Susan Hill

Professor Hill joined the University of Toronto in July 2017 and has a joint appointment with the Department of History and the Centre for Indigenous Studies. Prior to coming to U of T, she served as Associate Professor of History, and Director of the First Nations Studies Program at Western University from 2010-2017 and at Wilfrid Laurier University from 2004-2010. Professor Hill’s academic training includes a PhD in Native Studies from Trent University, MA in American Studies from SUNY-Buffalo, BA in history from the University of Michigan and language immersion programs through Onkwawanna Kentyohkwa (Kanyen’keha/Mohawk) and Grand River Employment & Training (Gayagohono/Cayuga).

Professor Hill’s research interests include Haudenosaunee history, Indigenous research methodologies and ethics, and Indigenous territoriality, with themes that benefit Indigenous communities while expanding academic understandings of Indigenous thought and philosophy. She is particularly interested in Haudenosaunee knowledge and thought, seeking to make sense of contemporary lives through an examination of how people got to where they are now, both literally and figuratively. Her 2017 book, The Clay We Are Made Of: Haudenosaunee land tenure on the Grand River, published by the University of Manitoba Press, takes up these themes in a provocative way.

Professor Hill served as a co-editor of the 2009 Special Issue of the American Indian Quarterly on “Writing from Home in American Indian History”. She is the recipient of several research grants from the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada. In May 2016 she was featured in an article in the US-based newspaper Indian Country Today, “Looking for True History of Native Peoples? Five Indigenous Women Who Get It Right.”