Academia and Community Work ( Closing Panel)
How can academics engage with communities they don’t come from that don’t replicate colonial histories? This panel will explore how different communities organizers answer this very question.
Art, Reclamation and Resistance
Art has always been used as a tool to speak to the experiences and histories of systemically targeted people. This panel will explore the work of different artists that are using art as a way to reclaim their stories and resist.
Beyond the Pavement: Healing Justice and Cultures of Care in Black, Indigenous, People of Colour Activist Communities
How do we as people invested in liberation hold space for those most vulnerable to harm? How have we internalized dominant discourses of activism, caretaking and community organizing? In this session, we will channel our individual and collective knowledge as daily survivors of racial oppression and (intergenerational) trauma and move towards social justice movements that centre healing, sustainability and community care. This is a closed workshop for BIPOC folks.
Confronting Intimate Partner Violence
What happens when intimate partner violence occurs in our communities? How do we change the circumstances that encourage these forms of violence to occur? How can we address this on a community level? These are some of the questions that will be explored on this panel.
Creating Accessible and Engaging Avenues for Sharing Knowledge
Academia often takes the stories of systemically targeted people and rewrites them in ways that is inaccessible due to academic language used and the inability for non-academics to actually even access these papers. This is how people’s stories get stolen. This panel will examine ways people have refused to let that happen and have chosen creative and accessible outlets for knowledge.
Decolonizing and Re Centering Our Food Systems
There is growing and serious food insecurity that presents a challenge in Canada. A large percentage of people affected are communities of colour; most specifically Aboriginal and Black immigrant communities. Eurocentric ideals dominate the conversation when it comes to food systems and food security. This panel hopes to provide opportunities for students, community members, and/or other stakeholders to present research or community initiatives that broaden our perspectives when examining food systems which recenter Black and Indigenous perspectives.
Education, criminalization and transformative strategies
Schools are streaming Black and Indigenous youth into prisons at an alarming rate. This is happening due to issues like the criminalization of our youth, the lack of curriculum that address the histories and realities of racialized youth’s experiences and disconnect that teachers have with the communities they are working with. This panel will examine the work some educators and community members are doing to keep our youth safe and empowered.
Food Sovereignty and Reconciliation: Mohawk Seedkeeper Farm and the “Good Mind” in Agriculture
Mohawk Seedkeeper Farm, located on Six Nations, has established an Indigenous Farm Share Project aimed at reclaiming food sovereignty while providing opportunities for reconciliation with the land and with each other. This 7 year project brings indigenous and non-indigenous growers together to learn traditional ecological knowledge while growing our own food as part of a collective. The spirit of First Nations agriculture connects grower, plant and creation to attain the balance necessary for developing “The Good Mind in Agriculture and Food Sovereignty”.
Impact of Colonization on 2 Spirit Identities
The imposition of colonial patriarchy has made invisible, marginalized, and attempted to wipe out two-spirited people. The Indian Act worked to conceal them by the gender-essentialized structures of colonialism, which have abolished their traditional places in Indigenous societies. So effective were Church- and government-led erasures of two-spirited peoples, that most conversations about the ‘beginning of the gay rights movement’ completely ignores the presence and work done by two spirited and gender nonconforming individuals throughout history. For some, Identifying as Two-Spirit becomes not just a retraditional way of expressing Indigenous beliefs of gender orientation and sexuality but a political identity in resistance of colonialism.
Indigenous Resistance Against Environmental Racism
Across Turtle Island land defenders have been working to combat the blatant and disproportionate impact of environmental degradation and hazards on indigenous communities and communities of colour. Land defenders have been fighting government, industry and settler apathy working to protect the lands and waters. The health and well-being of First Nations, Metis and Inuit peoples depends on their relations to the land. In the government and industry’s destruction of the land the are adding another layer to the ongoing genocide against indigenous peoples. Land defenders are participating in many different efforts to oppose industry, protect the land and the water, and ensure health for their communities.
Immigration in Canada: The trending of temporary and detention
In the last few months Canadian news has been filled with talk in respects to Syrian refugees; the aid going to Syria, the number of people the government is bringing in and how Canadians are “doing their part” to sponsor refugees and volunteer for the cause. However the reality as to what is going on in Canada’s immigration system is starkly different from what is advertised. This panel discussion will seek to look further into Canada’s immigration system; how immigration law is built on racist ideals and creates insecurity in people’s lives when they are living in this country as immigrants.
Knowledge mobilization for community engagement: Insights and dilemmas from a study of community-based water activism
The “Water Wins” research project involves collaboration between academia and grassroots activist groups, including the Wellington Water Watchers, in an exploration of the dynamics of community engagement around local water issues. This presentation summarizes the project, describes how results are being used for mobilization at the community level, and poses questions for audience feedback regarding the ethics, effectiveness and limitations of community-university partnerships in research activities of this kind.
Navigating Poverty in Guelph: Research and Community based experiences
What are the gaps in addressing the issues facing poor and working class people in Guelph? What are community initiates that are being spearheaded that speak to the experiences of low income people navigating the city? How can people build resources that are relevant to low income people? These questions will be explored in this panel.
Reclaiming the Power of our Stories
North American media is based on a history of erasure, genocide, war and slavery. So often the histories of systemically targeted communities are silence or warped to fit the story of the colonizers. This panel will highlight the efforts of storytellers to reclaim their histories and experiences to empower themselves and their communities.
Settler Police Violence on Black and Indigenous Women’s Bodies in Canada
As researchers, we have asked ourselves: What are the linkages of Indigenous and Black women and girl’s experiences with police violence in Canada? This workshop will explore how police violence on the bodies of Black and Indigenous women and girls in Canada must be theorized to reflect the context in which this violence occurs: a white settler society rooted and upheld by interlocking systems of anti-blackness, white supremacy, and settler colonialism.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission- Moving Forward in a Good Way in Guelph
(Facilitated Discussion)
What does reconciliation really mean- particularly within Canada? How can we respond as individuals and as a community to the recommendations put forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission? What work is happening throughout Guelph and how can we act in solidarity? We will be exploring these questions and more during this discussion.