Team

Dr. Joshua Schwab Cartas

Principal Investigator

Dr. Joshua Schwab Cartas is a mixed race Indigenous Binnizá-Austrian researcher, filmmaker, parent and language revitalization activist, with over 20 years of lived experience of working with Indigenous youth and Elders in his maternal grandfather’s community, as well as many other Indigenous communities in North America. He is also an Assistant Professor at NSCAD University in the division of Art History and contemporary culture, specifically teaching in the Masters of Art Education department. Schwab Cartas is a leading specialist in cellphilming, a participatory visual method that uses participants’ own cell phones and their everyday media making skills to address social and or community concerns. More specifically he developed a cellphilm method grounded in his ancestral binnizá epistemology to create a culturally responsive approach to researching language revitalization and cultural preservation. As a parent, Schwab Cartas alongside other Indigenous students, staff and faculty have collaboratively developed a series of culturally sustaining workshops celebrating Indigenous languages, foodways and culture from across Turtle Island. These initiatives are aimed at exploring how when arts are coupled with cultural practices can help Indigenous students feel more connected to their ancestral lifeways, such as languages, land based practices and traditional food practices. The ultimate goal of these workshops are to create events and spaces where Indigenous students feel they can be in community, while being heard, seen and represented on campus.

Sydney Wreaks

Project Coordinator

Sydney Wreaks, a mixed euro-settler and Kanien’keha:ka On:kwe. Their maternal ties are directly related to the Van Slyck lineage, who are familiar to upstate New York. As an artist, educator and researcher, they focus on socially engaged participatory projects that challenge colonial narratives, by refocusing on community and care. Turning to ways we build and celebrate connecting, that inherently disrupt notions of individualism.

Sydney completed both their Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master’s in Art Education at NSCAD University.

Natalie Laurin

Artist and Collaborator

Natalie Laurin (she/her) is a Métis and settler illustrator and interdisciplinary designer. She is from the Dusome-Clermont family line with roots in the Georgian Bay Métis community. Natalie holds a Bachelor of Design from NSCAD University, where she majored in Interdisciplinary Design and minored in Illustration. A central goal of her work is to create with a respectful, informed, and collaborative approach, especially when designing for communities other than her own. By using her talents to illustrate books for Indigenous children, she hopes to inspire youth to engage in our collective revitalization journey through themes of community and relationship-building. She is the illustrator of Andy’s Tribal Canoe Journey, Nipugtug, and the Cedar School Decodables series.

Natalie facilitated the drum-painting workshops part of Living Our Languages in March 2025. Participants were invited to paint on rawhide hand drums with designs highlighting themes of language revitalization, or depicting their own language-learning journey.

Anissa Peralta

Research Collaborator

Anissa Martins Peralta a Brazilian artist, researcher, and arts educator based in Halifax, Canada. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Art Education at NSCAD University. With a background in Arts & Crafts, Graphic Design, and International Relations, her practice centers on intersectionality, memory, decolonial narratives, and textile-based art.

Anissa’s creative and pedagogical work weaves together sensory experiences, community engagement, and ancestral knowledge, often rooted in her mixed heritage of Guarani Indigenous, Black, and European descent. She explores embroidery, crochet, and other tactile materials as tools of resistance and storytelling, particularly uplifting the voices and experiences of Black, Indigenous, and Women of Color (BIWOC).

She first joined the Land Connects Us project as a Research Assistant and now serves as its Project Manager. Led by Professor Joshua Schwab-Cartas, this international initiative fosters cultural exchange and Indigenous solidarity through collaborative activities across Mexico, Atlantic Canada, Indigenous territories, and digital platforms. In her current role, she coordinates partnerships, communications, and community engagement.

Anissa is also a Research Assistant for the Design and Visual Narratives project, affiliated with the Institute for Art, Community, and Transdisciplinary Studies (InACTS) at NSCAD. Under the supervision of Dr. April Mandrona (NSCAD) and Shakara Russell (Dalhousie University), she contributes to the development of visual methodologies and community-based storytelling practices.

In addition to her research, Anissa has supported public engagement at the Mount Saint Vincent University Art Gallery and volunteered with organizations such as Alumni Canada-Brazil and SEBRAE, helping bridge visual communication with public education.

Her recent contributions, including the exhibition Reconnecting to the Land through Urban Gardens, Travelling Images: Mi’kma’ki, and Xandú: Honoring Our Ancestors, participation in conferences, and co-authored publications, reflect her commitment to collaborative, intercultural, and decolonial approaches to art. Through her work, Anissa continues to create spaces for relationality, memory, resistance, visibility, care, and connection, where art becomes a vehicle for healing, remembrance, and transformation.

Diego Mañas

Research Associate

Diego Bitencourt Mañas is a PhD student in Indigenous Food Sovereignty at Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT). He brings an interdisciplinary background to this project, encompassing a BSc and BEd in Biological Sciences and an MSc in Ecology (Ethnoecology) from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. His professional journey has consistently interwoven educational practice, from direct instruction to the development of learning materials, with rigorous academic exploration. Since 2014, he has been actively researching in fields related to Ethnoecology/Ethnoscience, Historical Ecology, Nutritional Anthropology, and Food Sovereignty. He has expertise in conducting ethnographic work across Brazil, Peru, and Canada. Within this project, Diego’s primary contribution lies in his ability to analyze complementary food production, cooking, and processing methods through the lens of food security and sovereignty. Furthermore, he will be instrumental in capturing and preserving the rich knowledge systems of elders and youth, specifically as these are manifested through artistic expression, linguistic traditions, and material culture that embody ancestral and contemporary wisdom.

