Doreen Martinez

Doreen, PhD, is a transnational Indigenous epistemologist with a PhD in Sociology. Her work demonstrates how knowledge is produced and understood, and how meaning/outcomes/consequences are represented, experienced, and known through the practice of knowledge systems, i.e., values, materials, and norms/codes. Her projects offer valuable insights and practical applications that build and address cultural, political, and historical understandings, while pursuing contemporary understandings and solutions.

Her collaborative work has included engineers, veterinary researchers, infectious disease scientists, physicians, agricultural professors, architects, and other social scientists. Their projects address various inequity needs and situations such as ticks/Lyme disease awareness, mental health and chronic pain projects, environmental justice (air and soil quality,) citizen environmental measurement tool (patented), as well as projects to enhance the use of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA).

Doreen presents at international, national, regional, and local conferences/events, plus various community outlets. While students have shared, “Dr. Martinez has an uncanny ability to identify talent in others and encourage, champion for, and promote them in a selfless manner so that they may progress in all of their endeavors, may it be education, work, or social justice.” And a second student writes, “Attending Dr. Martinez’s classes has been a weekly rejuvenation and relief, because not only does Dr. Martinez teach more in one hour than I usually learn in an entire semester, (but) she is also a living example of social justice in all of her actions and lifeways.” Her dedication to develop working relationships, effective collaborations, and her ability to reach and connect with others is evident.

Doreen’s project focuses on Indigenous knowledge traditions and how knowledge is produced from principles of natural reason, ancestral responsibilities, and collective continuance. These foundations are propelled by respect, reverence, humility, and laughter. Through Indigenous understandings of sensory knowledge practices and dwelling expertise, knowledge pursuits are known as dynamic engagements and multifaceted commitments of curiosity, beauty, and power.

She pursues this work to share in meaningful and impactful community engagements that seek to capture histories, contemporary wants/needs, and existence journeys. This project uses several decades of research on ethics and protocols for community equity, representations, and change pursuits. Ultimately, this work explores how to integrate knowledge exploration, tools to foster depth in knowledge processes, and creative ways to disseminate those lessons, insights, and ways of being.