Performance artist, new media artist, filmmaker, writer, curator and educator Archer Pechawis was born in Alert Bay, BC in 1963. He has been a practicing artist since 1984 with particular interest in the intersection of Plains Cree culture and digital technology, merging “traditional” objects such as hand drums with digital video and audio sampling. His work has been exhibited across Canada and in Paris France, and featured in publications such as Fuse Magazine and Canadian Theatre Review. Pechawis has been the recipient of many Canada Council, British Columbia and Ontario Arts Council awards, and won the Best New Media Award at the 2007 imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival and Best Experimental Short at imagineNATIVE in 2009.

Pechawis works extensively with Native youth as part of his art practice, teaching performance and digital media for various organizations and in the public school system. Of Cree and European ancestry, he is a member of Mistawasis First Nation, Saskatchewan. As an Associate Professor at York University, he has been a long-time advocate for building capacity in digital technology with Indigenous youth. Pechawis co-leads the T’Karonto Pod at Abundant Intelligences alongside Sara Diamond and he will contribute to the theoretical and practical development of Indigenous epistemologies within computational contexts.

Dr. Sara Diamond, President Emerita of OCAD University, has led institutional transformation in the arts, digital media/ICT, and post-secondary education for over 30 years. She served as President and Vice-Chancellor of OCAD University from 2005 to 2020, guiding its transition to full university status, and was the founding Director of the Banff New Media Institute from 1995 to 2005. Trained as a historian, media artist, and computer scientist, Diamond brings a deep interest in the relationships between human practices, culture, and technology, alongside a strong commitment to equity and Indigenous rights. She has served as co-principal investigator on major research initiatives, including Am-I-Able (wearable technologies and IoT) and the Centre for Information Visualization and Data-Driven Design. Her funded research—supported by NSERC, SSHRC, the Ontario Research Excellence Fund, Mitacs, and private foundations—spans data analytics and visualization, urban and transportation planning, public art, cultural analytics, and wearable technologies to support seniors’ wellbeing. Current projects include co-PI leadership on iCity2.0 (ORF-E); the application of AI and generative design tools for community planning (ORF-E, Mitacs); development of machine-learning frameworks for qualitative media analysis (Mitacs); mobile affective computing systems to support workplace mental health (Mitacs); archival reassessment through visualization and metadata analysis (SSHRC); and ongoing research into human, animal, and machine agency. True to her early training as a social historian, she continues to write on the history of media arts and technologies. Her recognitions include appointment to the Order of Canada and the Order of Ontario, an honorary Doctor of Science from Simon Fraser University (2020), the 2020 Exceptional Women of Excellence award from the Women’s Economic Forum, and two New Media Pioneer awards. She is a Senior Fellow at the University of Toronto’s Massey College and an Adjunct Professor at University College Dublin and UCLA, and served as a reviewer for the 2021 mid-term CFREF assessments and the NFREF competition. Diamond is Co-Chair of Toronto’s ArtworxTO (the Year of Public Art) and Nuit Blanche, Chair of the Toronto Arts Foundation and the Baycrest Academy for Research and Education, an Expert Panelist with the Canadian Centre for the Purpose of the Corporation, and a Thought Leader with Lord Cultural Resources. She has led collaborative efforts to advance equity, diversity, Indigenous cultures, research, and decolonization, and will contribute expertise in data visualization and wearable technology, research-creation methodologies, and integration of Indigenous research methodologies into academic contexts.

Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada (Kanaka Maoli) is an Assistant Professor of Moʻolelo ʻŌiwi at Kamakakūokalani Center for Hawaiian Studies (University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa), specializing in Hawaiian language translation and storytelling practices. He is an editor and author who explores Indigenous Futurism through fiction, poetry, photography, essays and scholarly publications. He wrote ” We Live in the Future. Come Join Us .”, a seminal meditation on how Hawaiian ancestral practices enable abundant futures. Much of his research is focused on the nineteenth-century Hawaiian-language newspapers, a massive archive of Indigenous-authored writing that encompasses daily events to shipping notices to meditations on sovereignty to stories both traditional and contemporary. His work also focuses on Hawaiian and Indigenous digital media as a researcher, creator, and teacher of it. In 2017 and 2018, he helped put on intensive three-week workshops on telling traditional mo’olelo (stories/accounts/histories) through video games, through a strong partnership between Kanaeokana, a network of Native Hawaiian schools and organizations, AbTeC, and the Initiative for Indigenous Futures. He also teaches courses on digital media and Hawaiian/Indigenous Futurisms. A member of the Ka Hawai’i Pae Aina Pod, he will contribute expertise on how Hawaiian ancestral practices enable abundant futures.

Ceyda Yolgörmez is a Postdocoral Researcher at the Indigenous Futures Research Cluster, working in the Abundant Intelligences Research Program. Her PhD work brought together social theory and interactive technologies, such as large machine learning models or social robots, to consider how our conceptions of the social are changing. Her PhD dissertation proposes a framework for a sociology of machines that reimagines human-machine relations. Her research looks at playful and creative engagements with machines as a site to explore and experiment with human machine socialities, and is interested in methodologies that reveal and trouble the common-sensical way in which we understand such relations.

Scott Benesiinaabandan is an Anishinaabe (Obishkkokaang) intermedia artist working in experimental image making and sonic materials. He completed his MFA in Photography at Concordia University and currently resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His research interests focus on the intersections of artificial intelligence(s) and Anishinaabemowin. Benesiinaabandan has participated in international residencies at Parramatta Artist Studios in Australia, Context Gallery in Derry, North of Ireland, and the University of Lethbridge/Royal Institute of Technology iAIR residency, as well as international collaborative projects in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He has also completed residencies with the Initiative for Indigenous Futures and AbTec in Montreal. His work has been supported by grants from the Canada Council for the Arts, Manitoba Arts Council, Winnipeg Arts Council, and the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and is held in a number of private, provincial, and national collections. Benesiinaabandan has taken part in notable exhibitions across Canada and internationally, including Flatter the Land/Bigger the Ruckus at Harbourfront, Subconscious City at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, GHOSTDANCE at the Ryerson Image Centre, and solo exhibitions such as unSacred at Gallery 1C03; mii omaa ayaad / Oshiki Inendemowin in Sydney, Australia; Blood Memories in Melbourne; little resistances at Platform Gallery; and Insurgence/Resurgence (2017). Most recently, he completed a public commission for the CONTACT Photography Festival in Toronto.