Hosted by Dr. Kelley Main, Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies,  the 2025 Faculty of Graduate Studies Awards Reception marked the faculty’s first in-person awards reception celebration since the fall of 2019, as an opportunity to come together and recognize the outstanding achievements of graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, staff, and faculty.

Dr. Michael Benarroch, President of the University of Manitoba, presented the Faculty of Graduate Studies Outstanding Support Staff Award, recognizing excellence in administrative service to graduate students. This year’s recipient, Susan Ducharme, Graduate Programs Coordinator in Peace and Conflict Studies, was celebrated for her dedication, responsiveness, and unwavering support of both students and faculty.

The ceremony also included greetings from Dr. Diane Hiebert-Murphy, Provost and Vice-President (Academic), who presented the Outstanding Administrator Award to Dr. Melanie Janzen, Professor in the Faculty of Education. Dr. Janzen was applauded for her exemplary leadership and commitment to graduate student success.

Highlighting the value of mentorship in graduate education, the Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring Awards were presented across three academic categories.

• In Social Sciences and Humanities, Dr. Robert Hoppa, Associate Dean (Research) and Professor of Anthropology, was recognized for his sustained mentorship and dedication to scholarly growth, presented by Dr. Dawn Sutherland, Associate Dean in the Faculty of Graduate Studies.
• In Natural and Applied Sciences, Dr. Gail Davoren, Professor of Biological Sciences, received the honour for her commitment to fostering critical thinking and research excellence, presented by Dr. Steve Kirkland, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies
• In Health Sciences, the award was presented to Dr. Judith Scanlan, Associate Professor in the College of Nursing, whose mentorship has left a lasting impact on her students’ academic and professional development, presented by Dr. Greg Smith, Vice Provost, Academic Planning and Programs.

The spotlight then turned to emerging research leaders with the presentation of the Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow Awards presented by Dean, Dr. Kelley Main.

• In Health Sciences, Dr. Kathleen Kenny of the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy and Rady Faculty of Health Sciences was acknowledged for her innovative research and mentorship of junior researchers.
• In Natural Sciences and Engineering, Dr. Ruth Rivkin from the Department of Biological Sciences was honoured for her significant contributions, though she was unable to attend in person.

A poignant moment of the afternoon came as Dr. Steve Kirkland presented the newly established James House Memorial Awards for Excellence in Postdoctoral Mentoring, named in memory of Dr. James (Jim) House, a respected scholar and mentor who passed away in 2024.

• The award in Health Sciences was presented to Dr. Keith Fowke, Professor of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases, for his dedication to fostering postdoctoral development.
• The award in Natural and Applied Sciences was awarded to Dr. Miyoung Suh, Professor in the Department of Food and Human Nutritional Sciences. Accepting the award on her behalf was Kristin Hildahl-Shawn, Associate Department Head.

The ceremony concluded with remarks from Dr. Kelley Main, who commended all recipients for their dedication and contributions to the university’s academic community. “This celebration reflects the deep commitment our faculty, staff, researchers, postdoctoral fellows and students have to supporting and advancing graduate education,” said Dr. Main. “Today, we honour their passion, mentorship, and the remarkable impact they have on shaping the future through scholarship and research.”

The 2025 Faculty of Graduate Studies Awards Reception was not just about handing out awards — it was a chance to come together and celebrate the incredible achievements of everyone recognized. It was a meaningful reminder of the University of Manitoba’s ongoing commitment to academic excellence, innovation, and the strong sense of community that supports it all.

To see the awards recipients recognized at this year’s event, please visit 2025-awards-reception.pdf.

Roots of rematriation and repatriation

Lara Rosenoff Gauvin, Associate Professor with the Department of Anthropology at UM, is co-chair of the Respectful Rematriation and Repatriation Ceremony (RRRC) and has been actively involved since she joined UM in 2019.

Graduate student Savannah Moon joined the RRRC as a student research assistant while working on her thesis centered on rematriation and repatriation of Indigenous Ancestors. She continues to serve as a student representative on the department’s Rematriation and Repatriation committee. 

On June 3, 2024, the University of Manitoba apologized publicly for its history related to the inappropriate acquisition and housing of Indigenous Ancestral remains, burial belongings and cultural heritage without consent. 

Empowering student voices

Savannah spoke at the RRRC apology, sharing her experience. “When I first became a student in 2013 at just 18 years old, one of the very first things I heard from other students when I got on campus was something to the effect of, “Did you hear they got Indian bones in there?”

Reflecting on how it felt as a young Indigenous student aware of Ancestral remains, Savannah recalled, “Nobody whispered about this shocking truth. It was an open secret. It was something our own professors acknowledged in our classrooms, but said there was nothing they could do.”

Savannah continued to share her story with other students, presenting in Lara’s “Museums, Memory and Witnessing” class. As students contemplated the history and reflected on Savannah’s words, they learned about the RRRC and role of ceremony. 

