The CHA Nominating Committee

Brian Gettler is an historian of colonialism in Quebec and Canada and Assistant Professor in the Departments of Historical Studies and History at the University of Toronto. He has published articles in both French and English on among other things monetary space, on-reserve retail, Indigenous peoples and narratives of nation in Quebec, and the TRC’s historical research. His book, Colonialism’s Currency: Money, State, and First Nations in Canada, 1820-1950 (published in June 2020), analyzes money as both a symbol around which discourses of appropriate behaviour and national character were articulated and as a concrete tool in the governance of peoples and lands. His current research explores public finance and Crown-First Nations fiscal relations as well as Indigenous participation in the credit economy of the St. Lawrence Valley, both in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Brian is a member of the Montreal History Group and sat on the board of directors of Recherches amérindiennes au Québec for nearly a decade.

I have a PhD in History from York University and am currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Ryerson University. Up to now, my work has focused primarily on the histories of food, Indigenous health and the politics of settler colonialism. My current research, however, focuses specifically on the history of human biomedical experimentation on Indigenous peoples during the second half of the twentieth century.

Much of my work is interdisciplinary and collaborative and nature which is, perhaps, exemplified by my most recent co-authored book, Uncertain Harvest: The Future of Food on a Warming Planet (with Sarah Rotz and Evan Fraser), which was published by University of Regina Press 2020. I am also very much concerned with the intersections between history and public policy and have written extensively, for instance, on Canada’s progress towards meeting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action. This includes my work with Eva Jewell on the December 2020 Yellowhead Institute Special Report, Calls to Action Accountability: A 2020 Status Update on Reconciliation.

Angela Tozer is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the University of New Brunswick. She is of Tamil-Canadian heritage, and lives on the unceded and unsurrendered lands of the Welastekwewiyik, protected by the Peace and Friendship Treaties. She researches in Canadian history with a focus on the 19th century, and investigates the relationship between capitalism and settler colonialism. Her current book manuscript, Universal Nation: The Canadian Public Debt and the Making of the Settler State, 1820-1880 (forthcoming, University of British Columbia Press) examines the history of the Canadian public debt and its interdependence with settler colonialism. Her current research project ‘The lifeworlds of eels: Global capital and the development of Mi’kmaw and settler fisheries, 1850-1928’ explores the history of Maritime eel fisheries and describes the entanglement between global capital, treaty rights, ‘moderate livelihood’ Indigenous fisheries, federal and provincial jurisdiction, and ‘conservation’ in light of our current climate crisis.

Jennifer Tunnicliffe is an Assistant Professor in History at the Toronto Metropolitan University. Her research focuses on Canadian and international human rights history, histories of social movements and resistance, and the history of hate speech laws in Canada. She is the author of Resisting Rights: Canada and the International Bill of Rights, 1947-1976 (UBC Press, 2019) and co-editor of Constant Struggle: Histories of Canadian Democratization (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021). Her current book project, Drawing the Line: Free Speech and the Regulation of Hate in Canadian History, examines the evolution of Canada’s hate speech laws through a human rights framework, situating Canadian policy in a global context.