Team

Assistant Professor, School of Fashion
Lead, Fashioning Reconciliation 

Riley Kucheran’s research examines clothing and colonization, contemporary Indigenous fashion design, and how entrepreneurship can contribute to Indigenous cultural and economic resurgence. At Toronto Met, he is a PhD student in the Communication & Culture program, an Indigenous Advisor in the Yeates School of Graduate Studies, an Associate Director of the Saagajiwe Centre for Indigenous Research and Creation, and an Assistant Professor in Design Leadership at the School of Fashion. He is an active member of the Indigenous community and works with the Toronto Indigenous Business Association, Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto, the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto and NaMeRes, Toronto’s Native Men’s Shelter. At Toronto Met, he organizes the Pow Wow, is a member of the Aboriginal Education Council, Senate, and is working with the Office of the Provost on Toronto Met’s Truth & Reconciliation strategy.

Email: riley.kucheran@torontomu.ca

Social Media: @rskucheran

Chair and Associate Professor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, School of Fashion
Co-Lead, Fashioning Reconciliation 

Ben Barry (he/him) is a queer, Jewish settler fashion educator, researcher and activist. Through his teaching, research and academic leadership, he strives to intervene into the fashion system, collaborate with communities, and mobilize systemic transformation to bring about decolonization, healing and justice. His work aims to re-imagine the design process and design education to centre fat liberation, disability justice and gender diversity. Ben is currently Chair of Fashion at The Creative School, in addition to serving as Associate Professor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion as well as Director of the Centre for Fashion Diversity & Social Change. He is a member of the Fashion Industry Advisory Panel for the City of Toronto and a juror for the Canadian Arts and Fashion Awards. He holds an undergraduate degree in Women and Gender Studies from the University of Toronto and a PhD in Management from Cambridge University.

Email: bbarry@torontomu.ca

Social Media: Twitter @DrBenBarry / Instagram: @bendrakbarry

Joanne is proudly Cree, her ancestry is Omushkego from Attawapiskat.

Joanne has dedicated her career to counselling, advising and educating on Indigenous concerns, empowering and capacity building and advocating for change in terms of broader societal relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people through her business, Healing Works est. 1990. 

Her social service career began in 1985 and has contributed to transforming the lives of individuals, and the culture of agencies and the recognition and respect for Indigenous people, concerns and contributions within mainstream society. Joanne facilitates and consults in the not for profit sector and Toronto District School Board, around hiring practices, staff training, group facilitation, and policy and procedure development. She sits on several councils and committees at Toronto Met.

Artistic Director, Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto 

Sage Paul is an urban Denesuliné tskwe based in Toronto and a member of English River First Nation. Sage is an award-winning artist & designer and a recognized leader of Indigenous fashion, craft and textiles. Her work centres family, sovereignty and resistance for balance. Sage is also founding collective member and Artistic Director of Indigenous Fashion Week Toronto (external link) . 

Her art and design practice is conceptual, creating narrative-driven garments, crafts and costumes for artistic presentation, fashion, film, TV and theatre. Some of Sage’s art and design has shown at the Art Gallery of Ontario’s First Thursday, Harbourfront Centre, The Centre for Craft, Creativity and Design (North Carolina, USA), and a curated program at Western Canada Fashion Week by Ociciwan Contemporary Art Collective. She has designed costumes for Kent Monkman, Darlene Naponse, Danis Goulet and more. In 2019, Sage was nominated for the Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award in Costume Design and the Indigenous Arts Award, both at the Ontario Arts Council. Sage sits on the School of Fashion Advisory Board, sits on the Board of Directors for Red Pepper Spectacle Arts and is developing an Indigenous Fashion elective course for George Brown College.

Indigenous Canadian Fashion Designer
Designer in Residence, Toronto Met

Angela DeMontigny is an internationally-renowned, Indigenous Canadian designer. Her custom made and ready-to-wear, all leather clothing collections, bold accessories and statement jewelry collections have been sold in specialty boutiques and galleries throughout North America and Europe since 1995.

