Candace Brunette-Debassige (Playwright/Researcher)

Flight: Indigenous Women’s Leadership Stories in Canadian Universities

Situated on a fictitious university campus, Flight explores two Indigenous women’s stories as they set out to implement a reconciliation policy and transform the academy through collective and ancestral Indigenous leadership efforts. In the process, the women encounter age-old colonial tropes about Indigenous peoples and women and find themselves caught between university administrative systems and the Indigenous communities they serve. In this paradoxical world, Weesakeechahk (in goose form) shows up to guide the women and have some fun in the process. This work-in-progress builds on previously published academic research done by the playwright in 2021. 

Biography

Candace Brunette-Debassige is of the Mushkegowuk Cree Nation and member of Peetabeck in Treaty 9 Territory with Cree and French settler lineage. Born and raised in small town northeastern Ontario, Candace now makes the Deshkan zibing (Antler River area in London Ontario) her home where she works as an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Western University. As a scholar and storyteller, Candace is profoundly shaped by Indigenous stories as theories, and as pedagogical tools for teaching along with doing research with Indigenous communities. She is the author of Tricky Grounds a 2023 book focusing on Indigenous women’s leadership experiences in postsecondary institutions. Tricky Grounds was awarded the 2021 George L. Geis dissertation of the year award by the Canadian Society for Studies in Higher Education, for its groundbreaking approach to restorying the complexly challenging and paradoxical embodied experiences of Indigenous women labouring in Canadian universities post the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.