While Lara’s work continued with the RRRC, reflecting on teachings and truth-telling, she found herself working with small copper plates and rolling jingles until she collected buckets full. With the knowledge the students had learned from Lara and Savannah, they were inspired to join in rolling their own jingles from copper plates provided.

A space for reflection

Today, those jingles are a part of the piece known as Sings the Medicines. Strung together and cascading, you can ring the jingles to create a soft and rhythmic chime that fills the space.

Empowered by her own personal experiences as an Indigenous person, Savannah was drawn to the idea of using art to reclaim space, be representative and foster healing.

Looking upward to the jingles is Savannah’s truth hand-burned into a piece titled We Can Bring Our Ancestors Home, a 4×6 treated cedar plaque decorated with hand paintings.

The two women pondered, listened and came together to create sister pieces—the hundreds of jingles that make up Sings the Medicines, and the hand-decorated cedar plaque We Can Bring Our Ancestors Home complement one another, transforming the atrium space into a learning opportunity and create a healing space on the Fort Garry campus. 

Lara attributes the display as the result of many people’s thoughts, efforts and prayers. “Elder Carl Stone suggested that the Department of Anthropology display text about the history of our department’s exploitation of Indigenous Ancestors, as well as our current actions of atonement, truth-seeking and apology,” she says. “For many years, an idea for a display did not emerge that fulfilled these aspirations.”

For generations to come, students, staff, faculty and guests will experience the space in an entirely different way; a space reverberating with truth-telling and healing.

During this immersive program, Fulugan delved into archival research across various collections in Winnipeg, honing their research skills and gaining a deeper understanding of their discipline. Not only did the experience offer academic enrichment, it also allowed them to better understand themselves, revealing their strengths and areas for growth.

In the summer of 2024, Fulugan worked under the supervision of Dr. Lara Rosenoff Gauvin, an associate professor in anthropology and co-chair of the Respectful Rematriation and Repatriation Ceremony. The RRRC involves returning Indigenous Ancestors and Belongings – that were taken and/or held by the university without consent – to First Nations, Inuit and Métis descendant communities. Dr. Rosenoff Gauvin’s research centers on the knowledge, practices and rights of survivors of violence, conflict and forced displacement.

We spoke with Fulugan about their URA experience:

FACULTY OF ARTS: What research did you conduct?

FULUGAN: I engaged in archival research at collections throughout Winnipeg in service to the Respectful Rematriation and Repatriation Ceremony. My research was conducted to understand UM’s harmful and wrongful acquisition of human  remains and followed the public apology made by President Michael Benarroch in July 2024, which I was also able to be a part of. This apology was made to descendant Indigenous communities whose Ancestors’ remains and belongings were wrongfully accepted and stewarded by UM.

FACULTY OF ARTS: What made you decide to apply for an URA? 

FULUGAN: I was initially planning to graduate from my program after four years and immediately move on to graduate school, but I realized that trying to finish my undergrad as fast as I could wasn’t a good way of making the most out of the university experience (and would be detrimental to my mental health). I thought the URA would be a helpful experience before grad school and my would-be supervisor, Dr. Lara Rosenoff Gauvin, encouraged me to apply.

FACULTY OF ARTS: Was there anything that surprised you during the research process?  

FULUGAN: Understanding research as work! I loved all the parts of doing research but doing it within the context of a paid position was new.

FACULTY OF ARTS: What did you learn from the URA experience? How has it enriched your university journey? 

FULUGAN: I think that the URA helped me identify my strengths and weaknesses—what worked for me and what didn’t. Being able to dedicate the summer to honing in on these things while engaging in meaningful work was invaluable. For example, I had no trouble with doing the work but learning to balance my life as a student researcher and as a human being was something that I had to get used to. Since a lot of research involves just thinking things through in your head, it can be difficult to stop and take a break. I’m glad that the URA taught me the skills to navigate these kinds of problems, which I wouldn’t have known about without undertaking the experience.

FACULTY OF ARTS: What advice do you have for other students who are considering applying for an URA?

FULUGAN: You don’t necessarily need a plan set in stone; the goals of my project and what I did changed over the course of the summer. Just find something in your field that you’re interested in, approach a knowledgeable professor about research they might be doing that complements this and ask how you could get involved. Professors are people too!

FACULTY OF ARTS: How do your studies in the Faculty of Arts complement your research activities and your future career goals?  

FULUGAN: I hope to continue working with heritage in the future, and the Department of Anthropology’s rematriation is vital to addressing harm and moving forward in a good manner. I felt that I had a good idea of what to expect based on what I had learned in my courses because the professors I’ve had approach their work genuinely and are eager to help their students.

The URA is an excellent opportunity for students interested in conducting research to spend 16 weeks full-time from May to August under the mentorship of a professor of their choice. It offers many benefits: building valuable research skills, expanding your academic network and a $7,000 monetary award.

