Dr. Jonathan Dewar

Jonathan Dewar, Ph.D., has been recognized as a leader in healing and reconciliation education, policy, and research for over a decade. He has published extensively on these subjects, with a specialization in the role of the arts in healing and reconciliation, and has lectured nationally and internationally.

He is the Senior Advisor to the Reconciliation Secretariat at Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada. From 2012 to 2016 he served as Director of the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre and Special Advisor to the President at Algoma University, where he led research, education, and community service programming, including museum and gallery initiatives, and taught courses in Anishinaabe Studies, Law and Justice, and Fine Arts. From 2007-2012 he served as Director of Research at the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, where he was the managing editor and co-editor of the Aboriginal Healing Foundations’ three-volume series, Truth and Reconciliation, comprising the titles From Truth to Reconciliation (2008); Response, Responsibility and Renewal (2009); and Cultivating Canada (2011). He also served as a co-editor of the special reconciliation-focused issue of the journal West Coast Line called Reconcile This! in 2012.

Jonathan is also a past Director of the Métis Centre at the National Aboriginal Health Organization and previously served as the founding Executive Director of the Iqaluit, Nunavut-based Qaggiq Theatre Company from its inception in 2002 to 2006. While in Nunavut, Jonathan also served in senior roles with the Office of the Languages Commissioner of Nunavut and the Intergovernmental Affairs and Inuit Relations unit of Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Nunavut Region.

Jonathan is of mixed heritage, descended from Huron-Wendat, Scottish, and French Canadian grandparents with an academic background in Indigenous arts and literatures and Indigenous Studies. A former SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) doctoral fellow, Jonathan’s research explores the role of art and artist in truth, healing, and reconciliation, which was the focus of his doctorate in the School of Indigenous and Canadian Studies at Carleton University.