Cynthia J. Alexander

Cynthia J. Alexander is a political scientist and policy analyst who has been working with and for Indigenous peoples for forty years. She is the co-author of a book about multi-stakeholder consensus-based decision-making, A Stake in the Future: Redefining the Canadian Mineral Industry (UBC, 1997), co-authored with Dr. Mary Louise McAllister. She is the co-editor of Digital Democracy: Policy and Politics in the Wired World with Dr. Leslie Pal (Oxford, 1998). She served as the academic principal on a community-driven initiative to create a bilingual (Inuktitut and English) website, including an interactive film (www.InuitQ.ca), to illustrate how ancient and ever-evolving Inuit knowledge and ways of being inform contemporary policy issues. She has collaborated with the Mi'kmaq First Nation for almost twenty years, including on the creation of an historic memorandum of agreement to create a welcoming and safe space for Indigenous students and community members on her campus. As a yoga and pilates instructor, she has been collaborating with a Mi'kmaq cultural teacher to create restorative spaces for Indigenous communities and for university campus members. As a settler scholar, Alexander continues to work to decolonize herself.