Strategist | Design Thinker | Framework Architect

Dr. Jonathon Potskin is a member of Sawridge First Nation and a Nêhiyaw scholar, speaker, and strategist whose work has focused on understanding how Indigenous communities create voice, build systems, and shape futures grounded in their own lived realities, knowledge, and collective responsibilities. Drawing from both his First Nations identity and Métis family heritage, his work brings together decades of experience across Indigenous research, governance, community health, reconciliation, institutional development, and emerging technologies.

Grounded in an intersectional understanding of identity, Dr. Potskin’s work has consistently explored how Indigenous peoples navigate systems shaped by governance, culture, gender, sexuality, health, community belonging, and institutional power. Across both scholarship and professional leadership, his work has focused on creating frameworks that allow communities to better understand these relationships while building systems that reflect their own values, experiences, and futures.

Holding a Doctor of Philosophy from University of Sydney, Dr. Potskin’s research explored Indigenous youth in Canada and Australia, examining how music, storytelling, and cultural expression continue to carry knowledge across generations while creating new forms of voice, belonging, and self-determination in contemporary Indigenous communities. His academic work focused on developing Indigenous research methodologies capable of moving beyond colonial systems of research and creating approaches grounded in Indigenous relationships, lived experience, and community realities.

Throughout his career, Dr. Potskin has worked across a broad range of sectors including Indigenous community health, Two-Spirit advocacy, governance and institutional accountability, strategic planning, reconciliation frameworks, research development, and policy transformation. His work has consistently focused on understanding how communities navigate systems of power while building structures that better reflect their own values, identities, and futures.

Through Waskwayak Innovations, Dr. Potskin works with Indigenous Nations, organizations, and institutions to help build frameworks rooted in community realities, cultural teachings, governance integrity, and future-focused innovation. Whether through speaking engagements, institutional advisory work, or collaborative systems development, his work remains centered on one core principle: Indigenous communities must continue to remain builders of their own futures. 

SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS AND STRATEGIC ADVISORY

Dr. Potskin brings together scholarship, lived experience, storytelling, and practical systems thinking to engage audiences in conversations focused on Indigenous governance, reconciliation, community transformation, identity, health equity, institutional accountability, Indigenous futurism, and the future of Indigenous-led innovation.

His speaking and advisory work is grounded in a career dedicated to understanding how communities create voice, challenge systems that no longer serve their people, and build stronger futures through community-driven change. Drawing from experiences across academic research, health systems leadership, governance work, advocacy, and institutional transformation, Dr. Potskin works with organizations seeking meaningful conversations that move beyond performative engagement toward long-term structural change.

Whether speaking to Indigenous Nations, academic institutions, health organizations, governments, leadership teams, or community organizations, his work focuses on creating conversations that challenge systems, strengthen accountability, and help communities and institutions imagine stronger futures built on their own principles, lived realities, and collective responsibilities.