Dr. Patti Johnston

Biography

Patricia (Patti) Johnston is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary. She holds a PhD in Social Work and completed a Bating-Postdoctoral-Fellowship at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies, Canadian Studies Centre. She is a Qallunaaq (non-Inuk) white settler from southern Canada and she works from the Faculty’s Central and Northern Alberta Region office (Indigenous lands, Treaty 6) in Edmonton, Alberta.  

Patti’s research focuses on community-based socio-health participatory research in relation to social, cultural, and economic impacts of socio-health policy on Inuit children and families in Nunavut, Inuit self-determination and governance, anti-Inuit racism and discrimination, gendered labor and exclusion, Indigenous Knowledges and ways of knowing and being, Inuit-approaches to child and family wellness (child welfare, family strengthening), and the perpetuation of colonial relations, systems, structures, and approaches over time. Her work is dedicated to enhancing Inuit women's health and wellness, health equity, capacity enhancingstrategies, community development, and keeping Inuit families together. Her work involves the examination of the social determinants of health in northern rural and remote communities.  

​Patti engages in research that is based in Inuit cultural understandings and collaboration with northern Arctic community members, leaders, and organizations, and interdisciplinary academic partners to address issues relevant to, and determined by, Arctic Indigenous peoples. To this work, Patti brings experience from working for four provincial and territorial governments and over two decades of work with/ in Inuit Nunangat. 

 Patti is passionate about supporting rural and remote northern peoples, and advocating for northern-determined and directed education, training, employment, and research.