Dr. Lynn Gehl
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Leadership
- Personal Growth
- Career Development
- Conference
- Corporate Audience
- Education & Teachers
- Finance & Insurance
- First Nation Motivational Speakers
- Guest Panelist & Guided Q&A
- Inspirational
DR. LYNN GEHL BIOGRAPHY
Dr Lynn Gehl, was a recipient of the 2022 Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of Persons Day. She is also the recipient of the 2023 ReconciliAtion Award from Peterborough’s Community and Race Relations Committee and the Kawartha Truth and Reconciliation Support Group.
Dr. Lynn Gehl is an Algonquin Anishinaabeg scholar, advocate, and artist. She is one of eight siblings and grew up in the projects of inner-city Toronto. Dr. Lynn Gehl was born with a congenital disability and despite several surgeries and interventions today Lynn has a vision disability that affects many aspects of her life such as reading, writing, and walking. Dr. Lynn Gehl’s grandmother’s family was removed from her home community of Pikwakanagan First Nation because of sex discrimination in the Indian Act.
Relegated to the confines of inner-city project living, growing up Dr. Lynn Gehl experienced the worst of the human condition that manifests within racism, sexism, and ableism such as violence, poverty, a lack of safety, hunger, drugs, alcohol, and forced relocation. Today Dr. Lynn Gehl’s work encompasses both hard-core anti-colonial work and the joyful celebration of Indigenous knowledge. Dr. Lynn Gehl has a doctorate in Indigenous Studies, a master’s in Canadian Studies and Native Studies, a bachelor’s in Cultural Anthropology (summa cum laude), and a community college diploma in Chemical Technology. During her graduate studies, she was both an Ontario Graduate Scholar and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Fellow.
In her twenties, Dr. Lynn Gehl began her family oral research and archival research to have members of her ancestry entitled to Indian status registration. While her grandmother and father were eventually instated, she was denied. Lynn then turned to Canada’s court system to remedy Indian and Northern Affairs Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms violation. Through this court challenge the Department of Justice spent $1 million litigating against her on the matter of unknown and unstated paternity.
After 30 years Dr. Lynn Gehl, in her late fifties, was finally registered as a status Indian and is now in a more “central” place in her ancestral community of Pikwakanagan First Nation. While Gehl v Canada resulted in a change in the Indian Act and the “Gehl remedy”, Lynn is ambivalent about her victory in part because she understands the power that the state had over her during this time, as well as she fully understands that the genocide continues in the form of both the Indian Act and the land claims process that is imposed on the Algonquin people.
Drawing on life experiences Dr. Lynn Gehl challenges Canada’s practices, policies, and laws of colonial genocide such as the Algonquin land claims and self-government process, sex discrimination in the Indian Act on the matter of unknown and unstated paternity, Canada’s lack of policy and action addressing Indigenous women and girls with disabilities who are bigger targets of sexual violence, and the further destruction of Akikpautik / Chaudière Falls–an Anishinaabeg sacred place. As a non-production-oriented artist when Dr. Lynn Gehl feels like it, she weaves wampum belts, builds petro forms, beads feathers, creates collages, and paints.
Although due to a vision disability, Dr. Lynn learned how to read and write at a later stage in life, Dr. Lynn Gehl has four books. She also has several academic contributions in journals and book chapters; 140 community contributions in magazines, websites, newspapers, and op-eds; and 150 personal blogs. Lynn is frequently called upon as an expert by various media outlets to offer commentary on Indigenous issues. Dr. Lynn Gehl has also provided testimony to the Senate, the House of Commons, and the United Nations on the rights of Indigenous women and girls regarding unknown and unstated paternity and the matter of Indigenous women and girls with disabilities who are bigger targets of sexual.