Applications for the 2025 URA are open! Visit the Undergraduate Research Awards webpage for more information on the application criteria and guidelines. There are over 50 Faculty of Arts researchers willing to take on an undergraduate student this summer.

Asian Heritage Month is celebrated at UM with stories and events that highlight members of various Asian communities, along with the research, teaching and advocacy work they do.

 “Asian Heritage Month is an opportunity to increase understanding and appreciation of the diversity and richness of Asian cultures, communities and individuals, and to recognize the impactful work and accomplishments of so many at UM,” says Tina Chen, Vice-Provost (Equity) and Distinguished Professor of Chinese History.

“Asian Heritage builds solidarities amongst different Asian communities as we continue our work to dismantle oppression and eliminate anti-Asian racism, and all racisms, on our campuses. At UM, we commit to carrying forward the work from the National Forums on Anti-Asian Racism.”

UM research, teaching and community engagement advances critical understanding of the lives and cultures of Asians in Canada and globally. During her time as director of the UM Institute for the Humanities from 2018 to 2024, professor of English, theatre, film & media Hee-jung Serenity Joo has created models that centre community knowledges and creative projects in post-secondary learning, research and action for anti-racism. Another example is the interdisciplinary project Dried Fish Matters (anthropology), which focusses on a fisheries sub-sector particularly important in Asia and Africa, where women comprise a significant portion of this workforce. Asian Studies courses in the Faculty of Arts further provide opportunities to learn Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages and to study the cultures, politics, and histories of Asian nations, people, and diaspora.

Read on for stories, resources and upcoming events that are open to all.

Celebrating our unique stories

Watch for related content on UM platforms through May in celebration of Asian Heritage Month.

The Racial Equity and Inclusion Alliance (REIA) is a student-led community group founded last year by fourth year Faculty of Arts student Allisther De Castro. She is proud of her Filipino heritage and eager to promote multiculturalism and inclusion within the university. (Learn more about Allisther’s story!)

This year REIA hosted its first Empowerment Gala to recognize the diverse cultures at UM. The gala, which took place Sunday, Mar. 31, awarded racialized students and staff based on accomplishments in athletics and sportsmanship, academics, visual and performing arts, and advocacy and representation. 

As a first-generation academic and former international student in Canada, assistant professor of pharmacy Abdullah Al Maruf supports justice, equity, diversity and inclusiveness in his personal and professional life. He co-founded a research network to connect scientists interested in pharmacogenomics research in Bangladesh (BdPGRN) and also founded Prospective Bangladeshi Students in Canadian Universities, a not-for-profit, virtual peer-to-peer support and discussion platform. 

Wayne Chan [BSc/93, BA/00], who works as a data analyst at UM, is also a bit of a history detective — his passion for tracking down stories and tracing unknown histories has led to gems like Winnipeg’s forgotten song and Lost campus, a Google Earth tour that recreates historical UM spaces. His latest, about decoding cryptograms in an antique silk dress (CBC), came from his hobby in cryptography and codebreaking and made world-wide news.

Dr. Gigi Osler [BSc/92, MD/92] is a UM assistant professor of medicine who in 2018 became the first female surgeon and racialized woman elected as president of the Canadian Medical Association. Born in Winnipeg to immigrant parents from India and the Philippines, she was appointed to the Canadian Senate in 2022. “We have to be advocates for justice, racial justice, equity and social change,” she says.

Associate Vice-President (Administration) Raman Dhaliwal [B.Comm/07] is the first racially marginalized woman to hold the position and was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 100 Most Powerful Women in 2022. “Most of the time when I’m at different meetings, there aren’t a lot of people my age, my colour and even my gender sitting around the table with me,” she notes. Dhaliwal counts her parents, who left their homes in India to start a new life in Canada, as her biggest inspiration.

You may be familiar with the colourful artwork of acclaimed Winnipeg artist Takashi Iwasaki [BFA(Hons)/06] — including UM tunnel murals) — he and his wife Shih-Han Iwasaki are currently pursuing graduate degrees at UM. Iwasaki, who is back doing his MFA, grew up in northern Japan and arrived here at age 20, while Shih-Han, who is pursuing her master’s degree at Asper, is from Taiwan. Their two children speak both Japanese and Mandarin, along with English. (Watch for Takashi’s story later this month!)

Community events and resources

Join the learning journey on advancing equity, diversity, accessibility and anti-oppression at UM.

Support the work being done by the Office of Equity Transformation, UM’s Anti-Racism Taskforce and the Office of Anti-Racism (Rady Faculty of Health Sciences).

Check out the many ethnocultural student groups on campus.

Events

Stop by Taste of Asia – Asian Pop Fest! CN Stage at the Forks, May 25 and 26, 2-7 PM daily. Food, music, dance, art, fashion and more! Organized by Foodtrip and Asian Heritage Society MB.

