Valeri Pilgrim

Valeri Pilgrim is the Manager, Aboriginal Resource Offive at the Memorial University of Newfoundland (MUN) in St. John’s. She has been associated with the Aboriginal Resource Office of MUN since January 2011. She was first hired by Memorial University as the Aboriginal Liaison Officer with the Aboriginal Resource Office for three and a half years. In June, 2014 she took the position of International Student Advisor with the Internationalization Office (IO) where she remained until November, 2018. When the opportunity came up Valeri returned to the Aboriginal Resource Office as Manager in November, 2018. She considers her experiences working with Indigenous and international students extremely valuable, and has always felt enlightened and humbled by students from a variety of cultural backgrounds. In the 1990’s Valeri studied her undergraduate degree in anthropology & sociology at UNB, Fredericton and later completed a Master of Philosophy degree at the University of Oslo in Norway where she lived for two and a half years with her then 7 year old daughter, Kirsten. She self identifies as a Kablunângajuk which is essentially a mix between Inuk (singular for Inuit) and European settler in Labrador. She feels blessed to have grown up in the Inuit community of Nain in Nunatsiavut (Northern Labrador) and is a beneficiary of the Nunatsiavut Government. Last but not least, Valeri is the proud mother of 2 children, Dominic & Kirsten.