Dechinta Faculty, Staff and Board Members

Glen Coulthard is the founder of Dechinta Centre for research and Learning and has been a faculty and board member for 13 years!

Glen is Yellowknives Dene and an associate professor in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies Program and the Departments of Political Science at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Red Skin, White Masks: Rejecting the Colonial Politics of Recognition (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2014), winner of the 2016 Caribbean Philosophical Association’s Frantz Fanon Award for Outstanding Book, the Canadian Political Science Association’s CB Macpherson Award for Best Book in Political Theory in 2014/2015, and the Rik Davidson Studies in Political Economy Award for Best Book in 2016. He is a board member and instructor at the Dechinta Centre for Research and Learning.

Lianne is one of our full-time faculty members at Dechinta Centre! Lianne has been working as a land-based professor at Dechinta since 2021.

Lianne Marie Leda Charlie is Wolf Clan and Tagé Cho Hudän | Big River People (Northern Tutchone speaking people of the Yukon). Her maternal grandparents are Donna Olsen (first generation Canadian of Danish ancestry) and Benedict Larusson (second generation Canadian of Icelandic ancestry), and her paternal grandparents are Leda Jimmy of Tánintsę Chú Dachäk | Little Salmon River and Big Salmon Charlie of Gyò Cho Chú | Big Salmon River. She was born in Whitehorse to her mother, Luanna Larusson, and late father, Peter Andrew Charlie. Lianne grew-up and went to school on unceded Lekwungen territories in what is commonly referred to as Victoria, BC. She has a PhD in Political Science from the University of Hawai`i at Mānoa (UHM). Her research focuses on modern treaty politics in the Yukon, where she now lives. Lianne is multimedia artist and mom to Luka Gyo. She has created community murals in Whitehorse, Łu Ghą, Somba K’e, and Mayo; and co-created four pieces for To Talk With Others (Valerie Salez, 2018), including a life-size hot pink papîer maché bull moose made out of the Umbrella Final Agreement.

Lianne says: “Dä́ninchi’i. Dechinta has made my journey back to the land possible. I'm so grateful to be part of this team and to learn from and alongside my colleagues, students, Elders, and the land. I am most grateful for the opportunities Dechinta has provided for my son, Luka. I get so much joy from watching him fall in love with the land”

Heidi Kiiwetinepinesiik Stark (Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) received her Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, in 2008. Her doctoral research focused on Anishinaabe treaty-making with the United States and Canada and serves as the foundation for her manuscript - Unsettled: Anishinaabe Treaty-Relations and U.S./Canada State-Formation (In progress, University of Minnesota Press, First Peoples Series). Her primary area of research and teaching is in the field of Indigenous Comparative Politics, Native Diplomacy & Treaty and Aboriginal Rights. She is the co-editor of Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories with Jill Doerfler and Niigaanwewidam Sinclair (Michigan State University Press, 2013) and is the co-author of the third edition of American Indian Politics and the American Political System (2010) with Dr. David E. Wilkins.