novel.

Fraser McCallum is Project Coordinator at the Blackwood Gallery. In this role, he works primarily on programs outside of the gallery spaces, including offsite exhibitions, public programs, virtual programming, and publications. Fraser is an interdisciplinary artist of settler Euro-Canadian ancestry, whose practice often draws together histories and ongoing sociopolitical conditions through archives, places, and stories. Fraser has held previous roles at Gallery 44 and Art Metropole, and received a Master of Visual Studies from the University of Toronto. His work has been exhibited at HKW, Berlin; Sheridan College, Oakville; Modern Fuel, Kingston; and The Art Museum at the University of Toronto. His video works have been screened by the plumb, LIFT, Hamilton Artists Inc., and Trinity Square Video. Fraser’s writing has been published in the Blackwood’s Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge series, PUBLIC, and Imaginations: Journal of Cross-Cultural Image Studies.