Upcoming Talk "Care(ful) Disruption: Indigenous and Black Women’s Standpoints on Care as a Strategy of Resistance and Continuance"

Event Date: 
Thursday, January 14, 2021 - 7:00pm to 9:00pm EST
Event Location: 
Zoom/Online
Event Contact Name: 
Dr. Whitney Wood
Event Contact E-mail: 
Care(ful) Disruption: Indigenous and Black Women’s Standpoints on 
Care as a Strategy of Resistance and Continuance
 
Indigenous and Black women in Canada have been critical to their communities as traditional healers, health care providers, activists, and spiritual guides. Yet, the voices and health concerns of Indigenous and Black women, apart from a few notable exceptions, are virtually absent from Canadian and feminist histories of health, and seldom prioritized in policy debates. This erasure, which is consequential of oppressive structures and supports the continuance of white supremacy, colonialism, and heteropatriarchy, has had devastating consequences for Indigenous and Black peoples in Canada who are grappling with poor health outcomes.

In this conversation, chaired by Dr. Kristin Burnett (Lakehead University, Department of Indigenous Learning), we centre gendered and racialized notions and histories of healing, and discuss ways in which universities can be sites of change through the privileging of Indigenous and Black theories, histories, and methods. Consideration is also given to the structural changes needed to create space for the embodiment of Indigenous and Black women’s notions of caring as a particular mode of scholarship.
 
Speakers:
 
Dr. Karen Flynn is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Gender and Women’s
Studies and the African American Studies Program at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include migration and travel, Black Canada, health, popular culture, feminist, Diasporic and post-colonial studies. Her book won the Lavinia L. Dock Award from the American Association of the History of Nursing.
 
Dr. Lana Ray is an Anishinaabe scholar from Opwaaganasiniing. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Indigenous Learning at Lakehead University. She is committed to the use of Anishinaabe pedagogical practice and her work seeks to advance Indigenous social, cultural and political realities through resurgent and decolonial praxis.
 
Dr. Notisha Massaquoi is one of Canada’s leading experts in developing equity responsive organizations and served for 2 decades as the Executive Director of Women’s Health in Women’s Hands Community Health Centre in Toronto. Her research focuses on health equity and anti-Black racism. She is currently a Provost Research Fellow at the University of Toronto Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work. 
 
Support for this event is provided by: Gender & History; Vancouver Island University; the Canada Research Chairs Program; the Department of Indigenous Learning, Lakehead University; and the Department of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
 
For further information or to register, please contact Dr. Whitney Wood at
 

"Métis Way of Life" Fall 2020 Course

Event Date: 
Tuesday, September 8, 2020 - 8:30am EDT to Monday, December 7, 2020 - 7:00pm EST
Event Location: 
Online (Web Based Course)

The Department of Indigenous Learning is Offering "Métis Way of Life"

Course Code: INDI- 3110-FDE (Web Based)

Class Dates: September 8, 2020 to December 7, 2020.
Instructor: Bryanna Scott

Course Summary: In this course, we will explore and understand the historical and contemporary Metis way of life. The objectives of the course are to introduce the distinct characteristics of Metis culture including food, clothing, language, technology, music, dance, traditional values, family and community. Students will have the opportunity to learn about the origins of Metis culture and the distinct contributions the Metis culture brings to Canada.

"Decolonizing the Internet" web course (INDI-3110-ADE)

Event Date: 
Thursday, July 2, 2020 - 8:30am EDT to Thursday, August 13, 2020 - 4:30pm EDT
Event Location: 
Online (web courses)

This course uses the podcasts, memes, blogs, artistic creations, and other web-based productions of Indigenous scholars to form the basis of an exploration into the concepts and critiques central to the field of Indigenous Studies. Drawing on the podcasts of Ryan McMahon and Rick Harp, the Twitter Tutorials of Kim Tallbear, the blog entry essays of Chelsea Vowel, and the memes of Arnell Tailfeathers, the course asks students to imagine what decolonization looks like in the digital space and how this online work might translate into more material realms. In addition to online content, the course will introduce students to Indigenous scholarship theorizing issues of absence/presence, storytelling, and futurity.

This course will run online July 2, 2020 to August 13, 2020. The instructor is Dr. Travis Hay.

"Indigenous Peoples & the World" web course (INDI-4302-SDE)

Event Date: 
Friday, May 1, 2020 - 8:30am to 4:30pm EDT
Event Location: 
Online

A comparative overview of the experience of Indigenous Peoples; the North American experience compared to the contrasting life experiences of Indigenous Peoples in Australia, Russia and the Scandinavian countries. Issues considered will include traditional cultures and government policies.

 

This course will run online May 1st, 2020 to July 27th, 2020. The instructor is Dr. Julee Boan.

