Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles

Dr. Niiyokamigaabaw Deondre Smiles currently serves as an adjunct professor in the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. They are Black/Ojibwe/settler, and are a citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Smiles is a geographer whose research interests are multifaceted, including Indigenous geographies/epistemologies, human-environmental interaction, political ecology, and tribal cultural resource preservation/protection. They currently serves as the Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers (AAG); they are also a member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), and the Canadian Association of Geographers. (CAG). They also serve as a member of the editorial boards of the journals Native American and Indigenous Studies, the Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, NiCHE, and the Turtle Island Journal of Indigenous Health.