Dr. Heather Igloliorte, an Inuk-Newfoundlander and Nunatsiavut beneficiary, is the Director of the Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership partnership grant. She holds the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Decolonial and Transformational Indigenous Art Practices at the University of Victoria, BC, where she is a Professor in the Visual Arts Department (2023-). Heather grew up in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador, before completing high school in Newfoundland, going on to pursue a BFA at NSCAD University (2003), and an MA (2006) and PhD (2013) at Carleton University. Her doctoral thesis contributed the first comprehensive art history of the Labrador Inuit, and that research let to the survey exhibition she developed with many other Nunatsiavummiut, SakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut, created and circulated by The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery of Newfoundland and Labrador. Heather has been a curator since 2005 and has worked on more than thirty curatorial projects including nationally and internationally touring exhibitions, permanent collection exhibits, festivals, and public art installations. Her curatorial work has been recognized by The Hnatyshyn Foundation with the Award for Curatorial Excellence in Contemporary Art (2021). Igloliorte has served on many advisories, councils and juries. She is the current president of the board of the Inuit Art Foundation, and was the first Indigenous person in Canada to be awarded a Royal Canadian Academy of Arts Medal for her service to Indigenous art and artists, also in 2021. Heather publishes frequently on Indigenous art and curatorial practice; she has co-edited four books including The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada (2022); Qummut qukiria!: Art, Culture, and Sovereignty across Inuit Nunaat and Sápmi: Mobilizing the Circumpolar North (2022); Promoting and Protecting the Arts and Cultural Expressions of Indigenous Peoples Experiences of Misuse and Misappropriation, and Emerging Tools and Solutions (2021); and Arctic Prisms: Indigenous Arts of the Circumpolar World (2023).