Kathy Mallett is a proud Ojibwa and Cree woman born and raised in Winnipeg. She has been involved in the Winnipeg Indigenous community since the mid-1970s. During the 1980s, Mallett along with other Indigenous women developed a family support service organization to help inner city women and their children. Housing and childcare were important needs which resulted in the building of a family 42-unit housing co-op including a day care centre for children. Mallett worked for 10 years helping Indigenous women gain work skills, and assisted with studies on violence against Indigenous women in Winnipeg and needs for Indigenous women leaving prison and returning to their communities.
She was the co-director of the Community Education Development Association for five years. She was responsible for the operation of the Pathways to Education program along with other initiatives. One of the North End community initiatives was the redeveloped of the old Merchants Hotel on Selkirk Avenue resulting in its new purpose of becoming an educational hub and student housing. She first received recognition for her volunteer work by members of her community in 1985 when she was given the YWCA Woman of the Year award. In 1993, she received the Faculty of Social Work Anniversary Award. In the early 2000s, she received the Grassroots Women Award and the Manitoba Human Rights Commitment award. In the mid-2000s, she received the Order of Manitoba and Keeping the Fires Burning award. Lastly, she received the Errol Black Chair in Labour Issues recognition in 2015.
Dr. Shauna MacKinnon is the author of Decolonizing Employment: Aboriginal Inclusion in the Labour Market and editor of Practising Community Based Participatory Research Stories: Stories of Engagement, Empowerment, and Mobilization. She has also conducted numerous research studies utilizing a collaborative community based participatory research approach. MacKinnon has conducted research on social and economic issues for over 20 years with a focus on public policy, poverty and inequality. Dr. MacKinnon has been involved as a co-investigator and research stream lead with the Manitoba Research Alliance (MRA) since 2003. In 2020, the MRA was awarded a 7-year, $2.5 million Social Science Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Partnership Grant for the community driven ?Solutions to Poverty: Challenges and Possibilities? project. Dr. MacKinnon is proud to be the Chair of the Department of Urban and Inner-City Studies, situated in Merchants Corner in the heart of Winnipeg?s North End. She believes strongly in place-based pedagogical approach that privileges the voices and experiences of those who have been excluded from mainstream education. Dr. MacKinnon believes that bringing Indigenous and non-Indigenous people to learn together in the small, supportive space in Winnipeg?s North End is an important step in the truth and reconciliation process. She maintains a website focused on teaching at Merchants Corner at www.shaunamac.com.
