Dr. Tommy Happynook

Bio

My name is ḥapinyuuk. I am čaačaaciiʔasatḥ from the Huu-ay-aht First Nations. My English name is Tommy Happynook.

My research documents the reclamation of knowledge, teachings, culture, language, responsibilities, and identity through my relationship to my family’s ḥahuułi (hereditary territory).

In specific and intentional ways my research is part of a larger story of reconciliation and reclamation to ḥahuułi in which the lands, waters, skies, and the natural/spiritual worlds are not a place and/or object of inquiry, they are non-human knowledge holders and teachers.

Interests

• applied Indigenous ontologies, epistemologies and pedagogies
• land-based learning and relationships
• Nuu-chah-nulth knowledge systems
• land, language and identity

Courses

• ANTH 201 – Indigenous Peoples, Anthropology, and Colonization (forthcoming)
• ANTH 331 – Indigenous Peoples’ Health in Canada
• ANTH 336 – Contemporary Indigenous Issues in Canada
• ANTH 436 – Applied Indigenous Ways of Knowing

Selected publications

• Salomon et al. 2023. “Measuring biodiversity for what and for whom: Diversifying values that shape biodiversity science and management.” Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society B.
• Clutesi Exhibition. 2023. Exhibiting artist/scholar. Original art/scholarship. Public programing. Alberni Valley Museum
• Clutesi Exhibition. 2024. Exhibiting artist/scholar. Original art/scholarship. Public programing. Bill Reid Gallery
• Kobluk et al. 2024. “Relational place-based solutions for environmental policy misalignments”. Science & Society 39 (3), P217-220.