Videos
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Dr. Lynn Gehl Topic Presentations
debwewin journey
- Virtual PresentationKeynote PresentationWorkshop SessionHalf Day TrainingFull Day Training
Dr. Lynn Gehl discusses Debwewin Journey and the ancient Anishinaabe way of coming to truth and knowledge that involves the “circle of heart” knowledge and the “circle of mind” knowledge working together. Rooted in the Anishinaabeg language, traditional teachings, and ancient Midewiwin scroll knowledge, this way of coming to truth and knowledge predates European arrival on Turtle Island. It draws heavily on her own learning journey of coming to this ancient way.
indigenous knowledge vs western knowledge
- Virtual PresentationKeynote PresentationWorkshop SessionHalf Day TrainingFull Day Training
It is often said there is the need to return to Indigenous knowledge. All people have Indigenous knowledge yet some people are unable to grasp what it is because it sits outside the prevailing paradigm. A good way for people to begin learning and thinking about Indigenous knowledge is through comparing it to the scientific methodology. Drawing from an ancient icon/symbol as her organizing system, Dr. Lynn Gehl offer a model of unharnessed knowledge to help nudge people into the paradigm of Indigenous knowledge. It draws heavily on her own learning journey of moving more deeply into Indigenous knowledge.
gehl v canada - unknown and unstated paternity and the indian act
- Virtual PresentationKeynote PresentationWorkshop SessionHalf Day TrainingFull Day Training
This talk reviews the long history of discrimination in the Indian Act and the history of Indigenous women challenging it. Dr. Lynn Gehl discuss the creation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and Canada’s process of amending the Indian Act in 1985 to bring it in line with section 15, yet instead of eliminating the discrimination Canada created new forms of sex discrimination.
In Gehl v Canada, Dr. Lynn Gehl challenged the specific matter of unknown and unstated paternity where after 23 years of being tangled and trapped in Canada’s court system it was ruled by the Ontario Court of Appeal that she was entitled to a lesser form of Indian status. Within this discussion she flesh out two constructs she created to challenge the nation state’s hegemonic power: The Indigenous Famous Five which evolved into the Indigenous Famous Six and “6(1)a All the Way!”. In this talk Dr. Lynn Gehl reveals her deepest insights about power and Canada’s legal system as a way of coming to truth.
introduction to the treaty and land claims process
- Virtual PresentationKeynote PresentationWorkshop SessionHalf Day TrainingFull Day Training
Many people have difficulty understanding the treaty process in Canada and how it shifted (read slithered) into the land claims process. With this, many people wonder if the current land claims process really is a modern treaty process that respects Indigenous rights as laid out in the United Nations Declaration of Indigenous people.
While the Algonquin Anishinaabeg of what is now called the Ottawa River Valley are the host of Canada the nation state, the Algonquin were denied a treaty during the historic treaty process yet our ancestors were present at the 1764 Treaty at Niagara and submitted their first land petition in 1776. In this talk Dr. Lynn Gehl draw on her first-person experience as an Algonquin and our history to illustrate that colonial genocide continues today.
allyship and reconciliation
- Virtual PresentationKeynote PresentationWorkshop SessionHalf Day TrainingFull Day Training
Drawing on her personal experience once situated in a decades long Charter challenge regarding sex discrimination in the Indian Act, situated within the Ontario Algonquin land claims process, as well as living with a vision disability this talk draws on materials created intended to critically inform and guide settler people and their descendants in their role and practices of reconciliation.
Dr. Lynn Gehl will draw on “The Ally Bill of Responsibilities”, and “A Colonized Ally Meets a Decolonized Ally: This is What They Learned” where the goal is moving people to critically think about structures of power beyond ‘meaningless actions’ and into the direction of ‘critically aware genuine actions’. All Beings and all people require clean land, water, and air where as such we all must reconcile our relationship between the Earth and greater cosmos through standing behind Indigenous people and their knowledge paradigm.
intersectionality and indigenous women and girls with disabilities
- Virtual PresentationKeynote PresentationWorkshop SessionHalf Day TrainingFull Day Training
Black feminist thought created the concept “intersectionality” as a measure to help people understand the difficulties of living under more than one layer of structural oppression such as both sexism and racism. This talk begins with a discussion of what the concept means cognitively, and also what it means at the level of practice in terms of encountering people who are intersectionally oppressed and in terms of direction at the level of social justice.
