Biography

John Waaseyaabin Hupfield is Anishinaabe from Wasauksing First Nation. Currently living and working in Toronto, he is a grass dancer, urban Indigenous community member, and father/uncle raising his 2 daughters and 3 nieces alongside his partner of 17 years. Hupfield completed his MEd and PhD at York University where he researched the role powwows, kinship systems, and the ‘dance spirit’ play within Anishinaabe contexts of education and pedagogy. He teaches at York University in the Faculty of Education and recently took on the role as Wuleelham Director, overseeing the Waaban Indigenous teacher education program, and the Urban Indigenous Masters cohort. His family travels the powwow trail extensively, bringing them across Turtle Island to dance, sing, and pray in a good way.

Within his work, he centres relationality, place-based knowledge, and the importance of dibaajimowinaan (stories) as core tenets of his pedagogical stance. As an intergenerational residential school survivor, his mother attended the state-run Mohawk Institute Residential school, he witnessed first hand the impacts of assimilationist policy and its impacts on the Anishinaabeg nation. Intergenerational trauma, loss of family and kin, rampant self-medicating, poverty, the 60s scoop impacted both Hupfield and his partner’s family, resulting in myriad ruptures and disconnections of kin. His work’s central goal is to centre and assist in the revitalization of Anishinaabewin, the cultural ways of knowing and being, that have helped the Anishinaabeg nation thrive pre-contact, survive colonization in its early stages, and contribute to cultural continuity into future generations.

Courses Taught

• Issues in Indigenous Education (ED/EDST 2200)
• Place and Learning (ED/EDST 1200)