Presenters

Neria Aylward completed her BA at Cambridge University in Political Theory and Social Anthropology; her research interests are at the intersection of politics, activism and myth-making.

Her current thesis project critically examines the political myth of Muskrat Falls, as seen by settlers to Newfoundland and Labrador. She is currently engaged in fieldwork and archival research primarily in St. John’s, but her main field site is the public sphere of Newfoundland and Labrador -- She is interested less in what goes on “behind closed doors” than in narratives about Labrador that are pervasive and publically available. She views these myths through an intersectional feminist lens, and as such see them as (among other things) racialized and gendered.

Angus Andersen is passionate about his Inuit heritage and history and is an advocate in preserving the language through various community activities. Angus started to speak publicly against the Muskrat Falls Hydro Electric project when then Premier Danny Williams was pushing the project, he stands proudly with the Labrador Land Protectors and Grand River Keepers fighting the mega project. Angus created what he calls "Muskrat falls Water Bottles" which he presents to politicians and asks if they would drink water containing methyl mercury. Angus is also a storyteller, featured monthly at the Crow’s Nest, a soapstone carving teacher and NunaKakKaasimajut Radio Host on CHMR, 93.5 FM.

Stig Bernander has designed or been engaged in major civil engineering works such as bridges, dams, harbors, tunnels, dry docks, off-shore structures, buildings, underground storages and water supply structures in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Monaco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, India, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. After the large landslide in Tuve (Gothenburg, 1977), Stig Bernander began developing a finite difference model for slope stability analysis taking the deformation-softening of soft sensitive clays into consideration. In the model, the mean down-slope deformation in each element caused by normal forces is maintained compatible with the deformation generated by shear stresses.

Roberta Frampton Benefiel is a resident of Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, NL, Canada. She is Co-founder, and Riverkeeper for Grand Riverkeeper Labrador, (GRKL), a member of the New York based Waterkeeper Alliance. Roberta, has been involved with Labrador citizens concerned about the fate of the Grand (a.k.a. Churchill) River since 1998 and actively participated in the joint Provincial and Federal environmental assessment process for the Lower Churchilll Hydroelectric Project, the Labrador Island Transmission Link and the Maritime Link. She is a member of the Canadian Environmental Network (RCEN), and serves on the steering committee of their Environmental Planning and Assessment Caucus, as well as the Provincial affiliate; Newfoundland and Labrador Environment Network (NLEN)

Justin Brake is a reporter for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network in Ottawa, where he covers Parliament Hill and key issues affecting Indigenous people. In his former role as a reporter and editor for TheIndependent.ca Brake covered the Indigenous-led Muskrat Falls protests extensively, work which earned him both civil and criminal charges and a 2016 N.L. Human Rights Award nomination. He is still fighting the charges in court. In 2018 Brake was recognized by the Canadian Committee for World Press Freedom and PEN Canada for his efforts to protect press freedom. He hails from Gander and has lived and worked in St. John's and Bay of Islands.

Kyla Bruff is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Philosophy at Memorial University. Her work primarily investigates the metaphysical commitments of political positions, particularly in classical German philosophy. She is also a feminist and frequently lends a critical voice to political and ecological issues—especially those facing Newfoundland and Labrador. Kyla speaks and works in English, French and German. Many of her publications track the interactions and resonances between 19th and 20th century German and French philosophy. She is the Co-Director of For A New Earth, the Managing Editor of Kabiri, and the Treasurer of the North American Schelling Society.

Denise Cole is a Two Spirit land protector, communications liaison for the Labrador Land Protectors and coordinates the LLP National Solidarity Team. A member of Grand Riverkeeper Labrador and former employee of the Conservation Corp NL, Denise is of mixed Inuit descent from southern Labrador. She has been involved in the resistance to the Lower Churchill Project since 2011, including the Environmental Assessment hearings and numerous nonviolent protection events and campaigns. Denise faces civil charges for performing sacred ceremony on ancestral lands occupied by Nalcor, who are protected by a Supreme Court injunction.

Tracey Doherty was profoundly changed when Nunatsiavut, NunatuKavut and Innu First Nation community members gathered together by the hundreds to protect our lands from the Muskrat Falls development at the 2016 Rally in the Valley. She is the voice in the Liz Solo video, Everything Is Leaking!, crying: “Freedom Of Speech!” when Labrador Land Protectors were arrested for raising our voices against the toxic development that is occurring without free, prior, informed consent. Inspired by energy democracy and environmental justice, she wants to protect Labrador and Canada from further mega dam projects.