Angela has not only been a trailblazer for Aboriginal fashion for 2 decades, she has also produced some of Canada's most important showcases for Indigenous designers such as FashioNation - L'Oreal Fashion Week, Toronto; Fire & Fashion - Planet IndigenUs, Toronto; From Culture to Couture - Toronto and the first ever, Aboriginal Fashion Week during the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C. She has been an avid advocate and supporter of Aboriginal designers, artisans, women and youth entrepreneurs throughout her career and is asked to speak regularly at national and international symposiums and conferences and has sat on many, national round tables. DeMontigny was the co-founder of the Canadian Aboriginal Design Council, is currently a co-founder of the newly launched Ontario Fashion Exchange (OFEX), sat on the board of the Hamilton Arts Council, is a current member of the Humber Program Advisory Committee, a Board member of the newly formed, Aboriginal Conservation and Ecology Inc. (ACE) and as of September 2018, has been appointed as the new, Distinguished Designer-In-Residence for The Creative School at Toronto Met in Toronto.

Manager, Saagajiwe Centre for Indigenous Research and Creation Administrator, Fashioning Reconciliation

Laura Heidenheim (she/her) is a settler whose work focuses on co-conspiratorship and co-creation with Families of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, Trans and Two Spirit People. In 2016 the Cywink Family and Carpenter Families came together with Laura to created "Shades of Our Sisters", an exhibit which honours the lives of loved ones through short documentaries and the personal items of Sonya Cywink and Patricia Carpenter. The exhibit has grown to include more families over the past three years and has traveled to thirteen different locations. Currently she is co-creating a toolkit with families called "Circle of Aunties", while continuing to work with grassroots MMIWGT2S Family-lead projects. Laura graduated with Distinction from the Communication and Culture Master's Program at Toronto Met in 2019 and is currently the Manager of Saagajiwe, an Indigenous research centre within The Creative School.

MA, BA, PhD Student, Communication and Culture, Toronto Met and York University
Research Assistant, Cripping Masculinities: Disabled Men’s Intersectional Narratives Through Fashion

Michel Ghanem (he/him) is a PhD student in Communication & Culture at Toronto Met, and the grant writer and contributor to Fashioning Reconciliation. Michel holds a Master of Arts in Fashion and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History. His work engages with television representations of identity and how fashion and costume design are complicit in how identity is constructed. Currently, his doctoral research works with Mad-identified men and the emergent field of Mad Studies. He is also a Research Assistant on a SSHRC IDG-funded project, Cripping Masculinities: Disabled Men’s Intersectional Narratives Through Fashion (2019–2023).

MA Fashion
Coordinator, Fashioning Reconciliation 

Alysia Myette is a queer and Métis textile artist, fashion designer and educator living in Toronto. Originally from Nova Scotia, Alysia relocated to Toronto to pursue a career in fashion design at Toronto Met U. After discovering a passion for research and education and a love for the stories told by the individuals she has met, she obtained her MA in Fashion at Ryerson University (now Toronto Met U). In fulfillment of her graduate degree, Alysia produced a documentary titled FLUID which focused on the intersections of fashion and artistic practice for 6 queer artists living in Toronto. Alysia currently works as an instructor for first year students in the Fashion program at Toronto Met but continues to work as a researcher and tailor in the bridal sector. Alysia’s self-titled clothing label strives to challenge the gender binary upheld in the fashion industry and decolonize our ways of viewing 2SLGBTQIA bodies in fashion. 

Email: amyette@torontomu.ca

Social Media: @alysia.myette

MA Fashion
Digital Coordinator, Fashioning Reconciliation

Presley is a Métis designer, illustrator and researcher. She approaches design as visual storytelling; combining her arts and research practices to build effective and unique design solutions. After graduating from the Alberta University of the Arts (previously the Alberta College of Art & Design) with a degree in Communication Design, she has collaborated on a wide variety of branding, typography, art direction, advertising and publishing projects. She received her Master of Arts in Fashion from Ryerson University (now Toronto Met U) in the spring of 2019. Her thesis research that focused on the embodied experience of decolonization through fashion, received The Linda Lewis Award for Design Excellence.