Enjoy special screenings at the FascinAsian Film Festival, coming to Winnipeg May 24 to 26. Celebrating Asian perspectives, culture and integrity in film and media.

Check out additional local events throughout the month listed at Asian Heritage Society of Manitoba.

Watch CanAsian Arts On the Move: An online tour of Canada through its Asian artists in one evening! May 29, 8 P.M.

Upcoming: National Asian Heritage Symposium in Winnipeg. Nov. 6 to 9, 2024.

Resources

See “A Brief History of Asian Canadians,” “Asians in Early Canada,” and “Demographics of Asian Canadians in Manitoba” (Asian Heritage Society of Manitoba).

Winnipeg Public Library Guides: Asian Heritage. Deepen your learning about Asian history and heritage, with information that focuses on Manitoba and Canada. Resources including historical events and timelines, book recommendations!

Visit the Virtual Museum of Asian Canadian Culture and Heritage. 

The haiku style dates back to 17^th century Japan and is intended to focus on nature, which Crutchley’s poem does. But this time around, to capture the spirit of Homecoming celebrations, Town Halls and ‘How-was-your summer?’ catchups, we asked UM community members for their best Haiku on the theme of connection through their lens. Meet these somewhat reluctant poets as they bring us together, 17 syllables at a time.

Packing and unpacking

Every year our campus swells to the size of a small city as students and faculty return from all parts of the globe. Hang out by any residence on move-in day and you witness a great academic migration as 1,350 excited students from over 75 countries meet new friends and settle into fresh dorms. It’s an energy Barry Stone, director of student residences, loves. And these students are deeply connected to this community: living on campus provides unique engagement opportunities, cultural connections and support systems that all contribute to student success and an unparalleled sense of belonging. 

This is Stone’s haiku:

Futures far and near
Alone together at once
Connections untold

Growing joy

Trust Beta, a Canada Research Chair in Grain-Based Functional Foods in the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, explores how food, especially whole grains and cereals, connects to health. She understood this connection even as little girl drying corn under Zimbabwe’s sun for her mother. Today, her lab has catalogued  more than 30 phytochemicals—non-nutrient chemicals, like antioxidants, made by a plant—in wild rice, wheat, barley, corn and rice, and companies such as Kellogg and Heinz seek her expertise to make their products healthier.

This is Beta’s haiku:

Produce diverse food
Enriching lives everywhere
Planting health and joy

Show kindness

Knowledge Keeper Kim Guimond returned to her alma mater in early 2023, having graduated from the Faculty of Education in 2000. She is a proud Anishinaabe Ikwe from Sagkeeng First Nation, who taught junior high students there for 17 years, following in the footsteps of her mother. In 2017, Guimond took on a new challenge and worked with four other teachers from different communities to launch the Ojibwe Bilingual Program at Seven Oaks School Division—a first of its kind in Winnipeg. Today she’s honoured to be in Migizii-Agamik (Bald Eagle Lodge) providing support, guidance and connection to students who need it. (She is available Wed-Fri from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.) 

These are Guimond’s haikus:

Ancestors guide us.
Threads of culture intertwine.
Roots, everlasting.

And a haiku in Ojibwe, with translation:

Anishinaabe. (Indigenous).
Mino-bimaadiziwin (Lives a good life).
Minode’e win (if you show kindness).

Men-tor

Warren Clarke, an assistant professor of sociocultural anthropology who came to UM in 2021, is interested in a broad range of topics from race to masculinity to liberalism, paying particular attention to how Canadian social norms continue to affect the social development of African and Caribbean Black men. He refers to himself as a public scholar as his research and outreach takes place in public spaces, from barbershops where he runs The Barbershop Talk Series: Black Men & Misconceptions, to high schools where he has students learn about anti-oppressive behaviours through theatre. The theme of all his work is helping Black youth overcome social barriers and so he founded The Afro-Caribbean Mentorship Program, which operates a variety of programs that build connections.

This is Clarke’s haiku:

Inspiring and
Paying it forward to Black
Youth is my passion

Flowing

Barry Prentice, professor of supply chain management in the Asper School of Business, has spent his life studying literal connections: how we flow goods, how we move people, how we bring A to B. He’s been in the media for his work on airships, airports, and sea ports and has even weighed in on how Winnipeg bus routes should work.

This is his haiku:

Buoyant flight is green
What is old is new again
Let’s join North to South

Needful things

Back in April 2020, when COVID was severing our in-person connections, anthropology professor Kent Fowler published a paper that defied such isolationism. The paper in PLOS One described how he accurately dated and identified the sex of fingerprints left in ancient pottery. His quote then still rings true to him today: “These are the fingerprints of 4,700-year-old people! Right there to see. To connect with. It is very intimate.”

