Haudenosaunee activist Dawn Martin-Hill on decolonization and water – Canadian Geographic
Mar 12, 2025
The educator and activist on decolonization, social justice and why water is at the heart of everything
This article originally appeared at biinaagami.org, a change-provoking initiative seeking to uplift the stories of the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence watershed.
At the end of a conspicuously canoe-shaped room on the McMaster University campus, professor emeritus Dawn Martin-Hill reflects on her academic career. A clothed table by her side holds reminders of her home in Ohswé:ken — Six Nations of the Grand River. While not distinctly Kanyen’kehà:ka, the beaded turkey feather and sticky remains of medicines-turned-ash in an abalone shell quietly nod to Martin-Hill’s advocacy for Indigenous students and their place at the university. She founded the Indigenous studies program as a graduate student in 1992 and has spent the three decades since researching, teaching and championing water security.
On her motivations
I’ve always been a social justice person. It’s in your DNA — where you just can’t stomach to see injustice towards anyone. When I started university, I would point out the erroneous assumptions that they [professors] were making, and I was very critical when I saw racism in the academy. They [academics at the university] had no idea they were projecting European social mores and values onto Indigenous people. But they said Indigenous knowledge was just mythology, and I could not use it [in my academic writing]. Everything was a fight. There was never a time I wasn’t at war with something or someone.
