Our Team

Dr. Alan P. Diduck is a Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies and Sciences. As a professor, he works to ensure students have a better understanding of the relationships among natural and human systems. He carries out these values in his research as well, encompassing environmental governance and the learning implications of involvement, and consequences for social sustainability. Diduck’s work ensures involvement from individuals to communities, allowing for all voices to be heard. Dr Alan P. Diduck is currently a co-investigator for the Wa Ni Ska Tan Hydro Alliance, and is working to provide insight through his experience as a lawyer, as well as his extensive knowledge in natural resources and the environment.

Colin Bonnycastle is the director of the University of Manitoba’s Northern Social Work Program. His time as an associate professor has most recently focused on yearly homelessness counts in Thompson, Manitoba. These counts have served as building blocks for the community to move forward and develop solutions to reduce homelessness. Colin has also been known for his valuable experiential learning processes, allowing students to interact with communities and learn outside of the classroom. For example, his work involving photo voice generated into a community based research project with students in a First Nation regarding water and sewage issues. Colin is currently the principle investigator on a qualitative study entitled “Reestablishing their lives: The issues of affordable housing for women and their children escaping violent relationships in Northern Manitoba”.

Dr. Jerry Buckland, a Canadian Mennonite University Professor of International Development Studies (based at the University of Winnipeg), does research in the field of financial resilience and inclusion including First Nations and Indigenous Communities. One area he is interested in is the relationship between financial resilience and natural resource management, including hydro development projects. Some of his research has found that First Nations have had little inclusion in hydroelectric development projects, including both financial consultation and the co-management of natural resources. Other countries like Australia are facing similar conflicts to Canada when it comes to financial involvement in large resource development projects. In cooperation with the College of Business at RMIT University in Melbourne, Jerry Buckland’s research has drawn comparisons regarding financial resilience and of Indigenous engagement in hydro development in Canada to natural resource planning in Australia.

Dr. Jocelyn Thorpe’s research draws from critical race, feminist, and environmental studies scholarship to examine the history and legacies of, as well as challenges to, colonialism in the Canadian context. She seeks to understand how past discourses and relationships of power lead to and naturalize present-day social and environmental inequities, and to open up possibilities for more just relationships among humans and between humans and the non-human world in which we live.

Her current major project, “Lost Encounters in the ‘New-Found-Land’,” is supported by a five-year SSHRC Insight Grant (2013-2018).  It explores the history of present-day relationships among Indigenous and non-Indigenous Newfoundlanders and the territory they have come to share, with the goals of: contributing a detailed analysis of a little-known history; advancing scholarly understandings of the workings of colonialism, including its relationship with the non-human world; and contributing to decolonizing relationships among humans and between humans and the rest of the world.  Together with Newfoundland Mi’kmaq artist Joanna Barker, she is currently working on the oral history component of the research.

Dr. Marleny Bonnycastle is an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba’s Faculty of Social Work at the Inner City Social Work Program, Manitoba. She worked for five years at the Northern Social Work Program in Thompson, MB. She spends a great deal of her time working with students from communities in northern Manitoba. Her research is focused on university community engagement, homelessness, violence against women, gender and women, and refugees. Dr. Bonnycastle uses Community Based Participatory Research through which she has built strong community relationships in her work in northern Manitoba, and was recently awarded Researcher of the Week by the Centre for Human Rights Research. She hopes her research will promote social change, and encourages her students to do the same.

Dr. Melanie O’Gorman is an Associate Professor in the University of Winnipeg’s Department of Economics. Her current work with the Wa Ni Ska Tan Alliance is two-fold: 1) an analysis of potential revenue-sharing arrangements between Manitoba Hydro and hydro-affected First Nations, and 2) an analysis of the economic losses stemming from hydroelectric development around South Indian Lake. The first project focuses on Manitoba Hydro’s revenue-sharing partnerships and the degree to which they address socio-economic well-being in hydro-affected First Nations. The intention of these revenue-sharing partnerships is to alleviate the negative impacts caused by hydroelectric development, however few affected First Nations have been included in the development of these partnerships, making a new approach to benefit-sharing necessary. The second project is in partnership with the Community Association of South Indian Lake (CASIL) and it will involve quantifying the economy-wide losses resulting from the collapse of the South Indian Lake fishery.

Dr. Stephanie C. Kane, a Professor of International Studies at Indiana University, researches the political ecology of water. From port cities of Brazil, Argentina and Singapore to the Canadian Arctic and subarctic, Kane’s ethnography explores the way river and coastal city inhabitants embed themselves into the planetary crust and negotiate water disasters (flooding, pollution, dispossession).  Her non-fiction creative writing brings geoscience, engineering, law, social life and art into conversation to highlight social justice and environmental justice. New multi-media work of 2016/17 include an audio edition of Where Rivers Meet the Sea and a Sage video talk on “Unconventional Methods…” filmed in the SGIS TV studio. Earlier books include The Phantom Gringo Boat, AIDS Alibis, and, co-edited with Phil Parnell, Crime’s Power.

Dr. Ramona Neckoway is an Assistant Professor at University College of the North and currently serves as the Chair of its Aboriginal Northern Studies Program. As a member of a Hydro-affected community in northern Manitoba (Nisichawayasihk Cree Nation), her research has been shaped by the experiences and encounters of her family and her community.

For more than a decade, Ramona has listened to local perspectives as they relate to the many implications of hydropower. Drawing upon these perspectives and experiences, together with reflecting on broader implications of energy production on Cree homelands in northern Manitoba, she endeavors to create critical spaces that include Indigenous voices, histories, and perspectives thus aiming to open up possibilities for alternative narratives where hydropower and energy production in the north is concerned.

Dr. Neckoway is also the co-lead on a NSERC-funded project designed to offer opportunities for Indigenous youth to learn about science in a culturally relevant and meaningful manner. Shaped by both Indigenous customs and practices and Western scientific traditions, this cross-cultural initiative locates science education through land-based camps that are grounded in and draw from culturally rich Indigenous worldviews led by Indigenous Elders and other local knowledge keepers.