About
B.Kin. (Hons) Kinesiology, McMaster University, 2007
B.A. (Hons) Anthropology, McMaster University, 2013
M.A., Socio-Cultural Anthropology, University of British Columbia, 2016
M.A. Thesis: “Eating Gitxaała, being Gitxaała: food and cultural security”
PhD Supervisor: Dr. Leslie Robertson
Research
Research keywords:
settler colonialism; Métis; ancestry; politics of heritage; movement through place; autoethnography; historical ethnography; sensory/imaginative ethnographic methods; temporality and place; infrastructure; waterways; the canoe
Research summary:
My dissertation research weaves together my scholarly interrogations of settler colonialism with a personal exploration into my Métis ancestry to question “Canadian heritage” and the ways that it is leveraged by the state. I focus on a failed 19th-century infrastructure project cum National Historic Site, The Trent Severn Waterway. This 386-kilometre route connects Lake Ontario and Lake Huron through a series of rivers, lakes, and canals, linked by locks and dams. My halfbreed ancestors’ displacement to its most Westerly access point can at once be considered colonizing and colonized. I follow my feelings of emplacement and attachment in/to this landscape as a way to explore the landscape via canoe, and the palimpsest of multifarious narratives that embed people throughout this waterway. I document the histories that come to be known and told along the rivers, lakes, and canals, and also seek to uncover histories that have been forgotten, hidden, and/or obscured. I ask to whom, and under what circumstances, do certain histories of place come to matter? What are the implications of these differences? How does heritage figure in the ways that people relate to place and to one another?
Publications
Gendron, Danielle. In Review. “Unpacking and Repacking the canoe” in The Politics of the Canoe, edited by Bruce Erickson and Sarah Krotz. In review University of Manitoba Press
Moffat, Tina and Gendron, Danielle. 2018. Cooking up the “Gastrocitizen” through school meal programs in France and Japan. Food Culture and Society doi:10.1080/15528014.2018.1547587
Gendron, Danielle. 2016. “Eating Gitxaała, Being Gitxaała: Food and Cultural Security” New Proposals: Journal of Marxism and Interdisciplinary Inquiry, 8(1): 91-106.
Moffat, Tina and Thrasher, Danielle. 2016. “School meal programs and their potential to operate as school-based obesity prevention and nutrition interventions: case studies from France & Japan”. Critical Public Health. 26(2):133-146. doi:10.1080/09581596.2014.957654
Conference papers
Gendron, Danielle. 2018. “Canoe as methodology” Paper presented at Workshop on The Politics of the Canoe: Activism and Resistance through the Canoe, Winnipeg, June 10.
Moffat, Tina and Thrasher, Danielle (2015) “Cooking up the ‘gastro-citizen’ through school lunch programs in France and Japan. Paper presented at American Anthropology Association Meeting, Denver, CO.
Moffat, Tina and Thrasher, Danielle (2013) “School Feeding Programs: Can they help children escape poverty?” Paper presented at American Anthropology Association Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.
Moffat, Tina and Thrasher, Danielle (2013) “Addressing Child Malnutrition with School Lunch Programs: Canada, France and Japan”. Paper presented at Canadian Association of Physical Anthropology Annual Meeting, Scarborough, ON.
Thrasher, Danielle. 2013. “National School Lunch Programs.” Paper presented at 6th Annual Undergraduate Research Conference, Nipissing University, North Bay, ON.
Reports
Gendron, Danielle. 2019. Akwe:kon Tetewatátenonhkwe-We are all related: NEIHR roundtable on Ohero:kon youth, land and leadership held at Akwesasne with Louise “mamabear” McDonald. McMaster University. Unpublished report. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1haPIaMbpg2p2nTsaQCucN95fE1YM_iGi
Gendron, Danielle. 2019. Akwe:kon Tetewatátenonhkwe-We are all related: NEIHR roundtable on concerns in Northern Ontario. McMaster University. Unpublished report. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/open?id=15So2VPI5tcKR7QliY_U8zyxQIkDPRxGW
Gendron, Danielle. 2019. Akwe:kon Tetewatátenonhkwe-We are all related: NEIHR roundtable on two-spirit health and sterilization of Indigenous women with Toronto Sick Kids Hospital, Anishnawbe Health Toronto and Native Women’s Association of Canada. McMaster University. Unpublished report. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Wc6zqOLXQ5Tkpj3ZRXFmfZCSmQWJcqF3
Smith, Savanah & Gendron, Danielle. 2019. Akwe:kon Tetewatátenonhkwe-We are all related: NEIHR Roundtable on Haudenosaunee Nationhood with Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center. McMaster University. Unpublished report. Retrieved from:https://drive.google.com/open?id=19E42MenATMPSywQdVXj1ozA4PCTtp7fU74WCuebBHuo
Wekerle, Christine, Smith, Savanah, & Gendron, Danielle. 2019. Akwe:kon Tetewatátenonhkwe-We are all related: NEIHR Roundtable at McMaster Children’s Hospital on Health Services and Indigenous Ways of Knowing: Improving Care for Indigenous Two-Spirit Youth. McMaster University. Unpublished report. Retrieved from: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1O0QmqEgDDqzCiriHu62A4HjCSxeqsgcM
Moffat, Tina and Thrasher, Danielle. 2014. International Comparisons of School Feeding: Case Studies from France & Japan. Final Report prepared for research participants. Hamilton, ON: McMaster University, Department of Anthropology.
Awards
Liu Scholar, Liu Institute, 2017
SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship (2016-2020), 2016
UBC Four-Year Fellowship (2016-2020), 2016
SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship Master’s Award, 2014
Additional Description
Socio-Cultural Anthropology
Current Projects: The role of school lunch programs in addressing food security in France and Japan