I study the social relations through which authoritative knowledge – the knowledge that counts – is constructed and applied in cultural, social service, and healthcare organizations, particularly in efforts to address structural inequities. I carry out my research in varied settings ranging from museums to community centers, clinics, and schools. I work primarily with Indigenous peoples for whom my research has significant policy and applied implications, and my work centers on collaborative, community-driven, and participatory approaches to research that promote Indigenous knowledge frameworks to scholarship and research that is meaningful to community.

I am especially interested in how responsibility, choice, identity, and healing are shaped in relation to technological innovations, and the meaning people make from collective memory and engagements of the past in the present. Several of my research projects study the intersection of gender, culture, and perspectives on human/non-human relations in Indigenous women’s work and activism experience in community history, heritage item making, and education. I am currently examining materialities of Indigenous sovereignty in the meaning-making processes engaged by Indigenous peoples with museum objects of social and cultural significance. I have also focused a lot of my research on the pressing health issues which disproportionately impact Indigenous communities as a result of the structural forces of settler colonialism, especially diabetes.