Brenda Fitzpatrick, PhD (UBC), is an anthropologist whose research explores how language, power, place relationships, and institutions intersect in environmental conflict. She holds an MA in Peace and Conflict Studies, where she focused on the role of culture in shaping and transforming conflict—experience she deepened through peacebuilding and development work in Kenya/South Sudan, the Philippines, and Indonesia, as well as facilitating inter-cultural dialogue with Soliya.

As a former member of a Community Justice Initiatives program in northern B.C., Brenda values the opportunity to continue engaging in traditional restorative justice. She is especially enthusiastic about VARJ’s Environmental Restorative Justice initiative, which applies restorative values to the relationships among peoples, place, and planet.

Brenda is grateful to have lived most of her life on the unceded traditional territories of the sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh), and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.