“Having good support networks, working with compassion, working with honor, working with humility, working with love–I think those are the ways forward. And I think as soon as you begin to think in those ways, doors start to open. That's how you know you're going in the right direction.” In this episode, Shannon Leddy and Biz Nijdam discuss their SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2025), "Visual Storytelling in the Indigenous North,” a three-year project that brings together Indigenous and settler artists, scholars, and cultural organizations to develop Indigenous-centered popular media approach to amplifying the stories of Canadian and Greenlandic Inuit (Kalaalit) and Sámi stories of resilience, resurgence, renewal, revival, and resistance. Topics covered in this episode include: Defining the Indigenous North and approaches to trans-Indigenous dialogues Creative methods of collaboration between knowledge keepers and cartoonists Cultivating joy and playfulness in working with the community Advice for scholars interested in collaboration Speakers Bio Dr. Shannon Leddy is a member of the Métis Nation of British Columbia and an associate professor of art education at the University of British Columbia, whose practice focuses on using transformative pedagogies in decolonizing and Indigenizing teacher education. Before arriving at UBC, Shannon taught high school Art, Social Studies, and English. She is the Co-Chair of the Institute for Environmental Learning, along with Dr. David Zandvliet, and her book, Teaching where you are: Weaving slow and Indigenous pedagogies, co-written with Dr. Lorrie Miller, is now available from the University of Toronto Press. Dr. Elizabeth “Biz” Nijdam (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Teaching and settler scholar in the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies at the University of British Columbia Vancouver. Biz’s research and teaching are grounded in the belief that popular culture is capable of both reflecting social and political discourse and intervening in it. Biz's scholarship examines the representation of complex histories in comics and digital and tabletop games, Tarot’s capacity for innovating classroom teaching, and the role of comics and arts-based research in preserving Indigenous knowledges, sharing Indigenous storytelling traditions, and revitalizing Indigenous languages. Biz established the UBC Comics Studies Cluster in 2023, where she continues to support community partners, local nonprofits, BC’s First Nations, and UBC faculty and students in making comics about the important issues facing society today. She is also the Director of the UBC Pop Culture Cluster, which is home to the UBC Critical Play Lab, and sits on the Executive Committee of the International Comic Arts Forum. Leddy and Nijdam co-lead the SSHRC-PG-funded Survivor-Centered Visual Narrative’s Turtle Island Research Cluster and are working in collaboration with residential school survivor Dorothy Visser and graphic artist Natasha Donovan. Leddy and Nijdam co-direct the SSHRC-PDG-funded Visual Storytelling in the Indigenous North in collaboration with project co-leads Asta Mønsted (Kalaallit, UC Berkeley), Tim Frandy (Sámi, UBC), and Frederik Byrn Køhlert (Edinburgh Napier University). Spanning Canada, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), Sápmi (Norway, Sweden, Finland), and Denmark, this project brings together First Nation, Métis, Inuit, and Sámi knowledge holders to co-create graphic narratives and arts-based public programming that highlight resilience, resurgence, renewal, revival, and resistance.