This is his haiku:

They work together
with mud in the summer sun
to make needful things

Ancient bond

Meghan Azad, Canada Research Chair in Developmental Origins of Chronic Disease in the College of Medicine, studies how experiences in utero and during infancy shape lifelong health. One of the most enlightened people when it comes to our ancient, foundational, beautifully mammalian connection between mother and child, Azad researches breast milk and secured a $6.5 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She’s also the first  female UM researcher to receive the prestigious Steacie Prize.

This is Azad’s haiku:

Breast milk is not just
food but also medicine
and a lifelong bond

Paper coffee

If you’re not near retirement age, the University of Manitoba Retirees Association (UMRA) is an organization you might not be aware of, but it has over 800 members. UMRA is a community of university retirees that focuses on enriching the lives of its members through advocacy and community. In addition to defending the interests of retirees in the pension and benefits plans of the University, UMRA encourages retirees to support the United Way (in 2022 retirees’ donations totaled nearly $350,000) and it sponsors the student competition 3MT, as well as bursaries and scholarships.

Dennis Cooley, professor emeritus in the department of English, Theatre, Film & Media, wrote this haiku on behalf of UMRA:

Whenever they meet
there is plenty of coffee
plenty of paper

In the first longitudinal study of its kind, focusing on a single region for 800 years (between 1000-1800AD), researchers reconstructed Yersinia pestis genomes, the bacterium responsible for the plague, and showed that it was reintroduced into the Danish population from other parts of Europe again and again, perhaps via human movement, with devastating effects.

The historical samples were taken from nearly 300 individuals located at 13 different archaeological sites throughout the country.

“We know that plague outbreaks across Europe continued in waves for approximately 500 years, but very little about its spread throughout Denmark is documented in historical archives,” says Ravneet Sidhu, one of the study’s lead authors and a graduate student at McMaster’s Ancient DNA Centre, where the analysis was conducted.  

The team of historians and bioarchaeologists from the University of Manitoba, McMaster University and the University of Southern Denmark researchers, performed an in-depth examination of the relatedness and differences between the different strains of plague that were present in Denmark during this time.

They reconstructed and sequenced the genomes of Y. pestis, using fragments teased from ancient teeth, which can preserve traces of blood-borne infection for centuries. They compared the plague genomes to one another and to their modern-day relatives.

Researchers found positive plague samples in 13 individuals who had lived and died over a period of three centuries.

Nine of those samples provided enough genetic information to draw evolutionary conclusions about the plague’s persistence in Denmark. The results create a picture of urban and rural populations hammered by relentless waves of plague.

“The high frequency of Y. pestis reintroduction to Danish communities is consistent with the assumption that most deaths in the period were due to newly introduced pathogens. This association between pathogen introduction and mortality illuminates essential aspects of the demographic evolution, not only in Denmark but across the whole European continent,” says Jesper L. Boldsen, the skeletal collection curator and paleodemographer at ADBOU, University of Southern Denmark.

The analysis, reported in the journal Current Biology, revealed that the Danish Y. pestis sequences were interspersed with medieval and early modern strains from other European countries, including the Baltic region and Russia, rather than coming from a single domestic cluster that re-emerged from natural reservoirs over the centuries. 

“The evidence for plague in Denmark, both historical and archaeological, has been far more sparse than in some other regions, such as England and Italy. This study identified plague for the first time from medieval Denmark, therefore enabling us to connect the experience in Denmark to disease patterns elsewhere,” said Julia Gamble a co-author on the study and assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Manitoba.

In striking detail, researchers describe the earliest known appearance of Y. pestis in Denmark in the town of Ribe dating back to 1333 during the Black Death, its appearance in rural areas such Tirup—where there is no surviving historical evidence—and its disappearance by 1649.

Most places it hit in Denmark were port cities, but one of the last outbreaks struck a small rural site in the centre of the country with no access to water, suggesting importation via land.

Plague is a disease of rodents, but clearly the results suggest human-facilitated movement of plague, either via rodents travelling with humans or via other vectors, such as lice, on them.

“The results reveal new connections between past and present experiences of plague, and add to our understanding of the distribution, patterns and virulence of re-emerging diseases,” says Hendrik Poinar, senior author of the paper, director of the McMaster Ancient DNA Centre and an investigator with the Michael G. DeGroote Institute for Infectious Disease Research. 

“We can use this study and the methods we employed for the study of future pandemics,” he says.

Wrong.

Is a bone found at an archaeological dig from a female or male person? Is there a difference? How do you know? It turns out that the determination of biological sex from the examination of a human bone (or a fragment) can be quite challenging.

A person’s skeleton provides a lot of information about who that person was, and while many kinds of bones can help provide this kind of information, the hip bone or pelvis is the most accurate to use for sex estimation.

The trouble is that hip bones look very similar in juvenile male and females. For his doctoral thesis in UM’s department of anthropology, Jose Sanchez wanted to explore how to determine sex from a detailed examination of child and adolescent skeletal remains.

