Biography
Miigis Gonzalez, PhD, MPH is a member of the Lac Courte Oreilles Ojibwe Nation. She joined the Center for Indigenous Health’s Great Lakes Hub as an Assistant Scientist in September 2021. She is an Assistant Scientist in the Department of International Health, Social and Behavioral Interventions Program at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. She is happy to have been invited to join a team of researchers, educators, cultural advocates, and community members dedicated to health and healing within Indigenous communities. She is excited for the opportunity to join this national team while remaining locally and physically connected to her Ojibwe communities.
Her research is grounded in her values, beliefs, and personal experiences as an Anishinaabe woman, mother, and leader. Her research promotes Indigenous language and culture as the means to improve wellbeing among Indigenous Peoples. Her work supports what is innately understood among Indigenous people – that language, culture and spirituality are inseparable components of Indigenous wellbeing; and that we cannot deny contemporary experiences of loss and disconnection.
She hopes to utilize research and the resources of Johns Hopkins to create new opportunities to increase access to Indigenous language, culture, and wellbeing for Indigenous Peoples. In addition to Assistant Scientist, Miigis is a parent (with her three children) of Gookonaanig Endaawaad (Our Grandmother’s House), an Ojibwe language nest. Gookonaanig Endaawaad brings together parents, babies, and elders in a cultural, immersion setting to revive the language, the culture, Anishinaabe parenting practices, and ultimately, to raise a new generation of first language speakers. Miigis is dedicated to immersing her young family within language, cultural, and ceremonial spaces because it is within these spaces that Anishinaabe teachings are alive and transferable.