Water Security, Haudenosaunee Methodologies, and Indigenous Knowledge Systems

Dawn Martin Hill, PhD is Mohawk Wolf Clan and resides with her family at Six Nations of the Grand River. She founded the Indigenous Studies Program at McMaster University as graduate student in 1992. Dr. Martin Hill served as Director of Indigenous Studies for a decade and now is a Professor Emeritus at McMaster University. She was the first Indigenous cultural anthropologist in Canada and continues to break barriers in education and research.

Her primary focus over three decades of working with the environment, community, women, and youth has been to develop Indigenous ways of knowing capacity that can be applied in resolving real-world issues such as access to clean water. She developed Indigenous pedagogy and methodologies championing community-led co-creation STEM-TEK research. She currently serves as the academic Chair of the Indigenous Education Council she co-founded with S.S. Dean George in 1989, named the President's Committee on Indigenous Issues, later renamed IEC.

She led numerous community research grants in partnership with Six Nations Polytechnic (SSHRC) project, “Preserving Haudenosaunee language and ceremonies through the digitization and translation of the Hewitt Collection”. Her partners include SN Health Services CIHR-IIPH Haudenosaunee research health team Akwe:kon tewatahtonokwe (we are all related). She also served as an adjunct professor with SNP, created the SNP Indigenous Knowledge Research Center, and led the accredited SNP language diploma. Recently, McMaster Indigenous Research Institute honored her by renaming the Community Scholar Award after her. She has produced virtual reality, ‘Skyworld,’ to disseminate her team's research findings and is currently working towards establishing a Six Nations Haudenosaunee Environmental Research Institute with SNP.