BIO

Victoria Freeman is a Canadian of British settler heritage and is the author of Distant Relations: How My Ancestors Colonized North America.  A writer, public speaker, academic historian and teacher, she seeks to educate herself and facilitate learning for others on decolonization and reconciliation in Canada. She currently teaches in the Canadian Studies Program at Glendon College and in the History Dept. at York University. Her 2010 PhD dissertation, “`Toronto Has No History!’ Indigeneity, Settler Colonialism and Historical Memory in Canada’s Largest City,” focused on the changing historical memory of the Indigenous past of Toronto. She is a member of First Story Toronto, a community-based history project at the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto and has been involved in the development of the First Story smart phone app on the Indigenous history of Toronto.  She was also a member of the organizing committee for The Meeting Place: Truth and Reconciliation Toronto 2012, a conference organized by Toronto Council Fire Native Cultural Centre, in collaboration with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and other organizations. Her 17-minute interview for 8th Fire, a 2011 CBC Television four-part documentary series on reconciliation in Canada, is posted on the CBC website at http://www.cbc.ca/8thfire/2011/11/victoria-freeman.html.  Most recently, she was a participating artist in Restless Precinct, an outdoor art exhibition at Guildwood Park in Scarborough, where she gave a spoken word performance, Stand Up, Stand Out, on the extraordinary nineteenth century Mohawk Oronhyatekha, who built the tallest building in the British Empire in downtown Toronto in 1895.