Grand Council

Member Profile

Grand Chief

Geneviève Pelletier

Geneviève Pelletier is a Metis actor and theater director from Winnipeg and leads the Théâtre Cercle Molière, as its artistic and general director since 2012. She is inspired by the meeting of cultures, the possibilities that stem from these encounters and how to nurture safe and fertile creative spaces to spark conversations of change.

Member Profile

Carrier of Understanding

Sophie Dow

Winnipeg-born Sophie Dow is a multidisciplinary creator, inspired by dance, music, collaboration and her Métis-Assiniboine and settler roots. An avid adventurer, Sophie has a passion for busking, yoga and travelling on top of holding a degree in Dance Performance and Choreography. With a unique list of credits deeply impacting personal process and vocabulary, Sophie’s had great fortune of working with some of the country’s wonderful dance innovators, including Chimera Dance Theatre and Kaeja d’Dance. Presently Sophie is Artistic Associate of Chimera Dance Theatre, writes music with The Honeycomb Flyers and is a licensed practitioner of Traditional Thai Massage.

Member Profile

Bead Counter

Lynda Trudeau

Lynda is an Odawa Anishinaabekwe, from Wiikwemkoong.

As General Manager for Debajehmujig Storytellers, Lynda has worked in Arts Administration as both an Administrator and as a Board Director for over 15 years.

Lynda has earned a Master of Fine Art: Cultural Administrarion, Master of Environment and Business, Bachelor of Business Administration, Certificate of Indigenous Women in Community Leadership, and a Business Administration Diploma.

At the heart of Lynda work and career, has been Sovereignty, and Nation Building with an understanding of Art as critical for our shared humanity. Indigenous Art is essential for expression of understanding of our ways of thinking, ways of being, and ways of seeing while connecting our past, present and moving into our future.

Member Profile

www.moeclark.ca

www.nistamikwan.com

Community of Performing Artists Representatives

Moe Clark

âpihtawikosisâniskwêw (Métis / nêhiyaw / Norwegian / French / British) multidisciplinary artist Moe Clark is a 2Spirit singing thunderbird. She fuses together vocal improvisation with multilingual lyricism to create meaning that is rooted in personal legacy, ancestral memory and embodied knowledge. Originally from the prairies in Treaty 7, she’s called tio’tiá:ke / mooniyang (Montreal) home for over a decade. Her last solo album “Within” toured across North America and her collaborative video poem “nitahkôtan” won best indigenous language music video at the ImagiNative film festival. Apart from performance, Moe’s work as a creative facilitator and activist aims to remember and reconnect belonging to territories of land, body and voice through creative continuums of indigenous language immersion, song creation and ceremonial practice. In 2016 she founded nistamîkwan: a transformational arts organization. Her work has appeared the world over, including the Lincoln Centre (US), UBUD Writers & Readers Festival (ID) and Origins Festival in London (UK).

Member Profile

www.oliviacdavies.ca 

Community of Performing Artists Representatives

Olivia C. Davies

Olivia C. Davies is a Contemporary Indigenous artist who creates and collaborates across multiple platforms including choreography, creative writing, film, improvisation, and sound design. Davies’ body of work explores the emotional and political relationships between people and places. Her work has been presented in BC, Alberta, Ontario and Quebec since 2011. She is the Artistic Director of O.Dela Arts, the Matriarchs Uprising Festival, and is a founding member of the Crow’s Nest Collective (Vancouver), MataDanze Collective (Toronto) and Circadia Indigena Arts Collective (Ottawa). She honours her mixed Anishinaabe, French Canadian, Finnish and Welsh heritage in her work.

Member Profile

Community of Performing Artists Representatives

Marilyn Jacko

Marilyn is from the Odawa Nation. She has a strong educational background in law and justice and in the administration field. She obtained her Legal Assistant Diploma and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Law and Justice. She has also obtained a certificate in Oral history from the University of Alberta as well as a certificate from the Aboriginal Professional Administrator program through AFOA Canada. Marilyn is also a Certified Arbitrator and Adjudicator from the Osgoode Professional Development Department.
She first began a 3-year term as Trustee with the Wikwemikong Trust in 2017 and has successfully completed Phase I of the Trustee Training program through Lethbridge College.
Marilyn was raised by her parents in Wikwemikong with a strong background in the arts and culture, she practices beadwork, leatherwork, hand bags, regalia and sewing and design, which Marilyn practices when she has time. Marilyn has a strong passion for supporting the arts sector and looks forward to her term with IPAA.

Member Profile

Community of Performing Artists Representatives

Richard Ashley Manitowabi

Richard Ashley Manitowabi is of the three fires confederacy (Ojibway, Potowanami, Odawa)  land-based artist, storyteller, and multimedia Creative arts from Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory. As an Artistic Director, Land Base Arts Facilitator with Debajehmujig Storytellers, he supports Indigenous theatre and cultural storytelling through performance, digital media, and community-based arts. He is committed to uplifting Indigenous voices and strengthening connections through land, art, and story. Ashley is in transition as General Manager for Debajehmujig Storytellers.  

Member Profile

Youth Ambassador

Sara Kanutski

Sara Kae is an Ojibwe and Cree artist, writer, and performer with limitless range in both the stories she tells and the spaces where she tells them. A member of Lake Helen First Nation, Sara got her start touring northern Ontario with her counsellor father, speaking and singing in schools and community gatherings from the age of 12. An honours graduate and Founders Award recipient of the esteemed Metalworks Institute in Mississauga, Sara is a CBC x SOCAN Foundation Reverie resident, an RBC First Up participant, and one of the nation’s most promising emerging artists. Her 2025 single, “Do You Think Of Me?”, was named to the Top 100 Canadian Songs of 2025 and reached #6 on the CBC Top 20, marking a milestone moment in her early recording career.