Krista Maxwell

I am a settler scholar of Scottish, Irish, English and Danish descent and grew up in Mi’kma’ki (Nova Scotia). My research centers on Indigenous social and political organising around healing, care, and child welfare from the mid-20th century to the present. These interests are motivated by an analysis of the biopolitics of liberal Canadian settler colonialism as both a mode of assimilative governance and social dismemberment, and affording space for tactical Indigenous agency.  My forthcoming book Indigenous Healing as Paradox: Re-Membering and Biopolitics in the Settler Colony is a social history examining such tactical engagements by Indigenous social actors since the 1960s, with a focus on the re-membering of societies through healing interventions.  My ongoing project Anishinaabe Kinship Law and the Canadian Child Welfare System: Social Histories and Sovereignty Struggles in Dialogue is in collaboration with Wabaseemoong Independent Nations and supported by a SSHRC Insight Grant. This project aligns with Wabaseemoong’s ongoing struggle to fully enact sovereignty over their children. My most recent research interest is critical autism studies and autists’ experiences of working and learning in universities.

Prospective masters and PhD students with related research interests are welcome to email me about possible supervision. I expect those intending to work with Indigenous Peoples to demonstrate experience and understanding of how to develop and sustain respectful research relations, and those identifying as Indigenous to be aware of expectations regarding identity verification as established by the Tri-Agency Policy on Indigenous Citizenship and Membership Affirmation.

Education

Ph.D. (University of Toronto, 2011)

Major Awards and Grants

2017-25 Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council Insight Grant 
2014-16 University of Toronto Connaught New Investigator Award
2011-14 Social Science & Humanities Research Council Insight Development Grant
2011-13 Social Science & Humanities Research Council Postdoctoral Fellowship

Publications

2024  Indigenous Healing as Paradox: Re-Membering and Biopolitics in the Settler Colony. University of Alberta Press.

2017 Maxwell, K. Settler, humanitarianism: healing the indigenous child-victim. Comparative Studies in Society and History 59(4): 974-1007. Settler Humanitarianism (PDF)

2014.  Maxwell, K. Historicizing historical trauma theory, troubling the trans-generational transmission paradigm. Transcultural Psychiatry, 51 (3): 406-434.

2011. Maxwell, K. Ojibwe Activism, Harm Reduction and Healing in 1970s Kenora, Ontario: A Micro-history of Canadian Settler Colonialism and Urban Indigenous Resistance.  Comparative Program on Health and Society Working Papers Series 2009-2010, Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.  ISBN 0-7727-0853-3.

Other Significant Publications

2000. Anyebe W, Ebe M, Maxwell K. Sex, Shame & Poverty: Young People’s Sexual Health in Rural Benue.  Benue Health Fund Project Nigeria, Department for International Development UK.

1999. Maxwell K, Streetly A and Bevan D (1999) Experiences of Hospital Care and Treatment-seeking for Pain from Sickle Cell Disease: Qualitative Study.  British Medical Journal 318: 1585-90 (also reprinted in Western Journal of Medicine i. 171(5/6): 306-313).

1998. Ziebland S and Maxwell K. Not a “proper” solution? The gap between guidelines and users’ views about the safety of using emergency contraception.  Journal Health Services Research & Policy 3 (1):12-19.

1998. Maxwell K and Streetly A. Living with Sickle Pain: Sickle cell patients’ experiences of pain and pain management.   London: Guy’s King’s & St Thomas’ School of Medicine, Department of Public Health Medicine.  ISBN 1 869942 03 5.

Research Newsletters

Wabaseemoong Families Newsletter (PDF) The second in a series of newsletters reporting on-going research on the Treaty Three Anishinaabeg’s past and present relations with the Ontario child welfare system.

Graduate Students

• Laura Beach
• Eloïse Jaumier
• Alejandra Jimenez de Luis Armitage

Completed Graduate Students

2021-2023: Sofia Champion MSc. “Behind the Mask: Emergent Subjectivity in the Narratives of Autistic Women Identified in Adulthood”. Co-supervisor Alejandra Paz.

2016-17: Samuel Tait, MA. Counter-Mapping at the Borderlands: Indigenous GIS and Knowledge Co-Production in Ontario, Canada. Co-supervisor Tania Li.

2015-17: Kaitlyn Vleming, MSc. Femininity, ‘Male’ Hormones and Medicalization.

2014-15: Caitlyn Therrien, MA. “Why Can’t They Just Get Over It?” Addressing the Ramifications of Settler Colonialism. Co-supervisor Bonnie McElhinny.

2014-15: Sarah Spaner, MA. “My Heart, My Soul”: The Christian Theorizings of Samson Occom, Mohegan. Co-supervisor Valentina Napolitano.

2013-14: Erika Finestone, MA. Old Tools, New Sites: An Examination of Customary Care as an Adaptive Strategy  for Aboriginal Childcare in Contemporary Settler Nations. Co-supervisor Sandra Bamford.