Deondre Smiles

Dr. Smiles is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Victoria, in British Columbia, Canada. He is an Indigenous geographer whose research intersects critical Indigenous geographies, human-environment interactions, political ecology, tribal cultural resource preservation, and science and technology studies. His current projects investigate the political ecologies and political economies of Indigenous death and Indigenous relationships to space in general. He is a member of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA), and the Canadian Association of Geographers. Dr. Smiles received a PhD in Geography from The Ohio State University, a Master’s degree in Global Indigenous Studies from the University of Minnesota Duluth, and a bachelor’s degree in Geography from Saint Cloud State University. He serves as the Principal Investigator (PI) of the Geographic Indigenous Futures Collaboratory, or GIF Lab, which focuses on Indigenous geographic methods and collaborations with Indigenous communities. Dr. Smiles serves as a member of the editorial board of the journal Native American and Indigenous Studies, and on the Board of Trustees of Leech Lake Tribal College.