From this place of understanding the discussion will then shift to the matter of Indigenous women and girls with disabilities (IWagWid) who are disturbingly bigger targets of sexual assault. Drawing on the Gehl Report (2021) the issues discussed will include: a discussion of the cause of disability; the limitations of the national inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls; a statistical snapshot of both their higher rates of disabilities and higher rates of sexual assault; a summary of all previous recommendations; and the call for a political model of disability which demands Canada do better in serving IWagWid.
This discussion will be inclusive of Dr. Lynn Gehl’s recent United Nations written and oral submission during the “79th Session of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women Seeking Input on the Rights of Indigenous Women”.
creator's first sacred pipe (also known as akikpautik / pipe bowl falls / chaudière falls)
- Virtual PresentationKeynote PresentationWorkshop SessionHalf Day TrainingFull Day Training
Most humans think sacred places consist of brick-and-mortar buildings, where inside the walls of such places human made symbols and icons are hung, placed, and strategically situated. This, though, is a narrow and anthropomorphic understanding of the sacred.
Indigenous people here on Turtle Island have a much vaster understanding of the sacred. We know that before the first human was lowered to the Earth all else pre-existed them: The Rock Nations, the Water Nations, the Tree and Plant Nations, and the Four Legged, the Finned, and the Winged Nations …
‘Akikpautik’ is a Sacred Land and Waterscape for the Anishinaabeg and beyond. It is the place where Creation carved ‘Creator’s First Sacred Pipe’ where the Anishinaabeg ascribed the readings and meaning of the Pipe so that future generations could learn from it and respect the larger forces of Creator’s Law.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, before the advent of the camera and before the destruction by hydro dams, artists such as Davies, Hunter, Young, Cockburn, Woolford, and Krieghoff preserved the beauty of this sacred place in their works.
This talk, or better said viewing, offers a curated collection of this art narrated through an Indigenous paradigm, offering observers and listeners a different lens of what is sacred; thus opening the Doorway that western man-made religions, industrialization, patriarchy, and capitalism closed.
Dr. Lynn Gehl can deliver customized presentations within the following topic themes.
- Diversity & Inclusion
- Leadership
- Personal Growth
- Career Development
- Conference
- Corporate Audience
- Education & Teachers
- Finance & Insurance
- First Nation Motivational Speakers
- Guest Panelist & Guided Q&A
- Inspirational
- Interactive & Experience
- Key Note
- Lifestyle & Health
- Most Requested
- Motivation
- Politicians
- Social & Cultural
- Social Justice & Human Rights
- Speaker Types
Testimonials
What a humbling honour and privilege to be able to read Dr. Lynn Gehl’s profound and wise contribution and take her direction regarding the vital action required of all who are committed to promoting equality and justice.
Kim Pate
Congratulations are due to Dr. Lynn Gehl for her successful challenge of the Indian Registrar’s refusal to allow her to be registered under the Indian Act. The refusal was based on the fact that because Lynn could not prove who her paternal grandfather was or that he was entitled to be registered, she could not be registered. The Court of Appeal for Ontario found that requiring her to prove the unprovable (the name of her ancestor) was unreasonable and that there was circumstantial evidence...
Murray Sinclair
Dr. Lynn Gehl is at the cutting edge with her concepts and ideas. She is on a journey and she documents it well.
Lorelei Anne Lambert
Dr. Lynn Gehl embodies essential Indigenous wisdom, bravery, and responsibility in her work to dismantle the systems of colonial oppression. Her work serves as a beacon in a network of pathways for our people to make their way home.
Wendy Jocko
A remarkable monument in Indigenous struggles with the Colonial Crown.
