Cody Groat is Kanyen’kehaka (Mohawk) and a band member of Six Nations of the Grand River. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History and in the Indigenous Studies Program at Western Univeristy. His research focuses on two areas, one being the commemoration of Indigenous peoples and cultures by various levels of government and international bodies, such as UNESCO. This theme is considered in his upcoming book Always a Part of the Land: the Federal Commemoration of Indigenous Peoples (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) which considers the presence and exclusion of Indigenous peoples within Canada’s commemorative frameworks. His other research focus centers on biographical history and researching his own family’s past. Through this work, he has drawn attention to the barriers to accessing historical records, including those related to Indian Residential Schools and the Sixties Scoop. These restrictions impede understandings of Indigenous lived experience and prevent a full examination of the treatment of Indigenous people by the Canadian state.
His article “Holding Place: Resistance, Reframing and Relationality in the Representation of Indigenous History,” co-authored with Kim Anderson and published in the Canadian Historical Review won the Canadian Historical Association’s Best Article Prize for Indigenous History. The article examines how Indigenous peoples have resisted and reframed Canadian public history projects, while also generating their own forms of commemoration based in concepts of relationality. The article is grounded in stories from the Kika’ige Historical Society, a public history group of Indigenous women scholars who use performance art to engage with this work.
Groat’s work has also examined the commemoration of the Mohawk Institute, an Indian Residential School that his grandparents Stanley and Sarah both attended. This includes a 2018 article called “Commemoration and Reconciliation: The Mohawk Institute as a World Heritage Site”, and a forthcoming chapter entitled “The Stewardship, Preservation, and Commemoration of the Mohawk Institute” in Behind the Bricks: The Life and Times of the Mohawk Institute, the Model for the Canadian Residential School System (edited by Rick Hill, Alison Norman, Thomas Peace, and Jennifer Pettit).
Groat also works as a heritage practitioner, serving as the Chairman of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO Memory of the World Advisory Committee and a director on the board of the Museum of Ontario Archaeology. He is also a past Trustee for Chiefswood National Historic Site and the Past President of the Indigenous Heritage Circle, an Indigenous designed and led not-for-profit organization with the mission to advance the cultural heritage priorities of First Nations, Inuit, and Metis peoples in Canada.
Contact:
Select works:
Always a Part of the Land: the Federal Commemoration of Indigenous Peoples. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, forthcoming 2025.
“The Stewardship, Preservation, and Commemoration of the Mohawk Institute.” In Behind the Bricks: The Life and Times of the Mohawk Institute, the Model for the Canadian Residential School System, edited by Rick Hill, Alison Norman, Thomas Peace, and Jennifer Pettit, (forthcoming).
“Reclaiming the Stories of Our Families.” Opening Lecture, 2023 Munsee Language & History Symposium, Princeton, NJ, 3 November 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-T2y_DwAR3A
“Guardians of our Knowledge: Indigenous Peoples and the UNESCO Memory of the World Programme,” Canadian Commission for UNESCO IdeaLab Policy Paper, 24 May 2023. https://en.ccunesco.ca/idealab/guardians-of-our-knowledge-memory-of-the-world
With Kim Anderson. “Holding Place: Resistance, Reframing and Relationally in the Representation of Indigenous History.” The Canadian Historical Review 102, no. 3 (2021): 465-484.
“Commemoration and Reconciliation: The Mohawk Institute as a World Heritage Site.” British Journal of Canadian Studies 31, no. 2 (2018): 195-208.
Canadian Stories: A Teenaged Adventure with Presidents, Drag Queens and Drug Lords. Montreal: Rapido Books, 2016.