Carla Johnston

Carla (pronouns: she/her) specializes in community-based participatory action research, Indigenous rights, and food systems governance from the local to global scale. She has 8 years of experience in political advocacy, community-level planning, and policy analysis in the Northwest Territories (NWT) and the United Nations.

She uses community-based research methods to foster trust-based relationships to co-create knowledge and on-the-ground actions with, by, and for Indigenous Peoples. She uses Indigenous research principles, such as Indigenous self-determination, centering relationships, ethical space, and two-eyed seeing.

Carla’s POLAR Fellowship supports participatory action research with Ka’a’gee Tu First Nation in the NWT and the Teslin Tlingit Council in the Yukon. Together, they explore how fuel break food forests can integrate Indigenous land stewardship and sustainable agriculture into critical wildfire protection infrastructure.

She is a member of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) Fuel Break Working Group, where she shares her knowledge with other Northern communities interested in the co-benefits of fuel break food forests.

Carla was a SSHRC Joseph-Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship recipient. She is affiliated with:

• the Balsillie School of International Affairs,
• UNESCO Chair on Food, Biodiversity and Sustainability Studies,
• Laurier Center for Sustainable Food Systems,
• Northern Food Systems Research Group, and
• Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism for the United Nations Committee on World Food Security.

Degrees

• Master of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in Political Economy from Carleton University.
• Bachelor of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences in International Development Studies from Trent University.