Tania Fuentes Villa

Artist and Collaborator

Tania Fuentes (she/her) is a Mexican Visual Communication Designer and art educator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She holds a Bachelor’s in Design from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), Master’s degrees in Art Education (NSCAD University) and Design and Animation (Glasgow School of Art), and a Certificate in Gallery and Studio Management from the Anna Leonowens Gallery.

With over a decade of experience, she has worked as an Art Director in Mexico City and co-founded her own design studio in 2017. Her expertise spans editorial design, photography, multimedia, and cultural heritage preservation. She has published articles on cultural heritage preservation through design and participated in academic conferences at the Autonomous Metropolitan University, the National Institute of Anthropology and History, and The International Colour Association. Her recent research focuses on museums and immigrants in the Canadian context, exploring issues of representation, identity, belonging through community-based research methods and participatory methodologies.

Currently an instructor in NSCAD University’s Design Department, Tania previously served as Digital Art Program Director at Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (Tecnológico de Monterrey), where she also taught as a professor. Her work bridges traditional and digital design practices, supported by specialized training in illustration, composition, photography from UNAM, and extensive pedagogical development at Tecnológico de Monterrey.

Pedro Hernández

Artist and Collaborator

Pedro Hernández Antonio is a multidisciplinary artist from Unión Hidalgo, Oaxaca. For the past 18 years, he has worked as a visual arts instructor through his project “Picasso for Children,” offering art workshops in educational institutions and government spaces throughout the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.

A craftsman at heart, Pedro’s work spans painting, sculpture, muralism, and the restoration of traditional and sacred objects. He is well recognized in his community for preserving and revitalizing elements of popular art, including the restoration of religious imagery and traditional furniture such as wooden trunks.

In 2015, driven by his lifelong love of comic books, he launched the literacy initiative “Héroes de la Lectura” (Heroes of Reading), visiting elementary schools to inspire a passion for reading among children. In 2018, he ventured into design with the creation of Bet’s, a handmade jewelry line inspired by the gastronomy, textiles, flora, and fauna of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The pieces celebrate the strength, elegance, and beauty of local women.

Pedro Hernández is a cultural promoter, educator, and emerging creator deeply connected to his homeland. His work, whether on canvas, clay, recycled materials, or any surface that can be transformed, always carries a message. Above all, he seeks to inspire imagination, creativity, and hope in future generations.

Mads Warnica-Power

Research Assistant

Mads Warnica-Powers (they/them) is a queer non-binary white settler from Scandinavia/Denmark, working and living as an uninvited guest on the unceded and ancestral territory of Kjipuktuk in Mi’kma’ki. They are an aspiring community arts pedagogist, interdisciplinary craftsperson, research assistant and diviner who moves through the world attuned to the wisdom shaped by their lived experiences of learning disabilities, neurodivergence, Madness, and fatness.

Driven by curious-led resiliency, their practice dwells in the tactile pathways where personal and collective healing meets. Through multisensorial listening and hands-on inquiry, they explore how healing can emerge from the alchemical interplay between grief, queerness, and embodied meaning-making. Their interdisciplinary approach invites a (re)imagining of what art education can be, a field for aliveness, restorative rituals, and transformative care-based collaboration.

Their contribution to Living our Languages (2024), a collaborative community project and exhibition part of Land Connects Us, included the making of twenty leather seed pouches that were gifted to participants and facilitators. Mads participated in the becoming of XANDÚ: Honouring Our Ancestors (2024) and most recently Sydney Wreaks’ Gathering in a Good Way: Honouring Relationships through Shared Medicine and Care (2025), a Nocturne installation composed of medicinal-based garden boxes that offer a way to transform our relationship with difficult sites of colonial history, through community gathering and land stewardship.

Through Land Connects Us, Mads upholds a steadfast commitment to their settler responsibilities by practicing accountability through meaningful action. This commitment is grounded in trust-building with connections in community and is carried out through ongoing self-reflexivity, deep listening and an ethical responsiveness to harm, taking responsibility by acknowledging mistakes and making reparative efforts rooted in reciprocal consent. Mads holds space for difficult truths and remains present with the discomfort that they may bring, understanding that trust and accountability are built over time, through care-based actions and relational integrity.

Xinran Pang

Research Assistant

Xinran Pang is a Chinese visual designer, researcher, and art educator based in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Originally from Inner Mongolia, China, she brings more than a decade of professional experience in visual communication and graphic design, with a background in branding, exhibition design, digital media, and visual storytelling. She is currently pursuing a Master of Arts in Art Education at NSCAD University.

Growing up on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia shaped Xinran’s appreciation for the relationships between land, nature, food, and culture, and continues to influence her artistic and educational practice today. Drawing on her background in visual design and her experience as an immigrant to Canada, her research explores how art can strengthen connections between people, place, and community. She is particularly interested in land-based learning, Indigenous ways of knowing, and community-engaged art practices, while exploring how traditional leather craft from Inner Mongolia can support cultural continuity, storytelling, and intergenerational knowledge sharing.

As a Research Assistant with the Land Connects Us project, Xinran supports website development, digital storytelling, research, and visual communication. Through this role, she is gaining experience in collaborative research while exploring how digital platforms can support cultural exchange and make stories of land, culture, and community more accessible.

Beyond her research, Xinran enjoys volunteering and participating in community arts and education initiatives. She believes design is not only a form of communication, but also a way of listening, learning, and building relationships. She hopes to continue learning through collaborative projects that foster respect for the land, cultural understanding, and community connection.