Dr. Tara Joly

Joly, Dr. Tara

she/her

PhD (University of Aberdeen)

Assistant Professor, First Nations Studies
Adjunct Professor, Anthropology
Faculty of Indigenous Studies, Social Sciences and Humanities, First Nations Studies, Anthropology
Phone
250-960-6495
Email
tara.joly@unbc.ca
Office
CJMH-3018
Campus
Prince George
Website
https://tarajoly.com

Biography

Tara Joly is a 10th generation Euro-Canadian settler who is grateful to have lived in unceded traditional Lheidli T'enneh territory since 2016. She is trained as an environmental anthropologist and specializes in applied and community-based research with Indigenous peoples in northwestern Canada. Broadly speaking, Joly's work documents how settler colonial governments attempt to remake Indigenous land into extractive territory or settler home; and explores and supports processes by which Indigenous peoples assert sovereignty and renew relationships to place, regardless of these attempts.

Dr. Joly is also an Adjunct Professor in Anthropology at UNBC, and an Adjunct Professor in Archaeology & Anthropology at the University of Saskatchewan.

Research and Expertise

Dr. Joly has conducted numerous applied research projects with Indigenous Nations in northern Alberta and British Columbia, including community-based research, Indigenous land use/impact assessments, social scientific technical reviews, Indigenous environmental monitoring research, and oral history research. Her research includes varied intersections between Indigenous rights, extractive industries, histories of dispossession, gendered violence, settler colonialism, human-environment relations, history of science, research methodologies, and interdisciplinary studies.

Research Fields
  • Anthropology
  • Culture
  • Environment
  • First Nations
  • Gender and Women's Studies
  • Geography
  • Health and Well-being
  • Human Rights
  • Indigenous Environmental Planning
  • Indigenous Peoples
  • Natural Resources
  • Northern Issues
  • Pedagogy
  • Sustainability
Areas of Expertise
Dr. Joly has conducted numerous applied research projects with Indigenous Nations in northern Alberta and British Columbia, including community-based research, Indigenous land use/impact assessments, social scientific technical reviews, Indigenous environmental monitoring research, and oral history research. Her research includes varied intersections between Indigenous rights, extractive industries, histories of dispossession, gendered violence, settler colonialism, human-environment relations, history of science, research methodologies, and interdisciplinary studies.
Languages Spoken
  • English
Currently accepting graduate students
Supervises In
MA First Nations Studies, MA Interdisciplinary Studies, MA NRES
Interested in supervising graduate students in the social sciences, particularly those interested in Indigenous rights, ethnography, human-environment relationships in the North, and/or any field related to my areas of interest/expertise. I invite prospective students to email me to discuss potential projects.
Available to be contacted by the media as a subject matter expert

Selected Publications

Westman, Clinton, Tara Joly, and Lena Gross (eds.). 2020. Extracting Home in the Oil Sands: Settler Colonialism and Environmental Change in Subarctic Canada. Arctic Worlds Series. London: Routledge.

Joly, Tara. 2021. Growing (with) Muskeg: Oil Sands Reclamation and Healing in Northern Alberta. Anthropologica 63(1).

Westman, Clinton, Tara Joly, Max Pospisil, and Katherine Wheatley. 2020. Encountering Moose: Sociality, Intentionality, and Emplaced Entanglements among Boreal Browsers. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology. DOI: 10.1080/00141844.2020.1841262

Hopkins, Debra, Tara Joly, Harvey Sykes, Almer Waniandy, John Grant, Lorrie Gallagher, Len Hansen, Kaitlyn Wall, Peter Fortna, and Michelle Bailey. 2019. “Learning Together”: Braiding Indigenous and Western Knowledge Systems to Understand Freshwater Mussel Health in the Lower Athabasca Region of Alberta, Canada. Special Issue on Human-Mollusk Relations. Journal of Ethnobiology 39(2): 315-336. DOI: 10.2993/0278-0771-39.2.315

Westman, Clinton and Tara Joly. 2019. Oil Sands Extraction in Alberta, Canada: A Review of Impacts and Processes Concerning Indigenous Peoples. Human Ecology 47: 233-243. DOI: 10.1007/s10745-019-0059-6

Joly, Tara, Hereward Longley, Carmen Wells, and Jennifer Gerbrandt. 2018. Ethnographic Refusal in Traditional Land Use Mapping: Consultation, Impact Assessment, and Sovereignty in the Athabasca Oil Sands Region. Extractive Industries and Society 5: 335-343. DOI: 10.1016/j.exis.2018.03.002

Joly, Tara. 2020. “Urban Buffalo”: Human-Bison Relations in Northeastern Alberta. In Extracting Home in the Oil Sands: Settler Colonialism and Environmental Change in Subarctic Canada. Edited by Clinton Westman, Tara Joly, and Lena Gross. Pp. 138-159. London: Routledge.

Sax, Marieka, Marie Michèle Grenon, María Cristina Manzana-Munguía, and Tara Joly. 2022. “Sexual Harassment and Violence in the Practice of Anthropology: Creating Safe Conversational Spaces for CASCA Members”. Anthropologica 64(1).

Longley, Hereward and Tara Joly. 2018. The Moccasin Flats Evictions: Métis Home, Forced Relocation, and Resilience in Fort McMurray, Alberta. Prepared for Fort McMurray Métis Local 1935. September. 116pp.

Joly, Tara and Clinton Westman. 2017. Taking Research Off the Shelf: Synthesizing Existing Sources of Knowledge
about Impacts, Benefits, and Participatory or Consultative Processes around Extractive Industry in Northern Alberta. Final Report. Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Imagining Canada’s Future Initiative, Knowledge Synthesis Grants: Aboriginal Peoples. 11 September. 85pp.

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