Partners of Plenty Canada

​Plenty Canada works very closely with Indigenous professionals and elder knowledge keepers who add value to all of its endeavours. Here is a partial list of advisors who’ve assisted the organization or participated in projects and programs over the past year. What becomes evident when reading these brief bios is a combination of technical and academic skills mixed with cultural and humanistic value-based skills. Everyone within the organization takes deep pride in building and sustaining a culture of competency, understanding, and empathy.
 
Tauni and Aalpi Sheldon
 
Tauni Sheldon was born to her Inuit parents from Nunavik but was taken at birth as a Sixties Scoop baby. She was raised by her Qallunaat parents in Milton, Ontario. Tauni has spent her lifetime reconnecting with her biological family, while growing up in the "south.” She became the first female Inuit pilot, having flown in the Arctic for Air Inuit Ltd., and she has worked with federally incarcerated Inuit and Aboriginal men. Currently she works in a social capacity for all Inuit and shares her Inuit culture. Tauni and her son, Aapli embrace the Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit way of learning and she is reconciling her Inuit Rites of Passage.
 
Tehahenteh Frank Miller
 
Tehahenteh Frank Miller is Turtle Clan Kenyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk) from Six Nations of the  Grand River Rotinonhsyon:ni (Haudenosaunee)Territory. He is a fluent Kanyen’kehaka  speaker raised by his grandparents, Harry and Beatrice, who were also fluent speakers. Tehahenteh is dedicated to restoring and revitalizing Indigenous language and culture  through teaching, curriculum development, public lectures, and community programs and ceremonies. In 2000, Tehahenteh co-wrote the Native Languages Curriculum Document,  grades 9 to 12, for Ontario’s Ministry of Education and Training, and in 1994 was a key  contributor to Literacy Ontario’s Kenyen’kehá:ka Ohyatonhkwa’shón:’a Katokénhston  Tekawennatáhkwen (The Mohawk Language Standardisation Project). Tehahenteh is the author of several language textbooks including Karihonnyen:ni (The Teaching), Tsi Niyonkwawennò:ten (The Way We Speak), and Kenyen’kehá:ka (Mohawk Language). He is currently completing a comprehensive, thematic Kenyen’kehá:ka dictionary. Before his foray into Kanyen’kehá:ka teachings Tehahenteh spent 25 years as a commercial artist  and business owner in Toronto, Ontario. He enjoys collecting and processing sap from his sugar bush to create ohses (maple syrup).
 
Barry Sarazin
 
Barry  is an Algonquin language speaker, knowledge keeper, drum carrier, and member of the Kitchissippi Rini Drum Group. He has been involved with Anishinabeg community development since 1981 with the goals of fostering the traditional and customary practices of the Algonquin Anishinabeg First Nations. The community initiatives began while attending University 1987 in North Bay Ontario. In 1990 he moved to Thunder Bay in order to benefit from closer proximity to his traditional teachers who have continually passed on many songs, ceremonies, oral histories, and sacred teachings. He graduated from the Native Teachers Program from Lake head University in Thunder Bay in July 2015. 
 
Presently he resides in Pikwakanagan (Golden Lake, Ontario) working as an Algonquin language and cultural worker for Mndiwin Manido. He works as a community consultant developing his artwork and sits on various committees such as the Pow Wow and the Algonquin Language committees. As a part of his work, he travels to many First Nation communities and organizations to share his traditional teachings. 
 
Albert Marshall
 
Albert Marshall is a highly respected and much loved Elder of the Mi’kmaw Nation. He lives in Eskasoni First Nation in Unama'ki (Cape Breton), Nova Scotia, and is a passionate advocate of cross-cultural understandings and healing and of our human responsibilities to care for all creatures and our Earth Mother. Albert is the “designated voice” with respect to environmental issues for the Mi’kmaw Elders of Unama’ki and sits on various committees that develop and guide collaborative initiatives and understandings in natural resource management, that serve First Nations’ governance issues, or that otherwise work towards ethical, environmental, social, and economic practices. He and his late wife, Murdena, coined the phrase Etuaptmumk (Two-Eyed Seeing) as a guiding principle for collaborative work which encourages learners to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing; learning to use both these eyes together for the benefit of all. Albert was an inmate of the Indian Residential School in Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia, for much of his childhood and teenage years. He was profoundly affected by this experience and it has led him on a lifelong quest to connect with and understand both the culture he was removed from and the culture he was forced into, to help these cultures find ways of living in mutual respect of each other’s positive attributes.
 
