Lori Davis Hill
Lori Davis Hill is Onʌyota’a:ka (Oneida) Wolf Clan, Haudenosaunee from Six Nations of the Grand River who works with her team as Director of Health Services to improve wellness in her community. Davis Hill knows that as an O:kwehonwe (Indigenous) woman, wife and mother of three, maintaining connection to community and knowing the value that her culture places on connection is necessary to live as creator intended with a good mind, good words and good actions. She is a leader who walks her talk.
She has spent her career of over 30 years in clinical health care and management roles that benefit her community. She completed two degrees at a time when very few members of her community were attending post-secondary education, becoming the first Indigenous Speech Pathologist trained in Canada. Davis Hill, trained in Incident Management Systems, worked as Incident Command with the community Emergency Control Group to successfully lead her community response for 29 months of the Covid-19 Pandemic. Now, she is engaged in seeking to complete a life long goal with this DocSocSci program.
Lori’s doctoral research will give voice to the life experiences of adults with respect to access to their Indigenous culture and language. There are many language yearners – those who have struggled to learn their ancestral languages. To demonstrate the value of connection to language and culture, her research will seek to build upon teachings and ceremony of her community to create tools that can be used by language learners to understand how language works in a way that will enhance and support language reclamation, revitalization and wellbeing because language is medicine.
Lori holds a Master of Health Science in Speech Pathology from the University of Toronto (1990), a Bachelor of Aboriginal Adult Education (2005) and an Honours Bachelor of Arts – Psychology from University of Western Ontario (1988)