Dr. Veldon Coburn
We were so, so grateful to have you join us. You are a gifted speaker. I hope your travel home went well and I look forward to meeting again!
Lindsey Kirby-McGregor
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How to book Dr. Lynn Gehl for an event?
Dr. Lynn Gehl keynote speaker is an expert presenter and has a wide range of experience speaking to a wide variety of audiences and organizations. Dr. Lynn Gehl delivers keynotes, workshops & training sessions. They may also host or emcee events. Hire Dr. Lynn Gehl from Peterborough, Ontario for your event to inspire the audience to take action and make change in their work and their lives. Your workplace will benefit from our keynote speaker and their keynote talks and speeches will shift the mindsets or behaviours for the audience members in Canada.
Interested in booking Dr. Lynn Gehl for an event?
Are you looking to hire Dr. Lynn Gehl for your event? Dr. Lynn Gehl Peterborough, Ontario is a dynamic and engaging speaker that offers audiences researched content paired with expertise and a dynamic speaking ability. Dr. Lynn Gehl is also a Canadian corporate consultant and coach and facilitates workshops and training sessions for a corporate audience. Dr. Lynn Gehl is an expert keynote presenter and speaks on wide variety of topics. Hiring a great speaker for your event is important and working with a thought leader like Dr. Lynn Gehl from Speakers Canada’s roster will engage audiences into the content of the presentation to bring awareness and a fresh perspective for their approach to their work and their lives. Book Dr. Lynn Gehl to educate, motivate and activate the audience through an interactive and entertaining presentation at corporate meetings and gatherings.
Known as a popular key note speaker in Canada, Dr. Lynn Gehl creates life changing experiences for the participants with practical insights and strategic advice they can implement right after the session. Working with a one our leading expert speaker like Dr. Lynn Gehl from Peterborough, Ontario offers organizations a fresh perspective to assist the people of the organization. No matter if it is a government, association, or business crowd, Dr. Lynn Gehl is a perfect speaker for your event. Through unique practical insights for trending topics and years experience speaking to different organizations, Dr. Lynn Gehl focuses on changing individuals to make better decisions at work and their lives. No matter if you are holding an in person or virtual event, having an influential speaker such as Dr. Lynn Gehl will engage, motivate, and activate the audience to make a change in their lives and inspire action for results to meet organizational goals. Your workforce will benefit from Dr. Lynn Gehl’s presentations and speeches, with measurable results set to shift the people of the organization and core direction of the company. Book Dr. Lynn Gehl speaker for your annual general meeting, conference, summit, or convention in Canada.
How much does it cost to hire Dr. Lynn Gehl for a keynote presentation or virtual event?
Dr. Lynn Gehl is an expert professional key note speaker with a lot of experience speaking and delivering engaging talks to organizations and audiences in Canada. Each of Speaker Bureau Canada’s talent have different ways to assess their fees, and Dr. Lynn Gehl speaker fee ranges depending on the size of the audience, event format (in person or virtual), event location, and if the organization booking them is a non profit, association, government department/government agency or business/corporation. The speakers we work with are flexible with their fees, and it is important for us to learn more about your event before we approach them, as it is our role to work for you, and to help you find a speaker within budget.
Please contact Speakers Bureau of Canada and provide us with your event details so that we can contact Dr. Lynn Gehl to check availability or confirm the pricing and associated costs to hire a great speaker like Dr. Lynn Gehl for your event. As Dr. Lynn Gehl's agent and as a Canadian top speaker bureau and talent agency for speakers, we are able to propose each event opportunity from each host organization’s behalf to try to help you get in touch with Dr. Lynn Gehl and confirm them for your in person or online meeting/event. We can also provide and advise on the booking process and potentially negotiate their fee. Speakers Canada is a client focused speaker agency, and we work for you in finding good speakers for your team meetings and booking processes.
Dr. Lynn Gehl Disclaimer
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