Sarah Hunt

Sarah Hunt, also known as Tłaliłila’ogwas, is an Indigenous researcher, author and professor based in British Columbia, Canada. Hunt is a community-based researcher with an academic focus is on Indigenous politics, Indigenous methodologies, Decolonial methodologies, and issues facing women, girls, and Two-spirit people.

Life and Career

Early Life and Education

Sarah Hunt was born in Fort Rupert, British Columbia, Canada in 1976. She is Kwagiulth, of the Kwakwakaʼwakw Nation, and also of English and Ukrainian ancestry. Sarah group up on- and off-reserve. She attended Spectrum Community School, in Victoria, British Columbia, graduating as co-valedictorian. She was a Miss Native Centre Princess, and very active in Indigenous communities growing up.

Sarah Hunt completed both her B.A. in Women's Studies, and her M.A. at the University of Victoria. During her Bachelor's she worked on several projects on Indigenous women in sex work in Vancouver and she worked as a youth outreach worker with the Urban Native Youth Association. In 2001, she started to work at the Justice Institute of British Columbia, researching sexual exploitation of Indigenous peoples and women.

In 2014, she completed her Ph.D. at Simon Fraser University. Post-graduation, she was the Scholar-in-Residence at Vancouver Island University and postdoctoral fellow at the National Collaborating Centre for Aboriginal Health. She became an Assistant Professor of Critical Indigenous Geography at the University of British Columbia in 2015.

Academic Career

Sarah Hunt is a co-editor for the academic journal ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies. She also is the Secretary of Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group of the American Association of Geographers.

Awards and Honors

Sarah Hunt receive the Governor General's Gold Medal in 2014 for her Doctorate dissertation titled, "The dynamics of law, violence and space through the frequently unheard perspectives of indigenous people working to address violence in communities across B.C."

In 2017 she was awarded the Glenda Laws Award for Social Justice from the American Association of Geographers.

Publications

• Clark N, Hunt S. Navigating the Crossroads: Exploring young women’s experiences of health using an intersectional framework. In: Hankivsky O, editor. Health Inequities in Canada: Intersectional Frameworks and Practices. Vancouver: UBC Press; 2011.

• Clark N, Hunt S, Jules G, Good T. Ethical Dilemmas in Community-Based Research: Working with Vulnerable Youth in Rural Communities. J Acad Ethics. 2010;8(4):243–52.

• de Leeuw S, Hunt S. Unsettling decolonizing geographies. Geogr Compass. 2018;12(7):1–14.

• Holmes C, Hunt S, Piedalue A. Violence, colonialism, and space: Towards a decolonizing dialogue. Acme. 2015;14(2):539–70.
• Hunt S. Embodying Self Determination: Beyond the Gender Binary. In: Greenwood M, de Leeuw S, Lindsay NM, editors. Determinants of Indigenous Peoples’ Health, Second Edition: Beyond the Social. Second. Toronto: CSP Books; 2018.
• Hunt, S. Decolonizing sex work: Developing an Intersectional Indigenous Approach. In E. van der Meulen, E.M. Durisin and V. Love (Eds), Selling sex: Experience, advocacy, and research on sex work in Canada (pp. 82-100). Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press; 2013.
• Hunt S. Ontologies of Indigeneity: The politics of embodying a concept. Cult Geogr. 2014;21(1):27–32.
• Hunt SE. Witnessing the Colonialscape: Lighting the Intimate Fires of Indigenous Legal Pluralism. 2014.
• Hunt S. Representing Colonial Violence: trafficking, sex work, and the violence of law. Vol. 37, Atlantis: Critical Studies in Gender, Culture & Social Justice. 2016. p. 25–39.
• Hunt S, Holmes C. Everyday decolonization: Living a decolonizing queer politics. J Lesbian Stud. 2015;19(2):154–72.