Alicia Charles

Alicia Charles D’Avalon is an anthropologist, community-based researcher, dancer, and storyteller whose work centers Indigenous resurgence, cultural revitalization, and decolonial methodologies. With a BA in Religion and Culture from Concordia University, an MA in Socio-Cultural Anthropology from McGill University and a forthcoming non-thesis MA in Community Economic Development from Concordia University, she brings an interdisciplinary lens to questions of oral history, traditional knowledge systems, relational governance, and collective memory. Alicia is the Kasike (hereditary chief) of the Yukayeke Yamaye Kokuio (Taino Firefly Tribe of Jamaica), and her research is rooted in ceremonial practice and Indigenous knowledge systems. Her MA thesis, “Taino Resurgence in Jamaica: An Indigenous Leadership for the Ecozoic,” explores how Taino leaders are reviving. traditional governance, cosmology, and knowledge systems in the wake of colonial erasure. She is currently developing a tribal archive and a series of workshops that mobilize oral testimony, digital media, land-based practices and sensory ethnography as tools for cultural continuity and youth engagement.