Taiaiake Alfred

Gerald Taiaiake Alfred is an author, educator and activist, born in Montreal, Quebec in 1964 and raised in the community of Kahnawake. Alfred is an internationally recognized Kanien’kehá:ka professor.
Alfred grew up in Kahnawake and received a B.A. in History from Concordia University, an M.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. He served in the US Marine Corps in the 1980s.
Alfred was the founding director of the Indigenous Governance Program (serving from 1999 until 2015) and was awarded a Canada Research Chair 2003–2007, in addition to a National Aboriginal Achievement Award in education. In 2019 he resigned from the University of Victoria in the wake of an investigation of an allegedly toxic learning environment.