I am pleased to announce that the Board of Governors has approved the appointment of Professor Clifford Atleo Jr. as Senior Advisor and Associate Vice-President, Indigenous Affairs, for a five-year term starting May 1, 2026.
As Senior Advisor and AVP, Professor Atleo will play a key convening role for Indigenous initiatives at UBC Vancouver, helping to advance Indigenous engagement and reconciliation efforts. He will steward Indigenous initiatives, advise senior leadership, and strengthen relationships with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples across British Columbia and beyond.
Professor Atleo is Ts’msyen from Kitselas/Kitsumkalum and Nuu-chah-nulth from Ahousaht. He is currently an Associate Professor at the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University. In this role, he has built a program of teaching, research, and engagement focused on Indigenous resurgence, governance, and resource justice. Professor Atleo has been an Indigenous Advisor to two Deans, served on SFU’s President’s Aboriginal Steering Committee, and supported the implementation of SFU’s Aboriginal Strategic Plan.
His scholarship focuses on how Indigenous communities navigate, adopt, and resist neoliberal capitalism while working to fulfill their responsibilities and sustain their unique cultural identities, worldviews, and ways of living. He is particularly interested in how Indigenous leaders continue to assert agency within the confines of settler-colonial politics and economic systems and work tirelessly to lead their communities in more sustainable directions.
He regularly speaks to audiences across academic, community, and policy settings, including Stanford, Oxford, Cambridge and the Nuu-chah-nulth Tribal Council. Professor Atleo is working on several research projects on cleaner marine transport, Indigenous community responses to climate change, Indigenous resistance and Canadian law enforcement, and urban Indigenous real estate development.
We are grateful to the members of the Advisory Committee for their commitment of extensive time and energy throughout the search.
Please join me in welcoming Professor Atleo to UBC.
Gage Averill
Provost and Vice-President Academic, UBC Vancouver