Justine Woods

Justine Woods (she/her) is a garment artist, creative scholar, and educator with a focus in Indigenous fashion and material culture, Indigenous arts-based methodologies, performance and embodiment, and research-creation. She is a Doctoral Candidate in the Media and Design Innovation practice-based PhD program at Toronto Metropolitan University, holds a Master of Design in Interdisciplinary Art, Media and Design from OCAD University and a Bachelor of Design in Fashion Design from Toronto Metropolitan University.

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Born and raised in Tiny, Ontario, Justine is a registered member of the Métis Nation of Ontario. She is a Métis rights-holder from the Georgian Bay Métis community - a recognized Métis community in Ontario with section 35 Indigenous rights - from the St. Onge and Berger-Beaudoin families. Her Ancestors come from Drummond Island (in what is now known as Michigan) and were relocated in 1828 to Penetanguishene, Ontario where they built diasporic roots with their kin and community that continue to hold strong to this present day. 

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Justine’s doctoral research centres Indigenous fashion technologies and garment-making as practice-based methods of inquiry to explore the role garments play in resisting settler-colonial displacement of Indigenous ontologies and bodies to place. Her research centres re-stitching as both a theoretical framework and embodied practice to understand how the physical act of stitching cloth done by the Indigenous body can regenerate Indigenous ontology and re-stitch alternative worlds and futurities.

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For the last three years, Justine has taught as a sessional instructor in the Fashion Department at Toronto Metropolitan University and in the Indigenous Visual Culture Program at OCAD University. Her pedagogical approach and commitment to teaching are grounded in the reciprocal gesture of supporting the research and work of future generations of learners by creating a space for critically informed possibilities of thinking and making foregrounded by Indigenous knowledges and decolonial frameworks.