BIO

Dr. Joshua Schwab Cartas is a mixed-race Indigenous Binnizá (Zapotec)-Austrian researcher, filmmaker, parent, and language revitalization advocate. With over two decades of lived experience working alongside Indigenous youth and Elders in his maternal grandfather’s community and across numerous Indigenous communities throughout North America, he brings a deeply relational and community-rooted approach to research, pedagogy, and creative practice.

At NSCAD University, Dr. Schwab Cartas teaches in the Master of Arts in Art Education program, where his courses focus on decolonial aesthetics, participatory research methodologies, and Indigenous knowledge systems. He is a leading specialist in cellphilm—a participatory visual method that engages participants in creating short films using their own cell phones and everyday media-making skills to explore social and cultural concerns. His cellphilm approach is deeply grounded in his Binnizá epistemology, offering a culturally responsive methodology for Indigenous language revitalization and intergenerational knowledge transmission.

His co-edited book, What’s a Cellphilm? Integrating Mobile Phone Technology into Participatory Arts-Based Research and Activism (Sense Publishers, 2016), was the first scholarly text to explore the potential of this emerging methodology.

As a parent and community member, Dr. Schwab Cartas collaborates with Indigenous students, staff, and faculty to co-create culturally sustaining workshops and gatherings that celebrate Indigenous languages, foodways, and lifeways across Turtle Island. These initiatives are designed to foster spaces of belonging on campus where Indigenous students feel heard, seen, and empowered to connect with their ancestral practices through the arts, land-based activities, and storytelling.

Through both his academic and creative work, Dr. Schwab Cartas is committed to decolonizing research and pedagogy, supporting Indigenous resurgence, and fostering intergenerational healing and learning through the arts.