She is the author of the award-winning book Grounded Authority: the Algonquins of Barriere Lake Against the State, published by the University of Minnesota Press in 2017, about the Algonquins’ rejection of the federal land claims policy in Canada from the perspective of Indigenous law and jurisdiction. Pasternak is also the Research Director for the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nations-focused think tank based in the Faculty of Arts at Ryerson University.