H.E.A.L. Team

Dr. Sarah de Leeuw
Contributor

Sarah de Leeuw is a professor and the Research Director of the Health Arts Research Centre. Shortlisted for a Governor General’s Literary Award (non-fiction), she holds two CBC Literary Prizes for creative non-fiction and the Dorthey Livesay BC Book Prize for poetry. Author/editor of eleven books, de Leeuw is a Canada Research Chair (Humanities and Health Inequities) with the Northern Medical Program in Prince George, a distributed site of UBC’s Faculty of Medicine. She grew up on Haida Gwaii and now divides her time between Lheidli T’enneh/Dakelh Territory (Prince George) and Syilx Territory (Okanagan Centre), BC.

Lisa Striegler
Contributor

Lisa Striegler is a Research Manager at the Health Arts Research Centre in the Northern Medical Program at UNBC. For the bulk of her career she has been a social justice community educator and counsellor. She is an amateur performing artist, playwright, and poet; and has quite a loyal following comprised of people who share her DNA...

Lisa is a trained Forum Theatre facilitator and, for her Master’s thesis, used that method to explore the effects of anti-Indigenous racism on community health in Saik’uz territories.

Nicole Halbauer
X’staam Hana’ax

 X’staam Hana’ax is Nicole’s Tsimshian name, it means Victorious Woman. Nicole is a member of the Tsimshian Nation, Ganhada (Raven) Clan, of Kitsumkalum. She deeply values family and cultural connections.

She is excited to be supporting the H.E.A.L. (Hearts-based Education and Anti-colonial Learning) research program at UNBC. She has spent much of her career in related fields and knows from personal experience that practical decolonization training tools are a critical missing element in most institutions in Canada.

Both her education and her political activism in social equity have led her to positions where she could focus on decolonizing and championing change in health-related sectors. Most recently this was as Interim Director at the Terrace Women’s Resource Centre, and previously as Interim Director for the Pacific Northwest Division of Family Practice Physicians. 

She continues to work with her children and grandchildren to restore her culture including harvesting traditional foods, storytelling, and revitalizing the Smalgy’ax language.

After a long day of smashing the patriarchy, Nicole relaxes by knitting and immersing herself in her land with her much-loved horses, dogs, and chickens.

Michelle Roberge
Digital Archivist and Designer

Michelle Roberge lives with her family tucked away in the trees on a beautiful west facing hill just north-east of Vanderhoof within the traditional territories of Saik’uz Whut’en. Here, when not working her day job(s), she grows food with her husband and children on their off-grid farm.

Inspired by her childhood of catching (trying to catch) fish on the ocean and lakes of Vancouver Island, Michelle pursued a Bachelor of Science degree in Ecology and Environmental Biology at UBC, and immediately followed it with a Master of Science degree in Zoology. Although Michelle started her working life as a fisheries biologist – which brought her to northern BC over 20 years ago – her life and career in Vanderhoof has led her down many different and intersecting paths and experiences working in graphic design, health, education, agriculture, and anti-racism awareness.

Michelle is honoured to join the HARC team to support the Hearts-based Education and Anti-colonial Learning (H.E.A.L.) project at UNBC as the digital archivist and designer.

Lisa Boivin

Lisa Boivin is a member of the Deninu Kue First Nation in Denendeh (Northwest Territories). She is an interdisciplinary artist and the first Indigenous PhD candidate at the Rehabilitation Sciences Institute at University of Toronto, Temerty Faculty of Medicine. Lisa uses images as a pedagogical tool to bridge gaps between medical ethics and aspects of Indigenous cultures and worldviews. She paints, collages and orates image-based stories that address the colonial barriers Indigenous patients navigate in the current healthcare system. Lisa strives to humanize clinical medicine as she situates her art in the Indigenous continuum of passing knowledge through images.

Lisa Munro
Research Support

Lisa has supported the work of the Health Arts Research Centre for more than 10 years, through the Northern Medical Program when she worked as Research and Faculty support. Lisa has enjoyed learning about Health Humanities and its unique application in the NMP. Lisa’s first response is always “I want to help” So, when the HARC team invited Lisa to join the Heal Healthcare project, she jumped at the opportunity to use her skills to more specifically support this project.

Kelsey Chamberlin
Communications Manager

Kelsey works with the Health Arts Research Centre and the H.E.A.L. Team as Communications Manager. Kelsey is a recent graduate of the Master of Interdisciplinary Studies program at UNBC, where she studied under the supervision of Dr Sarah de Leeuw. Her master’s research explored the perinatal well-being of young people living in rural, northern, and Indigenous geographies.

Kelsey lives in the Widzin Kwah Valley in Witsuwit’en Territory, where she frequently collaborates with other creative folks to produce arts- and land-based projects oriented around Indigenous Sovereignty, community well-being, and body movement. Kelsey is also a doula who supports families navigating all outcomes of pregnancy.