Lennart Elfgren returned to Luleå as Full Professor in 1983 and has served as Department Head and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering Sciences. He has studied anchorage of sheet piling in soft clays, anchorage to concrete, fatigue, fracture mechanics and strain-softening materials and, in the last 20 years, assessment and strengthening of existing structures including numerical modelling and full scale testing to failure of bridges. He has been the main supervisor for 14 PhDs and an associate supervisor for another 14. He has published more than 300 papers and reports, see https://ltu.diva-portal.org/

Dr. Jim Feehan was research advisor to the Royal Commission on Renewing and Strengthening Our Place in Canada. He is a former Director of MUN’s Institute of Social and Economic Research as well as the Smallwood Foundation for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies. Currently, he is the editor of the journal, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies. Nationally he is recognized as an expert in public finance and energy economics, and has served on the editorial board of the Canadian Journal of Economics. He has been on Canada’s National Statistics Council and on the executive board of the Canadian Economics Association. In early 2012, he published a C.D. Howe Institute policy brief arguing that the Muskrat Falls project was inconsistent with economic principles.

Greg Hewlett is a writer and ESL instructor currently living in Toronto. Upon moving there in late 2017, he found that with distance from Newfoundland and Labrador came the heightened urge to dig deeper into the project that so threatened the home he’d just left. With the first Muskrat Falls Symposium in Happy Valley-Goose Bay serving as inspiration, Greg set out to capture some of the various angles from which the Lower Churchill Project has failed the province and its people; the attempt was to wrangle an already long and sordid history into the broad strokes of a narrative, giving shape to what for much of the public is an all-too nebulous curse. Chad Pelley graciously agreed to publish what became a 6-part series for The Overcast.

Lisa Moore is an acclaimed Canadian writer and editor established in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.Born in St. John's, Newfoundland, Moore studied art first at College of the North Atlantic in her home province and then at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Although she had intended to follow a career in the visual arts, she now writes full-time. Moore's work primarily takes place in Newfoundland. She has worked to promote different writers and places of the province by compiling local artist’s text and writing articles about Newfoundland communities. In her new book "The Democracy Cookbook" Moore writes a non-partisan approach to "stir up conversations around cabinet tables".

Shiri Pasternak is the author of Grounded Authority: The Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State that tells the story of the Algonquins' rejection of the federal land claims policy in Canada from the perspective of Indigenous law and jurisdiction. Pasternak is also the research director for the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nations-focused think tank based in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson. She has also participated as an ally in the Defenders of the Land steering committee and has been involved in many other solidarity movements over the past decade.

Rhonda Pelley was born in St. John’s Newfoundland. She spent her early childhood in Nelson, British Columbia before returning home with her family when she was 12. She is a second-generation visual artist who employs photography, compositing, collage techniques and data projection to create surreal and evocative images that explore the political and psychological aspects of identity. Pelley’s artwork has been exhibited at the RCA and Leyton Galleries (St. John’s), Galerie Les Territoires (Montreal), the San Francisco Arts Commission, and the Musée de l’Elysée (Switzerland). “The Fever”, a tarot reading for Newfoundland and Labrador is presently being exhibited at The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.

Jessica Penney is a Nunatsiavut Inuk researcher with family from Carbonear and Rigolet, NL, but was raised in Iqaluit, Nunavut. After attending Pearson College UWC in Victoria, she completed her joint honours undergraduate degree in Sociology and Public Policy, and is currently completing an MSc in Global Health at the University of Glasgow. She has also worked as a Policy Analyst in the Department of Health at the Government of Nunavut. Jessica is interested in how global processes operate at the local level to impact health. Her work for the Muskrat Falls Symposium presents the preliminary results of her Master’s fieldwork, which focuses on how the Muskrat Falls project shapes Labrador Land Protectors’ conceptions of health and wellbeing. This work took place in June and July 2018 in the form of interviews, surveys, and a sharing circle in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Jessica can be reached at j.penney.1@research.gla.ac.uk.

Emily Philpott holds a BA(Hons.) in Psychology and Communication Studies from Memorial and recently completed her MA in International Development Studies at York University. For her Master's research, she studied local peoples' perceptions and experiences around the impact of Muskrat Falls in Central Labrador, including a focus on notions of wellbeing and resistance. Emily has shared some of her research at public forums on Muskrat Falls in Labrador and Ontario. Emily has worked on a number of interdisciplinary, community-based research projects in Labrador and is currently working with the MUN Faculty of Medicine in Happy Valley-Goose Bay and Sheshatshiu.