He says: “One thing that was missing from all the studies on the subject was: ‘When do sex differences in the skeleton appear?’ The main assumption has been that these traits develop at puberty and their full expressions do not appear until adulthood. But puberty is not a moment in time during a person’s development; people are not pre-pubescent and then, all of a sudden, post-pubescent. It’s a process with various stages.”

Sanchez decided to address this significant knowledge gap by finding a reliable method of determining at what age visible and measurable sex differences in the pelvis begin to appear and stabilize throughout childhood and adolescence.

To do so, he looked at the skeletons of 128 individuals between four months and 20 years of age, scored observable features that are often used to estimate sex, took accurate measurements of the bones, and applied a number of mathematical processes to the data.

Out of respect for both the individuals he worked with and possible descendants, no identifying information of the deceased was collected for his research. Further, none of the remains included in the study were of Indigenous Ancestry.

Sanchez points out that it is important to recognize the humanity of the remains being used. He explains: “I incorporated traditional care practices, including respectful acknowledgment of the individuals at the beginning and end of the day, and making sure they were protected if they were at my lab bench overnight.” 

His findings represent a major methodological contribution to the areas of archeology and anthropology which can help us better understand the lives of those who came before us.

“My research showed that very few observable features in the pelvis appear concurrently in males and females,” he noted. “Most features show a male expression until late childhood or the early teenage years, which is when the female expression appears. But age estimates are not always correct and are unknown for past populations. One constant, however, is the pattern of development during puberty.”

Sanchez discovered that a person must have passed the period of fastest growth during puberty, known as peak height velocity, in order to allow correct sex estimates from looking at his or her bones. He found that using puberty stages can accurately estimate biological sex for juveniles as young as 14 years of age.

He explains: “I wanted to see when, during puberty, areas of the pelvis exhibit sex differences. Delayed puberty can be used as a proxy to understand the environmental conditions people lived in and this can be an indication of adverse living conditions. Through this type of analysis, I hope to share how this transition from adolescence to adulthood was experienced by these individuals.”

Sanchez says his research has significant real-world applications. “This research has important implications for research on past populations since bioarchaeologists can apply this method and confidently estimate the sex of adolescents. By doing so, they can reconstruct the ways males and females experienced this stage of life and determine any similarities and differences in the way they experienced such an important social transition.”

Further, Sanchez says his work has applications for criminal investigations when adolescents are victims of crimes.

He hopes to travel to Europe in the near future to further pursue his work on skeletal remains.

“I want to apply the same idea of tracking when sex differences appear and stabilize to other areas of the skeleton, like the skull and the upper arm bone. The end goal will be to see what area of the skeleton is the most useful for sex estimation of the youngest individuals.”

University of Manitoba Distinguished Dissertation Awards are given to graduating doctoral students who have been nominated by their faculty/college/school for a dissertation that represents a ground-breaking piece of original work. Each year, one award is offered in each of the following categories: applied sciences, health sciences, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. Awardees receive a $3,000 prize.

When Ontario Education Minister Steven Lecce was blasted for having participated in an anti-Black slave auction as a university student, he became the second politician in recent history to be called out for a past act connected to anti-Black racism.

Once again, Black Canadians and their allies are expected to direct their votes away from politicians (and their political parties) because of anti-Black racist behaviour.

Politicians such as Trudeau and Lecce should apologize for anti-Black racism. However, political parties who share this information publicly during an election should be held equally responsible. Sharing this information to sway voter opinions during an election is insensitive at best, lending itself to anti-Black racism at worst.

It is a political tactic that does nothing to liberate Black Canadians. Instead, it creates a fixed meaning of anti-Black racism in Canada as an essential public concern only during election campaigns.

Instead of looking at anti-Black racism as a series of one-off historical moments, it should be identified as an ongoing systemic issue to be actively challenged and addressed.

Challenging systemic oppression

As a public scholar who looks at anti-colonialism, race, ethnicity and neoliberalism: I am driven to speak out against racial discrimination and related forms of oppression. I urge people to pursue the foundational knowledge required to build race-conscious, safe spaces for Black people in Canada.

On a personal level, I am a Black man who is a proud father of Black children. I am concerned that my children face constant exposure to anti-Black racism. This racism interrupts their social, economic, educational and political engagement in this country. As Robyn Maynard explains in her book, Policing Black Lives, Black children and youth are stripped of the concept of childhood purity afforded to white children, and are viewed by Eurocentric Canadian culture as immoral.

Despite loud calls to address anti-Black racism in Canada, most politicians have failed to do so. Here people gather for a peaceful demonstration to protest police brutality, in Vancouver, May 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Sociologist Tamari Kitossa shows that the persistence of anti-Black racism creates an undeserved disadvantage for Black people, and results in uneven distribution of social justice. White supremacy relates Blackness to the evil and inhumane, while positioning white people as the opposite. This mechanism allows for the continued exploitation of Black people, while white and non-Black Canadians are prevented from empathizing and understanding the trauma of anti-Black racism.