Outside of work, you’ll find Kelsey growing vegetables and flowers in the community garden, weaving textiles on her loom, and smashing the patriarchy in outdoor sports.

Gregory Prosser
Web Development and Support

Gregory lives with his wife Esther and their 3 fur babies, in Prince George on the traditional unceded territory and ancestral home of the Lheidli T'enneh.

He is a partner at Concept Design, working in web development that is focused on thoughtful solutions for their clients, tailoring management systems to match the needs of each of their clients.

In addition to his web development work, he holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from York University, and can often be found with a trumpet in hand in the local music scene.

Carolyn Melro

Carolyn M. Melro is a Killam Scholar and recent PhD graduate from Dalhousie University. Dr. Melro’s doctoral dissertation explored what works, why, and how when developing educational content on Indigenous Peoples experiences with historical and ongoing colonialism. Her research unearthed the overreliance of knowledge-based outcome evaluations of educational opportunities to teach about Indigenous Peoples experiences in Canada and the limits to these evaluation designs. She further found that these educational opportunities can have unintended effect, no effect at best or worse wherein the learners’ blaming attitudes, sense of professional responsibility, and support for government social action and policy worsened at the end of the course. Within her dissertation she called for exploring learners’ affective reaction to learning about Indigenous Peoples traumatic experiences with historical and on-going colonialism. One such way of evoking emotion is through the use of arts and humanities, she looks forward to exploring this as a HARC fellow. Carolyn is a Settler researcher first generation born Canadian to Portuguese immigrant parents and currently lives in Mi’Kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq.

Logan Burd

Taanishi, Logan Burd dishinihkaashoon (Hello, my name is Logan Burd).

Logan Burd (she/her) is a Citizen of the Métis Nation British Columbia, with mixed Blackfeet, Cree, Métis, and European ancestry. Logan’s Métis family names include Bird, Smith, Allard, and Boucher. She grew up and currently lives, learns, and works on the traditional and unceded territory of the Syilx Okanagan Peoples, colonially known as Kelowna, BC. Logan is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus in the Interdisciplinary Studies – Community Engagement, Social Change, Equity theme. Logan’s dissertation is nested within the established Community-Led Action for Resiliency Important Throughout Youth (CLARITY) research program promoting upstream prevention of youth suicide, led by Dr. Sana Shahram and Dr. Katrina Plamondon. Her dissertation will focus on centring Métis youth voices in community-driven and culturally responsive research to reimagine how youth suicide prevention is understood, designed, and measured using strength-based approaches to transition language and narratives towards focusing on life promotion.

Logan holds a Master’s in Public Health (MPH) from Simon Fraser University and a Bachelor of Art (BA) in Psychology from the University of British Columbia Okanagan campus. Her relations and connections to her ancestors, family and community are centred around reciprocal practices of being involved and giving back to her Métis community and the Nation through being a founding member of the Métis Youth Mental Health and Wellness Initiative and a Métis Youth Advisory Committee member for the Ooma La Michinn (Here is Medicine) Life Promotion program hosted through Métis Nation British Columbia. In her free time, she loves beading, weaving, drinking tea with Elders and community members, and taking her miniature dachshund Kipp out for walks.

Sarah Graham

Sarah is a queer white settler who has lived on the lands of the lək̓ʷəŋən and WSÁNEĆ peoples for the past 10 years. She has worked in a wide range of community-based organizations doing youth support, health education, harm reduction, and violence prevention work. Currently, she is a Violence Prevention and Response worker for an organization which serves current and former sex workers.

Sarah completed a BA in Political Science and Social Justice Studies and is now working on her Master of Social Work through the University of Victoria. In her upcoming thesis research, Sarah hopes to identify principles for anti-violence education which support young people to learn about sex, communication, and intimate relationships in meaningful ways that raise the bar far above consent. Her research will draw upon sex-positive decolonial work from feminist and anti-racist studies while collaborating with her colleagues in the local anti-violence community.

In the evenings you can often find Sarah walking her young rescue dog Kaia by the water or reading science fiction at home.

Shannon Webb-Campbell
Poet

 Shannon Webb-Campbell is of Mi’kmaq and settler heritage. She is a member of Flat Bay First Nation (No’kmaq Village) in Ktaqmkuk/Newfoundland. Her books include: the forthcoming Re: Wild Her (Book*hug 2025), Lunar Tides (2022), I Am a Body of Land (2019), and Still No Word (2015), which was the recipient of Egale Canada’s Out in Print Award. Shannon holds a PhD in English/Creative Writing from the University of New Brunswick, and is the editor of Visual Arts News Magazine and Muskrat Magazine