January 2021
Congratulations to FNIS Professor Daniel Heath Justice, who has been appointed Officer of the Order of Canada. Those appointed to the Order of Canada are recognized for their extraordinary contributions to the nation that inspire, teach and show the way forward to creating a better country.
Daniel, who is a Cherokee Nation enrolled citizen and was raised in Colorado, became a Canadian citizen in 2009. He received this recognition for his “for his prolific contributions to the field of contemporary Indigenous studies in Canada and abroad.”
Daniel currently holds the Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Literature and Expressive Culture and is a professor with First Nations and Indigenous Studies at UBC on unceded Musqueam territory. Daniel teaches, inspires and guides FNIS students in our practicum program.
His most recent book is Why Indigenous Literatures Matter, a literary manifesto about the way Indigenous writing works in the world. Daniel’s current projects include Raccoon (in the Animal Series from Reaktion Books), Allotment Stories: Narrating Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege (an edited collection on Indigenous land privatization and allotment co-edited with White Earth Ojibwe historian Jean M. O’Brien, from the University of Minnesota Press), and a long-gestating Indigenous steampunk novel.
Congratulations for the well-deserved recognition, Daniel!