The Fight for Rights and Inclusion in Canadian Schooling

Patricia Kmiec is an interdisciplinary educator, researcher, and historian. She holds a PhD in Social Justice Education from the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on children's experiences with religious education in nineteenth and twentieth-century Canada. Along with publishing on the history of childhood and schooling, she has contributed to various legal and educational projects related to human rights and education. She currently teaches in the History Department at the University of Ottawa.

Dr. Karine Duhamel is an Anishinaabe-Métis historian and a member of Red Rock Indian Band in northwestern Ontario. She has extensive expertise and experience in dialogue-based, reconciliation-centered and trauma-informed approaches to research and engagement in various fora, including in the design and delivery of guided dialogues bringing together impacted family members and survivors of violence during her tenure as Director of Research for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) from 2018 to the end of its mandate in 2019. In 2021, she was awarded the  Bruce and Liz Welch Community Dialogue Award through the Simon J. Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University, where she serves remotely as an Indigenous fellow, consulting with organizations on the design and delivery of trauma-informed dialogue spaces involving Indigenous people and other underrepresented groups. In her current role as Director of Indigenous Strategy with the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, she works closely with Indigenous students, academics and community partners to co-design the implementation plan for the strategy to support Indigenous research.