Abraham Francis
 
Abraham Francis has a BSc in Microbiology, 2014, and MSc in Natural Resources, 2019, from Cornell University. His past experiences include community empowerment, engagement, and research with the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne and a variety of other community-based organizations. His masters’ thesis focused on applied research to develop a biocultural land stewardship strategy for existing and newly settled Native American Land Claims on the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, Akwesasne. Currently, he works as the environmental science officer for the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne Environment Program. The position allows him to develop and implement projects that are inspired and directed by community needs as well as influenced by his research interests. His research interests are at the intersection of environmental studies, Indigenous methodologies, community engagement, education, health, social services, law, and cultural foundations as a means of advancing empowerment and healing within Indigenous communities.
 
Rick Hill
 
Rick Hill is a citizen of the Beaver Clan of the Tuscarora Nation of the Haudenosaunee at Six Nations of the Grand River. He holds a master’s degree in American Studies from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo. He was the assistant director for Public Programs at the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution; museum director at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and assistant professor of Native American Studies at SUNY Buffalo. Rick also served as senior project coordinator for the Deyohahá:ge: Indigenous Knowledge Centre at Six Nations Polytechnic, Ohsweken, Ontario. Currently, he is the Indigenous innovation specialist at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario. Rick is working with a group of historians on a book that will examine the history and legacy of the Mohawk Institute, the oldest Indian residential school in Canada.
 
Marilyn Capreol
 
Elder Marilyn Capreol is Anishinaabe from Shawanaga First Nation in Ontario and is a founding member of the Conservation through Reconciliation Elder’s Lodge. Marilyn was raised on the waters of Georgian Bay. Throughout her life she has been an active volunteer. For many years she was the president of the Circle of Directors for Na Me Res, a shelter for Indigenous men in Toronto. She is also involved with the Georgian Bay Biosphere and is a member of the Indigenous Circle for the Canadian Biosphere Reserves Association.
 
Dr. Dan Longboat
 
Dr. Roronhiakewen Dan Longboat (He Clears the Sky) is a Turtle Clan member of the Mohawk Nation and a citizen of the Rotinonshón:ni (Haudenosaunee , People of the Longhouse), who hails from Ohsweken in the Six Nations of the Grand River community. He is currently on leave from Trent University where he is an associate professor in the Chanie Wenjack School for Indigenous Studies and acting director of the newly formed Indigenous Environmental Institute. Dan was also the founding director of the Indigenous Environmental Science Studies Program. Dan has also taught at several other post-secondary institutions in Ontario.
 
His Ph.D. is in Environmental Studies at York University with his dissertation, The Haudenosaunee Archipelago: The Nature of Bio-Cultural Restoration and Revitalization, receiving the York Award of Excellence in Scholarship in 2009. While speaking on Indigenous issues across Turtle Island, he stresses the importance of learning from elders and knowledge holders as the critical foundation for Indigenous identity, vision, and life purposes.
 
Pam Perreault
 
Pamela Perreault is a member of Garden River First Nation in Ontario. Her academic and
consulting careers have taken her across Canada and around the world in pursuit of knowledge
and understanding of Indigenous peoples’ connection with forested landscapes. She has
worked with First Nation governments, regional organizations, NGOs, and state governments on
projects related to resource policy development and implementation, land-use planning,
Indigenous housing, community-based research, and the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) and Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) in forest certification.
 
Pamela has been a research fellow at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, a member of the Forest Sciences Board of the British Columbia Ministry of Forests, a program coordinator in the Faculty of Forestry at the University of British Columbia, and a university instructor on Haida Gwaii at Algoma University. She began her academic career in biology, specializing in freshwater ecology at the University of Waterloo. She has a Master’s of Science degree in Forest Management from UBC and is co-editor of the book Aboriginal Peoples and Forest Lands in Canada (UBC Press 2013). In 2014, Pamela returned to her home community of Garden River First Nation with her husband and son where she served as an elected Council member for a 2-year term. Today, she happily lives and works between Vancouver Island in British Columbia and Garden River First Nation.