Libby Dean

About

Libby Dean is a community-based researcher and facilitator who works with a wide variety of groups, communities and projects. Libby is currently a research assistant with CCRN (2018-19) and was a research assistant with CCRN’s work with the Innu Nation in Labrador (2015-16). She has spent part of several years working with Indigenous people in Labrador (Innu, Inuit and NunatuKavut) on topics ranging from polar bears to caribou, sustainable communities to the development of Indigenous-centred environmental policy. She first worked in Labrador in 1997, helping with an oral history and literacy project, and later did her thesis fieldwork in Nain, the northernmost Labrador community.

Libby has a master’s degree in environmental studies from Dalhousie University’s School for Resource & Environmental Studies (Halifax, Nova Scotia) and an undergraduate degree in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic (Bar Harbor, Maine). Before her campus-based education, Libby was a student with the National Audubon Society Expedition Institute. This experiential education programme focused on learning directly from experiences with people and places across much of North America: Indigenous cosmology from Hopi and Navajo elders, geology from the Grand Canyon, ways of farming from Mennonites, natural history from extensive hiking and canoeing in all seasons and regions. She slept outside in all seasons (in a tent or directly under the stars) for three entire years as part of this unique educational experience. Libby’s first time in Atlantic Canada was as a student – visiting with and learning from Nova Scotia coal miners, Newfoundland fiddlers and Labrador’s fisherfolk.

Libby has lived all of her adult years in rural, coastal places including Maine, Newfoundland and Scotland and has lived in Nova Scotia for 16 years. Libby is a co-chair of the Eastern Shore Musquodoboit Community Health Board. Libby lives in West Jeddore, where she loves to walk along the shore, observing wildlife and the ever-changing tides and seasons.