This is Who I Am: Aboriginal Women's Healing from Criminalization and Problematic Drug Use

Along with being the Research Chair in Substance Abuse, Colleen Anne Dell is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and School of Public Health at the University of Saskatchewan. Dr. Dell is a Senior Research Associate with the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse, Canada’s national non-governmental addictions agency and the Correctional Service of Canada Addictions Research Centre. She is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University and a Research Associate with the National Network for Aboriginal Mental Health Research at McGill University and the Indigenous Peoples’ Health Research Centre at the University of Saskatchewan. She is currently leading a five-year national study of the role of stigma and identity in Aboriginal women’s healing journeys from problematic substance use.

Valerie Desjarlais is a Saulteaux woman and a student of Cree ways. Following her incarceration she earned a Bachelor’s degree in Human Justice from the University of Regina. Valerie is a therapist and trainer in Focusing Therapy, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Domestic Violence, and Chemical Dependency. Valerie’s traditional purpose is to be speaking Cree by the time she is 50 so she could teach her children and grandchildren (all children) to find balance, as well as survive in the modern ways of today and to keep passing down the traditional ways of the ancestors. Valerie’s future academic goal is to work towards a second degree in Specialized Education and obtain her Master’s in Justice Studies.

Jennifer Kilty is Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology at the University of Ottawa. Her primary area of research interest is criminalized women – their experiences of incarceration and reintegration, their adoption of self-harming behaviours, and their construction as ‘violent’, ‘dangerous’ and/or ‘risky’. Using identity and citizenship theories, Professor Kilty examines how different health and mental health statuses come to affect the construction, maintenance, and negotiation of identity in prison and post incarceration. Much of this work is based on discussions of rights and ethics of care, and is framed by a prison abolitionist standpoint.