Mercedes Peters

Mercedes Peters was born in Menahkwesk in Wolastokuk and is a band member of Glooscap First Nation. With a love for storytelling and a passion for public education, she has spent the last ten years dedicated to sharing and learning Mi’kmaw history with others through many different initiatives. She is currently working on her PhD in History through the University of British Columbia, and her dissertation, rooted in Mi’kmaw ways of thinking about and doing history, focuses on Mi’kmaw and Wolastoqey women’s grassroots activism and community care work from the 1970s through to the early 2000s.

As the Sharing Our Stories Coordinator, Mercedes will be working closely with the MDCC team on sharing Mi’kmaw worldviews, language and history with learners of all ages, as well as educators across Nova Scotia and beyond. Before starting at MDCC, Mercedes was a researcher and oral historian at the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre in Vancouver, BC, where she helped in supporting residential school survivors and their communities in telling their stories and identifying research needs in ways that put their voices, goals, and healing first.