In Canada, anti-Black racism can be traced back to the colonial period, where the nation was built on laws and policies that created segregation in education and employment.

Scholar George Sefa Dei urges Canadians to pursue understanding by closely examining power differentials, including examining the ascribed racial identity for Black Canadians that carries dangerous political stereotypes.

Canadians forgave PM

Lecce’s public apology for his anti-Black racist behaviour was not directed at Canadian Black communities. Instead, his apology broadly homogenized all races and was underscored with the assumption that all racialized people experience racism the same way.

In 2019, after news media reported that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wore blackface while teaching at a Canadian private school, he was apologetic.

Despite this new public information, Trudeau was victorious in the 2019 and 2021 elections. Trudeau’s past anti-Black racist behaviour was not enough to convince Canadians to resist voting for him.

Many argued his expression of anti-Black racism happened years ago. That was enough for Canadians to forgive and move on with our lives.

Anti-Black racism as a tactic

The tactic of uncovering anti-Black racist “indiscretions” during an election campaign is an effort to villainize politicians while upholding a colour-blind version of racism.

American sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva says the failure to recognize colour-blind racism limits our understanding of racial problems, making it difficult to establish policies and practices needed to address racial tensions. At the same time, it functions to fix the public understanding of anti-Black racism in Canada as an alarm-sounder during highly publicized moments.

This tactic does nothing to ease the concerns of Black Canadian communities and instead sustains a public image of Black Canadians as deserving of continuous re-exposure to their trauma. Canadian scholar Philip Howard argues that the failure to address the full continuum of anti-Black racism serves to sustain white Eurocentric Canadian politics, policies and laws. As such, Black Canadians are at risk of continued social oppression with no end in sight.

When anti-Black racism is seen as worthy of acknowledgement and discussion only during an election — it is quickly forgotten after the election’s winner is declared.

Black Canadians, casualty of political wars

Black Canadians continue to be casualties of the political war between major political parties.

Politicians have few policies designed to protect Black children and Black Canadians remain underrepresented within all levels of the Canadian government. Despite loud calls to do so, Canada’s ongoing failure to address anti-Black racism and provide a sense of belonging to Black Canadians is seldom explored. And so the issue of anti-Black racism plagues Black Canadians as it did their ancestors.

Canada’s tolerance of anti-Black racism results in repeated apologies from those in power, without practical solutions to address anti-Black racism.

Francis Darko, a Ph.D student in anthropology at the University of Manitoba contributed to this article.

Forensic researchers like UM master’s student Chenée Merchant and faculty advisor Emily Holland, of the University of Brandon, seek to find new answers hidden in our bones. Merchant’s current study, recognized as a national finalist in the SSHRC Storytellers Challenge, explores new methods for identifying key features of the skull which could hold important clues to our ancestry.

“We’re trying to find a way to determine where in the world a person’s ancestry originates to help speed up the process of identifying skeletal remains,” Merchant says. “Our bones tell the story of our ancestry, and I entered the Storytellers Challenge because sometimes in science we lose sight of the impact on people’s lives. This is a human issue, and I am doing this research for all the people who are living with the trauma of a missing family member.”

The features of the skull which are most indicative of ancestry reside in the mid-face – our eye orbits, nose bones, and cheekbones. Patterns in the shapes of these bone features that can help estimate someone’s ancestry are not immediately recognizable when looking at a person’s face. Forensic researchers reveal these patterns by studying and comparing many population samples. Merchant’s work tests the descriptive terms used to identify these features to make the process more reliable.

The more researchers like Merchant add to the scientific literature, the more useful visual ancestry becomes. This work supports the admissibility of forensic researcher in court and helps to bring justice as well as answers to grieving families.

Merchant faced many obstacles with this project due to restricted access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Her determination found a way forward by using data from teaching collections housed in universities across Canada. For Merchant, this subject is important because, “We need to remember the people who have passed away. We should never stop looking for a way to reunite them with their family, and hopefully give them a little bit of closure.”

The SSHRC Storytellers Challenge top five will be announced May 16, 2022.  You can watch Merchant’s entry here.

Despite the highly publicized 2020 murder of George Floyd and subsequent calls for change, many people of non-African descent around the world have yet to consider the lasting impacts of anti-Black racism.

Anti-Black racism is rooted in the enslavement and historical experiences of people of African descent. It continues to harm Black people and communities, “othering” their existence while creating and maintaining tensions between non-Black and Black people.

As a result of anti-Black racism, non-Black people remain ignorant about how Black people experience discrimination and how it acts as a barrier that suppresses the civic, political and economic success of Black communities in a dominant white society.

Canadian scholars like Carl James and Johanne Jean-Pierre explain anti-Black racism as both historical and contemporary race-based discrimination that upholds white supremacy.

