The International Joint Commission has appointed Susan Chiblow as one of its commissioners.
Chiblow, from Garden River First Nation, is currently an assistant professor at the School of Environmental Sciences at the University of Guelph in southern Ontario.
She joins five other commissioners who will deal with issues around waterways, levels, flows, and investigations along the Canada-U.S. border.
She’s the first Indigenous person to serve as commissioner.
“I’ve also done my Ph’D with a focus on N’bi Kendaaswin, which is ‘our water knowledge,’ our Anishinabek water knowledge,” she told APTN News. “And I’ve always had a relationship, I suppose I can say, with water and always as a Anishinaabe woman and learning about my responsibilities. And one of those is to protect the water.”
Chiblow grew up in Garden River, a community east of Sault Ste. Marie and located on the banks of the St. Mary’s River which connects Lake Superior and Lake Huron.
