[6][7] Nanibush has been an active community organizer participating in demonstrations against the Iraq War and uranium processing, and raising awareness about the relationship between racism and lack of education.
[8] In 2025, she will serve as the Helen Frankenthaler Visiting Professor in Curating in the Ph.D programme in art history at the City University of New York.
[22] Notable figures in the Canadian and international arts sector have expressed their support and solidarity with Nanibush including Lucy Bell, Haida curator and professor who led the Indigenous collection and repatriation department at the Royal British Columbia Museum before resigning due to systemic racism and bullying,[23] artist Dr. Jamelie Hassan, winner of the 2001 Governor General's Award in Visual Arts, and Candice Hopkins, Tlingit curator, artist and Executive Director of the Native-led Forge Project in Taghkanic, New York.
[24] On November 28, 2023, an open letter signed by over 50 Canadian and international Indigenous cultural leaders, including Shelley Niro, Greg A. Hill, Raymond Boisjoly, Andrea Carlson and Gabrielle L'Hirondelle Hill, condemned the AGO's "decision to erase Nanibush’s institutional presence" and censured the AGO and other Canadian art institutions' for the "harms inflicted upon our community members working in these institutions" through "regular systemic discrimination, racism and subsequent stress-related obstacles".
[25] The letter called for the AGO to "review and revise the inner workings and cultures of their institutions and to genuinely support and commit to practiced policies of decolonization and Indigenization".
The same day, 44 recipients of the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts published a shared statement to "express our alarm and disapproval of the forced departure of Wanda Nanibush" and that "the forced departure of Wanda Nanibush is an act of political censorship" that "severely damages the reputation and credibility of the AGO and sets a dangerous precedent in Canadian art that demands protest".
I recognize there is much work to be done with open, honest, and brave conversations" and the institution will "deeply review and reflect on our commitments to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report".