Although George Floyd’s murder was a reminder that anti-Black racism exists in western societies, it also illustrated that race-based discrimination is not homogenous among Black people.

Not homogenous

The murder of George Floyd resulted from anti-Black racism coupled with deep-rooted, stereotypical notions of Black masculinity.

In his book The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood, philosopher Tommy J. Curry demonstrates that Black men are denied social spaces, defined and perceived as brute savages. And sociologist Tamari Kitossa reminds us that Black men and their bodies have been simultaneously hated and dominated by non-Black people. This domination is rooted in a historical belief that Black men are uneducated and savages, which has been perceived as a social truth.

In the eyes of non-Black — especially white — people, George Floyd’s body was deemed unworthy. Black men and their bodies suffer from further discrimination when their gender is perceived as hypersexual, violent and savage. In turn, white settler society responds by attempting to control and “other” the existence of Black men. This attempt leads to social, economic and political barriers, and the murdering of Black men.

Black men and women do not experience the same anti-Black racism. African American studies researcher Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor outlines the unique racial and gender-based oppression experienced by Black women in white capitalist societies that challenges their survival and liberation.

A woman pays respect to George Floyd at a mural at George Floyd Square in April 2021. (AP Photo/Julio Cortez)

Black women continue to experience an upward battle to be recognized. Sociologist Patricia Hill Collins contends that Black women’s social oppression is centred on the intersections of their Blackness, gender and social class. Western societies maintain social inequalities where Black women have to experience more moments of struggle to assert themselves economically and politically in comparison to white women.

Black men do in fact share similar economic and political barriers but their social experiences lead to heightened sense of oppression. For instance, research has demonstrated that Black men’s experiences in education have been more challenging than Black women’s. And Black male youth are more likely to continue to be marginalized as they enter adulthood in comparison to Black women.

Interrogating the difference in social experiences between Black women and Black men can lead to an appreciation of intersectionality. Doing so can help us recognize the comprehensive ways to address social inequality on the axes of race, gender, social class, sexuality, disability and age, which distinctively shape people’s lives.

This all illustrates that anti-Black racism is intersectional and experienced differently by Black people based on various characteristics, including gender and socio-economic status.

Settler-colonial ideology

As a settler-colonial nation, Canada rests on a foundation of white settler-colonial ideology. Anthropologist Eva Mackey illustrates that this underlying ideology results in culturally diverse populations being governed under the confines of Canadian white superiority.

As such, predominant Canadian discourse inevitably erases authentic diversity, offering a presumptive sense of inclusion in its place. This provides a sense of ambiguity that defines non-white Canadians as the “other” under the colonial practices within Canada.

Anthropologists Aisha Beliso-De Jesús and Jemima Pierre bolster this argument, suggesting that white colonial powers control and define racialized groups and normalize social understandings of race.

White supremacy serves as a far-reaching barrier, hindering the ability of Black, Indigenous and other racialized people in Canada to lead healthy lives, receive equal employment opportunities and access suitable education.

Despite this shared barrier, white settler ideology does not consider racialized people’s unique racial divisions. For instance, sociologist Sunera Thobani outlines that racialized immigrants receive inclusion in Canada, albeit tenuous and conditional, while the Canadian government continues to strip Indigenous people of sovereignty.

Although racialized people share a common sense of unbelonging in Canada, their unique experiences of discrimination are based upon their cultural and ethnic associations. In order to understand the lived experiences of non-white Canadians equitably, these unique associations need to be prioritized.

Afro-Indigenous activist Mahlikah Awe:ri along with thousands of people demonstrate during a Black Lives Matter protest in Toronto in 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Homogenized under one acronym

The lived experiences of Black, Indigenous and other people of colour are continuously grouped together under one acronym — BIPOC. Homogenizing or grouping together racialized communities under any one term effectively omits the individuality and unique experiences of racialized people.

This acronym treats all racialized people as a whole, erasing their unique, individual experiences. As a common acronym, BIPOC also assumes a bond and closeness between people of colour. The colour of one’s skin doesn’t automatically equal sameness, apart from white supremacy’s stranglehold and attempted dominance over people who are not white.

In a 2020 New York Times article, art historian Charmaine Nelson writes that the use of BIPOC erases Black, Indigenous, Asian, Southeast Indian lived experiences and there needs to be distinctions drawn between racialized people. Arguably, homogenizing racialized people’s lived experiences erases their lived experiences.

The acronym BIPOC discourages consideration of the intersections of oppression that a racialized person can experience. This colonial way of understanding people invisibilizes racialized people and communities, sustaining ignorance about racism. Homogenizing people, particularly Black people, ignores the intersectional facets of anti-Black racism and sustains a non-understanding of the social oppression Black men and women face.

Solidarity must never be attempted through the erasure and homogenization of people’s experiences. Creating true solidarity among racialized people requires not only unity, but acceptance of, and respect for differences.

Warren Clarke, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, University of Manitoba