Andriy Nahachewsky is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta. He holds a B.A. in Ukrainian Studies (University of Saskatchewan, 1979), a B.F.A. in Dance (York University, 1985), M.A. and Ph.D. in Ukrainian Folklore (University of Alberta, 1985 and 1991, supervised by Bohdan Medwidsky). He has an extensive background in Ukrainian dance, as a performer, instructor, choreographer, workshop leader, critic, adjudicator, and authour. He has taught a wide variety of courses at the university level in many aspects of Ukrainian and Ukrainian Canadian traditional culture. His research interests and publications deal with Ukrainian dance, Ukrainian Canadian identity, material culture, ethnic representation, and dance theory. He has conducted fieldwork in Canada, the U.S.A., Brazil, Ukraine, Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Poland, and other countries. His most recent book is Ukrainian Dance: A Cross-Cultural Approach (McFarland Press, 2012).
Andriy served as the Director of the Peter and Doris Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore and Curator of the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives since their inception and until summer of 2016. Dr. Nahachewsky retired in the summer of 2018, but continues his research and actively participates in the international dance research community.
Published
On September 23, 2012, Myrna Kostash co-hosted an event in Edmonton called Zemlya/Nanaskomun (The land/We give thanks): A Ceremonial Exchange of Gifts, which meant to remind there there had once been a relationship between Ukrainians and Indigenous peoples.
The collections consists of photographs of the event, and an article about the event by Myrna Kostash in the albertaviews. As Myrna wrote on her website: "The Ceremony evolved from my desire as a descendent of Ukrainian settlers on Treaty Six land to acknowledge the relationship between my people and the First Nations people through the shared gift of the land. The emphasis was on ceremony and acknowledgement of relationship. The idea of the Exchange of Gifts was mine but I shared the event with my co-host Métis advocate, Sharon Pasula." (https://www.myrnakostash.com/zemlya-nanaskomun-gallery/ accessed January 9, 2021)
Andriy Nahachewsky (then Director of the Kule Folklore Centre) and Lynnien Pawluk (Kule Folklore Centre Administrator) participated in the event. Andriy shared a story of his grandfather. Lynnien shared gifts with a representative of the Indigenous community. See the article for detailed description of the event.