探花系列

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School of Public Health & Social Policy

Sarah Wright Cardinal

Sarah Wright Cardinal

Associate professor

Public Health and Social Policy

Status:
Not accepting new graduate students
Contact:
250-853-3109
Credentials:
BA (UBC), MA (SIT), PhD (UVic)
Area(s) of expertise:
Spirit and land-based dimensions of Indigenous health, holistic Community Wellness, Decolonizing praxis, Indigenous Child Welfare (historical and current), Intersectionality & identity development, Storied and community led research, Indigenous ethics

Background

 Sarah Wright Cardinal, PhD, is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Health & Social Policy at the 探花系列. She is Bush Cree from treaty 8 territory, her late maternal grandparents Narcisse Cardinal and Agatha Desjarlais were recognized traditional healers in the communities of Fort Smith, NT and Fort Fitzgerald, AB. Sarah is the first generation born in the hospital, speaking English, and raised away from family, community, and land-based worldviews and wellness practices. The importance of these connections is what drives her research Healing from Colonial Disruptions to Indigenous Identities & Lifeways; co-creating community wellness frameworks that engage land, language, culture, and ceremony; and crafting an approach to community wellness research Being a Helper where Invited. She holds a (2024-29) for her program of research “Sharing Medicine Bundles & Pathways to Community Wellness: articulating nation-specific ceremonial, land-based wellness practices” informed by her CIHR project grant (2022-27) “Sharing medicine bundles and pathways to community wellness: Land-based connections to address youth protective factors and intergenerational healing in four Indigenous nations.” She is also a co-principal investigator on the CIHR project grant (2025-2030) “Holding space for Indigenous re-narration of urban wellness, self-determination, and community flourishing in colonial Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside’s Single Room Occupancy Hotels”.  She is a 2022 recipient of the CUFA BC Ehor Boyanowsky Academic of the Year award, former President of Aurora College (2009-2012), a community auntie and helper mentor.

Select publications

Wright Cardinal, S., Cardinal Lennie, T. (2025). Our Ancestors are dancing. In Krill, S. R. &  Skavinski, K. P. Eds. Bebias Into Ohndaa Ke: Queer Indigenous Knowledge for Land and Community. ARP Books.

Sharing Medicine Bundles students:

Kyra Willoughby (MA, 2025). Manidookewin: Exploring community wellness with Elders and knowledge keepers in Whitesand First Nation. 

Tracy Underwood (PhD, 2024). ȽÁU, NOṈET SXEDQIṈEȽ - Healing House post (totem pole): Addressing Indigenous specific systemic racism with ancestral knowledge and matriarchal wisdom.