Leanne Bekeris

lbekeri@uwo.ca

Leanne completed a combined honours B.A. in Political Science and Sociocultural Anthropology (UWO 2009), and is currently an MA student of Sociocultural Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario. Her general research interests relate to Aboriginal health, healthcare and healing. More specifically, she is examining federal and provincial policy application and regulation of Aboriginal communities and making connections between stress, anxiety, and deterioration of health among Aboriginal people through structural violence. She uses the theory of cultural safety to look not at Aboriginal culture but to instead focus on the “culture of health care”.

Leanne’s current work addresses the issue of methyl-mercury accumulation in water and traditional foods in relation to the symbiotic connection traditional food consumption maintains with health and healthcare concerns within the Walpole Island First Nation (WIFN) in South Western Ontario. Her work is contributing to Dr. Janice Graham’s CIHR funded project ‘Articulating Standards: Translating the practices of standardizing health technologies’.