"Incarceration & Critical Race" web course (INDI-4012-SDE)

Event Date: 
Friday, May 1, 2020 - 8:30am to 4:30pm EDT
Event Location: 
Online

This course examines definitions of "race" and racism, and explores different ways of theorizing their relationship to law, criminal justice, and settler colonialism. The course uses empirical cases in policing, sentencing, corrections, border control, and policy-making in order to explore the particular dynamics of race, the law, and criminal justice in Canada.

 

This course will run online May 1st, 2020 to June 15th, 2020. The instructor is Dr. Angie Wong.

Teaching and Learning after TRC: An Indigenous Feminist Lens

Event Date: 
Thursday, November 7, 2019 - 2:30pm to 4:30pm EST
Event Location: 
LI 5014 C (Lakehead Thunder Bay) & OA 3041(Lakehead Orillia)

Dr. Kim Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph.

As an Indigenous (Métis) scholar, she has spent her career working to improve the health and well-being of Indigenous families in Canada. Much of her research is community partnered and has involved gender and Indigeneity, urban Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous masculinities, and Indigenous feminism.

Her single-authored books include A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood (2nd Edition, Canadian Scholars, 2016) and Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings and Story Medicine (University of Manitoba Press, 2011).

Recent co-edited books include Indigenous Men and Masculinities:  Legacies,  Identities,  Regeneration (with Robert Alexander Innes, University of Manitoba Press, 2015), and Mothers of the Nations: Indigenous Mothering as Global Resistance, Reclaiming and Recovery (with Dawn Lavell-Harvard, 2014).

 

Injichaag: My Soul in Story

Event Date: 
Friday, November 8, 2019 - 2:30pm to 4:30pm EST
Event Location: 
The Study Coffeehouse, Lakehead University, 955 Oliver Road
Event Fee: 
Free event, please reserve through Eventbrite link provided

Join Rene Meshake and Dr. Kim Anderson for the Launch of their Book, Injichaag: My Soul in Story on November 8th, 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm at The Study Coffeehouse, Lakehead University.

Authors Rene Meshake an accomplished Anishinaabe storyteller and artist and Dr. Kim Anderson a distinguished Cree/Métis scholar will be joining us to share and discuss excerpts from their book, Injichaag: My Soul in Story.

Meshake was born in the railway town of Nakina in northwestern Ontario in 1948, and spent his early years living off-reserve with his grandmother in a matriarchal land-based community he calls Pagwashing. He was raised through his grandmother’s “bush university,” periodically attending Indian day school, but at the age of ten Rene was scooped into the Indian residential school system, where he suffered sexual abuse as well as the loss of language and connection to family and community.

This residential school experience was lifechanging, as it suffocated his artistic expression and resulted in decades of struggle and healing. Now in his twenty-eighth year of sobriety, Rene is a successful multidisciplinary artist, musician and writer. Meshake’s artistic vision and poetic lens provide a unique telling of a story of colonization and recovery.

The material is organized thematically around a series of Meshake’s paintings. It is framed by Kim Anderson, Rene’s Odaanisan (adopted daughter), a scholar of oral history who has worked with Meshake for two decades. Full of teachings that give a glimpse of traditional Anishinaabek lifeways and worldviews, Injichaag: My Soul in Story is “more than a memoir.”

Light snacks and refreshments will be provided.

This event is sponsored by the Office of Aboriginal Initiatives, The Departments of Indigenous Learning, Sociology, and Visual Arts, and the ReImagining Value Action Lab (RiVAL).

 

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Rene Meshake is an Anishinaabe Elder, visual and performing artist, award-winning author, storyteller, flute player, new media artist and a Recipient of Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee Medal.

Kim Anderson is a Cree/Métis writer, a Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Relationships, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph. She has published six books, including Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings and Story Medicine and Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration.

Decolonizing Research Ethics: Challenges and Possibilities

Event Date: 
Thursday, November 7, 2019 - 7:30pm EST
Event Location: 
CASES Atrium, Lakehead University

Dr. Kim Anderson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Family Relations and Applied Nutrition at the University of Guelph.

As an Indigenous (Métis) scholar, she has spent her career working to improve the health and well-being of Indigenous families in Canada. Much of her re- search is community partnered and has involved gender and Indigeneity, urban Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous masculinities, and Indigenous feminism.

Her single-authored books include A Recognition of Being: Reconstructing Native Womanhood (2nd Edition, Canadian Scholars, 2016) and Life Stages and Native Women: Memory, Teachings and Story Medicine (University of Manitoba Press, 2011).

Recent co-edited books include Indigenous Men and Masculinities:  Legacies,  Identities,  Regeneration (with Robert Alexander Innes, University of Manitoba Press, 2015), and Mothers of the Nations: Indigenous Mothering as Global Resistance, Re- claiming and Recovery (with Dawn Lavell-Harvard, 2014).

 

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