Kelty Jean McKerracher

Kelty worked for almost ten years in the Downtown Eastside (DTES) of Vancouver in harm reduction and the arts. She worked at the non-profit Portland Hotel Society, at Insite, the first legally-sanctioned supervised injection site in North America, and at a Drug Users Resource Centre dedicated to the rights of people who use illicit street drugs. In 2010, Kelty began sharing her lifelong passion and practice, flamenco, with the DTES community. Having completed several years of intensive study in Vancouver and Spain, she led a dance troupe that performed at the annual event Barrio Flamenco: Flamenco for the People, which she produced for the DTES Heart of the City Festival for seven years.

Kelty mentored in intercultural community arts practice with DTES-based theatre company Vancouver Moving Theatre, participating in the cross-country Train of Thought tour connecting Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities through the arts. Inspired by these experiences, she helped found Reframing Relations, a program at the Community Arts Council of Vancouver bringing together Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to classrooms for dialogue about our histories and relationships. In 2015, she completed a Masters of Arts in Expressive Arts Therapy with a Minor in Psychology at the European Graduate School. She applied this methodology in Illicit: A Shadow Story, a research-to-performance project she co-founded with frontline responders to the poisoned drug and alcohol crises. This project culminated with a full production that played in Vancouver, Victoria, and Kamloops.

In 2018, Kelty joined the inaugural class of the JD/JID Joint Degree Program in Canadian Common Law and Indigenous Legal Orders at the University of Victoria. She graduated in 2022 and now works at a law firm that serves Indigenous nations on their paths of self-determination.

Through her many practices, Kelty seeks to respond to the presence and resurgence of Indigenous law on the lands she is privileged to live on. She continues to sing and dance flamenco, and is currently involved the Queer Flamenco Project, seeking to queer the flamenco form through explorations of gender, lineage, and anti-colonial practice.