Decolonizing Ourselves, Building Alliances: An Aboriginal/ Black Dialogue

Friday March 18, 2005, 9.30-4pm

Decolonizing Ourselves, Building Alliances brings together Aboriginal and Black perspectives on colonization, spirituality and resistance. The aim of this event is to build connections and solidarity on and off campus in the struggle to decolonize education and heal our communities. Panelists include faculty, students and community members. The event is free and all are encouraged to attend.

Speakers include:

M. Jacqui Alexander is Professor of Women's Studies and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. Her publications include Sing, Whisper, Shout, Pray!: Feminist Visions for a Just World (Edgework, 2002), co-edited with Lisa Albrecht, Sharon Day, and Mab Segre, and The Third Wave: Feminist Perspectives on Racism (Kitchen Table, 1998). She is also the co-editor, with Chandra Talpade Mohanty, of Feminist Genealogies, Colonial Legacies, Democratic Futures (Routledge, 1997). Her collection of essays, Pedagogies of Crossing, is forthcoming from Duke University Press later this year.

Marie Battiste is a Mi'kmaq from the Potlo'tek First Nation in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She is full professor in the Department of Educational Foundations, Academic Director of the Aboriginal Education Research Centre in the College of Education at University of Saskatchewan, and co-Director of the Humanities Research Unit in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is co-author of (2000) Protecting Indigenous Knowledge: A Gobal Challenge. Saskatoon, SK: Purich Press, which won a Saskatchewan Book Award in 2001; and editor of (2000) Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision. Vancouver: UBC Press, and senior editor of (1995) First Nations Education in Canada: The Circle Unfolds. Vancouver: UBC Press.

George Elliott Clarke is Africadian, born in Windsor, Nova Scotia in 1960, a seventh-generation Canadian of African-American and Mi'kmaq heritage. He is a poet, playwright, literary critic and professor of English at the University of Toronto (1999). Clarke has published in a variety of genres: verse collections, Saltwater Spirituals and Deeper Blues (1983), and Lush Dreams, Blue Exile (1994), a verse-novel, Whylah Falls (1990 & 2000), two verse plays, Whylah Falls: The Play (1999 & 2000), and Beatrice Chancy (1999) and poetry chapbooks: Provençal Songs (1993 & 1997), Gold Indigoes (2000), Execution Poems (2001) and Blue (2001). Clarke has been instrumental in promoting the work of writers of African descent, especially those of Nova Scotia. In 2001 he won the Governor General's Award for English Poetry for Execution Poems.

Bryan Prince is a descendant of slaves and free blacks who found safe haven in Canada prior to the American Civil War. Born in Chatham, he lives in nearby Buxton and is the sixth generation in his family to do so. Brian and is actively involved in the Buxton National Historic Site and Museum. His first book "I Came as a Stranger: The Underground Railroad" was published by Tundra books in 2004. In 2002, he was awarded the Queen's Golden Jubilee Medal for contributions to history.

Julia Sudbury is Canada Research Chair in Social Justice, Equity and Diversity in the Faculty of Social Work at UofT and Coordinator of the UofT Social Justice Cluster. She is author of Other Kinds of Dreams: Black Women's Organisations and the Politics of Transformation and editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender and the Prison-Industrial Complex. She is Igbo (Nigerian) and British and has been a member of the Black women's movement in Britain for many years.

Jean-Paul Restoule is an Assistant Professor of Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto. He has published several articles related to Aboriginal identity and decolonisation in journals such as the Canadian Journal of Native Education, Environments and Canadian Issues/Thèmes canadiennes. Jean-Paul is a member of the Dokis First Nation and is Anishinabe (Ojibwe) and French-Canadian.

Njoki Wane is an Associate Professor in Sociology and Equity Studies at OISE/UT. Her areas of research include teacher education, cultural knowledges, Black Canadian feminist theorizing and African spirituality. Her publications include: Equity in School and Society (co-editor) and Back to the Drawing Board: African Canadian Feminisms (Co-editor).

Sponsored by:

Aboriginal Studies, First Nations House, Sociology and Equity Studies/ OISE, Faculty of Social Work, UT Social Justice Cluster, International Black Women's Congress, Indigenous Education Network, African Studies.