Robert Henry, PhD, is Métis (citizen of Métis Nation-Saskatchewan) from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and is an Associate Professor at the University of Saskatchewan in the Department of Indigenous Studies. Robert’s research areas include Indigenous street gangs and gang theories, Indigenous masculinities, Indigenous and critical research methodologies, youth mental health and visual research methods. Working closely with community partners, Robert works to create knowledge mobilization outcomes that reflect community needs and wants. He’s published a photovoice narrative collection with Indigenous male gang members titled Brighter Days Ahead (2013) and with Indigenous females and their involvement in street gangs titled Indigenous Women and Street Gangs: Survivance Narratives (2021).
Robert was the lead editor of Global Indigenous Health: Reconciling the Past, Engaging the Present, Animating the Future (2018) and is a co-editor on Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West (2019), and two forthcoming collections on Indigenous health and art and Indigenous sociology. Robert has also published in the areas of Indigenous masculinity, Indigenous health, youth subcultures and criminal justice. His current research focuses on the concept of survivance and its applicability within Indigenous research more broadly.
Borrowing from Gerald Vizenor’s concept of survivance in literacy, Robert and partners from Canada, New Zealand and Australia are contextualizing its usage within street spaces, and how Indigenous peoples continue to survive, resist and resurge their presence, challenging settler colonialism. In Canada, Robert is using survivance as a way to comprehend pragmatic agency of Indigenous peoples engaged in street lifestyles, specifically street gangs.