Indigenous Speakers Series presents Dr. Evan Adams | Arts

The Indigenous Speakers Series returns this term with the first of our online events featuring Dr. Evan Adams addressing the impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous communities in Canada.

About Evan Adams

Illustration of Evan Adams with strawberries and flowers

Evan Tlesla II Adams is a Coast Salish actor and physician from the Tla’amin First Nation near Powell River, BC, Canada. Evan stars as Thomas Builds-The-Fire in Miramax’s 1998 film Smoke Signals, for which he won Best Actor awards from the American Indian Film Festival, and from First Americans in the Arts, as well as a 1999 Independent Spirit Award for ‘Best Debut Performance’. He won a 2011 Gemini Award for co-hosting the National Aboriginal Achievement Awards along with Adam Beach.

Aside from his career in the arts, Dr. Adams completed a MD from the University of Calgary in 2002, and a residency in the Aboriginal Family Practice program at St. Paul's Hospital in Vancouver, BC. Dr. Adams has a Master of Public Health (2009) from Johns Hopkins University. He was the first-ever Aboriginal Health Physician Advisor in the Office of the Provincial Health Officer, BC Ministry of Health (2007-2012). He was the Deputy Provincial Health Officer for the province of BC from 2012 to 2014. He is currently the Chief Medical Officer of the First Nations Health Authority.

Following his talk on the impacts of COVID-19 on Indigenous communities, Dr. Adams will be joined by Lori Campbell, Director of Waterloo's Indigenous Student Centre, and Stephanie Marr, a Waterloo graduate who is now in medical school, for further conversation. Audience questions are welcome too.

Please mark your calendar and join the event via the livestream link. No sign-in or registration required! But please note, if you join via the link on a mobile device or tablet, you’ll need the Teams app. Computer users can join with no Teams app.

Also, mark your calendar for noon on April 8 when the Indigenous Speakers Series presents Professor Logan MacDonald, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Art. More details to come.

Illustration by Luke Swinson and Alanah Astehtsi Otsistohkwa Jewell. The Indigenous Speakers Series is co-presented by the Waterloo Indigenous Student Centre, the Faculty of Arts, the Department of History, and the Department of Communication Arts. The Series highlights the voices of Indigenous artists, writers, activists, and leaders from across Turtle Island, offering UWaterloo students, faculty and staff opportunities to learn from, understand, and engage with Indigenous issues.