Lea Bill

Cree from Pelican Lake First Nation in Saskatchewan, Lea Bill (RN BScN) has worked as a community health nurse, Indigenous Knowledge holder, and researcher over the course of her 30-year career as a registered nurse.

From 1990 to 1994, she served on the Board of Directors of the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada and President between 1994 and 1999. In 2019 Lea was elected President of the Canadian Indigenous Nurses Association.

Her nursing career has provided her the opportunity to work in many First Nation communities across the country, and she continues to be an advocate for health equity for First Nation, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

One of Lea’s proudest achievements was her role as Traditional Knowledge Component Project Leader and Traditional Knowledge Co-Leader on the Northern River Basins Study (1996) a research project that examined the relationships between industrial, agricultural, municipal, and other developments in 10 First Nations communities in Northern Alberta and the Northwest Territories. The project has been used as a reference text for community participation research at Athabasca University.

Lea is also the Executive Director of the Alberta First Nations Information Governance Centre (AFNIGC), where she served as project lead and research oversight manager since 2014.