Liz Solo is a performance artist, writer, media artist/machinimator, activist and musician. Liz works independently and as part of collectives and partnerships to produce works that merge the live performance stage with virtual (online, game) environments. Her performances often span multiple venues and online platforms. Liz Solo is co-founder and member of the Black Bag Media Collective and the online performance collectives The Second Front Performance Art Collective.and Actual Virtual. She is a composer and performer with The Avatar Orchestra Metaverse and is the current curator/manager of the Odyssey Contemporary Art and Performance Simulator. She is a musician and composer, known best for her work as a solo recording artist and with The Sauce (2013 – present), TrixXxie (2013 – present), Lizband (1993 – 2013 ), The Black Bags (2002 – 2013), Live Girls (2,000 – 2002) and Red Scare (1987-1991).

Des (Desmond) Sullivan is a businessman based in St. John’s and a graduate of Memorial University. He was the executive assistant to Premier Frank D. Moores (1974-1979) and the senior executive assistant to Premier Brian Peckford (1979-1985). Sullivan is also a former member of the Board of Directors of the Canada-Newfoundland Offshore Petroleum Board (CNLOPB). In the private sector since 1985, and as president of the Sullivan Group of Companies, Sullivan has been engaged as a director in several companies with operations in real estate management, development, commercial leasing and the retail sector. Since March 2012, Sullivan has hosted the Uncle Gnarley Blog. The website is a strictly Newfoundland and Labrador publication which promises “opinions on Newfoundland politics that bite”.

Gerald Vaandering is a working artist with a broad range of exhibition experience spanning the last 26 years, showing mostly across Canada but also the US and England. Gerald works in many different mediums including installations. His work is in many private, corporate and gallery collections, and is also found on CD, book and magazine covers. The bulk of Gerald’s art presents images that are sometimes of a contemporary anthropological look at the relationship between culture and economy.

David Vardy was trained in Economics at Memorial University, the University of Toronto and Princeton University. He served in a number of executive positions, including Clerk of the Executive Council, President of the Marine Institute, Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Chair of the Public Utilities Commission. Early in his career he was a member of the Economics Department at Queen’s University and also worked with the Federal Department of Finance and with the (then) Department of Fisheries and Environment. He is former director of the Public Policy Research Centre and currently an Associate of the Harris Centre at Memorial. He is also a founding member of the Muskrat Falls Coalition of Concerned Citizens.

Robin Whitaker teaches Anthropology at Memorial University of Newfoundland and is President of MUNFA, the union representing Memorial’s Academic Staff Members. Her research focuses on Northern Ireland and Newfoundland and Labrador, where she has explored questions of gender, political culture, democracy and citizenship, abortion access, and household debt. She has been a board member and columnist for The Independent, sits on the board of the international reproductive rights organization, Women Help Women and has been known to advocate for cycling of all kinds.

#MuskratMUN

Neria Alyward

MPhil Student in Development Studies at Oxford University

Angus Anderson

Inuk Artist and Activist

Stig Bernander

Civil Engineer

Roberta Benefiel

Co-founder, and Riverkeeper for Grand Riverkeeper Labrador

Justin Brake

Reporter for the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network

Kyla Bruff

PhD Candidate, Department of Philosophy, Memorial University.

Denise Cole

Two Spirit Land Protector, Communications Liaison for the Labrador Land Protectors

Steve Crocker

Associate Professor, Sociology Department, Memorial University

Tracey Doherty

Labrador Land Protector and Grand Riverkeeper

Jennifer Dyer

Head of the Department of Gender Studies at Memorial University

Lennart Elfgren

Civil Engineer

Jim Feehan

Editor, Newfoundland and Labrador Studies

Greg Hewlett

Writer

Lisa Moore

Writer

Shiri Pasternak

Writer

Rhonda Pelley

Visual Artist

Jessica Penney

Nunatsiavut Inuk Researcher

Emily Philpott

Researcher

Liz Solo

Artist

Des Sullivan / Uncle Gnarley

Businessman, Blogger

Gerald Vaandering

Artist

David Vardy

Founding Member of the Muskrat Falls Coalition of Concerned Citizens.

Robin Whitaker

Professor, Anthropology Department, Memorial University

Muskrat Falls Symposium

September 28 & 29, 2018#MuskratMUN

September 28 & 29, 2018
#MuskratMUN