Becoming Kin: A Discussion with Patty Krawec

Patty Krawec is an Anishinaabe/Ukrainian writer and speaker belonging to Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory and residing in Niagara Falls. She has served on the board of the Fort Erie Native Friendship Centre and co-hosted the Medicine for the Resistance podcast. She is a founding director of the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation which challenges settlers to pay their rent for living on Indigenous land and then disburses those funds to Indigenous people, meeting immediate survival needs as well as supporting the organizing and community building needed to address the structural issues that create those needs. With a background in social work, Patty focused on supporting victims of sexual and gendered violence as well as child abuse. She is a strong believer in the power of collective organizing, and was an active union member throughout her career as a social worker. 

Her current work and writing focuses on how Anishinaabe belonging and thought can inform faith and social justice practices and has been published in Sojourners, Rampant Magazine, Midnight Sun, Yellowhead Institute, Indiginews, Religion News Service, and Broadview. Her first book, Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future was published in 2022 by Broadleaf Books. Her second book about the ways that subaltern writing and storytelling can help us reimagine that future will be published in the fall of 2025. She lives on Twitter as @gindaanis and you can find her online at daanis.ca