2022 Indigenous Feminisms Symposium

Dates: April 21-23, 2022
Location: First Peoples House, University of Victoria

The Indigenous Feminisms Symposium is inspired by the influential text, Making Space for Indigenous Feminism, originally edited by Joyce Green (URegina, retired) and now entering its third edition to be edited by Gina Starblanket (UVic Indigenous Governance). In celebration as well as preparation for the new edition, the Indigenous Feminisms Symposium is being held to inspire generative discussions that will build into its new iteration. To this end, the symposium will bring together Indigenous feminist scholars, activists, artists, and community members to consider the historical trajectory and future directions of Indigenous feminist ideology and practice. 

Through the symposium, we intend to create a space and facilitate a broad interdisciplinary and community-engaged dialogue to nurture feminist and queer theories and meaningfully uphold them as central to Indigenous governance. The intent is to cultivate an environment for productive and critical conversations regarding Indigenous feminism, while exploring new openings and directions for the movement.  

The 2022 symposium is taking place two decades after the first symposium on Aboriginal Feminism, which was held by Dr. Joyce Green in 2002 and led to the creation of the 1st edition of Making Space. The 2022 symposium will provide a forum for contributors to the new edition to share their initial thoughts and to engage in important dialogue around themes that will be taken up in the new edition.

 

This event is being held on the traditional territories of the Songhees, Esquimalt and WSÁNEĆ peoples.

Intergenerational Indigenous Feminisms Art Exhibit

Running from April 21st - 23rd, the symposium will feature an art exhibition in the First Peoples House Ceremonial Hall. Curated by Jas M. Morgan, the exhibition will chronicle an aesthetic history of intergenerational Indigenous feminisms. The exhibition will pay particular attention to the legacy of Christi Belcourt, and will include work by Francis Dick, Lou-ann Neel, Jordanna George, Daphne Odjig, Margaret August, Emily Riddle, Dan Cardinal McCartney, and Darcie Bernhardt.

Roundtable Dialogues

In conjunction with this symposium, the Yellowhead Institute is organizing a series of roundtable dialogues on April 23rd that will apply an Indigenous feminist lens to issues of contemporary concern for Indigenous nations and people. 

IFS 2022 Poster

Agenda

April 21st, 2022
3:00 - 6:00pm
First Peoples House, University of Victoria

2:30pm - Coffee and Snacks

3:00pm - Territory Acknowledgement, Welcome and Opening Comments 

3:30pm - Intergenerational Indigenous Feminisms Art Overview
Jas Morgan, Assistant Professor, X University 

4:15pm - 5:00pm - Keynote Address 
Joyce Green, Professor Emerita, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Regina 

With responses from Dr. Rita Dhamoon, Assistant Professor, UVic Political Science and waaseyaa'sin Christine Sy, Assistant Professor, UVic Women and Gender Studies

5:30pm Wrap up and food

April 22nd, 2022
9:30am - 5:00pm 
First Peoples House, University of Victoria

Panel Presentations by contributors to Making Space for Indigenous Feminisms, 3rd edition. 

9:00am - Coffee and Snacks

9:30 - Event Opening

10:00am – 11:45pm - Panel: Gendering and Queering Land Based Practices

Isabel Altamirano-Jimenez
Alex Wilson
Hokulani Aikau 

11:45am – 1:00pm - Lunch 

1:00pm – 2:45pm - Panel: Critical Interventions on Normativity

Kelly Aguirre
Cara Peacock
Billy-Ray Belcourt

2:45pm – 3:00pm - Coffee Break 

3:00pm – 4:45pm - Panel: Indigenous Feminist and Queer Ethics, Critique, and Worldbuilding

Megan Scribe & Jas Morgan
Emily Riddle
Eva Jewell 

4:45pm - Closing Comments 

April 23rd, 2022
Time: TBD
First Peoples House, University of Victoria

9:30am - Coffee and Snacks

10:00am - 12:00pm - AM Roundtable: Queer and Trans Indigenous Art and Policy Making

12:00pm - Lunch

12:30pm - 1:45 - Roundtable: Feminist and Queer Approaches to Community-based Research

2:00pm - 4:00pm - Relational Desires: Black, Indigenous, and Black-Indigenous Co-Conspiring

4:00pm - Event Closing

Speaker Bios

Joyce Green

Dr. Joyce Green (she/her) is Professor Emerita in the Department of Politics and International Studies at the University of Regina.Her research has been primarily concerned with Indigenous-state relations; Indigenous feminism; citizenship; identity, and racism in Canada’s political culture; Indigenous human rights, and reconciliation in the settler state context in Canada. Most recently she has turned to research relating to Ktunaxa Nation matters, including its contemporary constitution, and its cultural and political problematics since colonization.  She is the editor of Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (Fernwood Publishing and Zed Books, 2007; 2nded. 2017) and of Indivisible: Indigenous Human Rights (Fernwood Publishing 2014). Dr. Green is English, Ktunaxa, and Cree-Scottish Metis, and her family’s experiences have provoked much of her scholarly and political work. She now lives in ʔa·kiskaqⱡi?it, in ʔamak̓is Ktunaxa (Cranbrook, B.C., in Ktunaxa territory).

Gina Starblanket

Dr. Gina Starblanket (she/her) is an Associate Professor in Indigenous Governance at the University of Victoria, and is the former Canada Research Chair in the Politics of Decolonization (UCalgary). Gina is Cree/Saulteaux and French/German French, and is a member of the Star Blanket Cree Nation in Treaty 4 territory. Her research focuses on Indigenous-state relations, gender and Indigenous feminism, prairie Indigenous political life, racism and settler colonialism in the prairies, and Indigenous-Crown treaty relations in Canada. She is co-author of Storying Violence: Unravelling Colonial Narratives in the Stanley Trial (ARP Press, 2020) and co-editor of the 5th edition of Visions of the Heart: Issues Involving Indigenous Peoples in Canada (Oxford University Press 2020).

Jas Morgan

Dr. Jas M. Morgan (they/them/theirs) is a Toronto-based assistant professor in X University’s Department of English, curator, writer, and producer. Morgan is Cree-Métis-Saulteaux and a registered member of Tootinaowaziibeeng First Nation. Morgan's Métis relatives are too numerous to name but their closest kin are the McKays from around Prince Albert, Saskatchewan and the Demerias from around Brandon and Winnipeg, MB. They previously held the position of Editor-at-Large for Canadian Art. Morgan’s first book nîtisânak (Metonymy Press, 2018) won the prestigious 2019 Dayne Ogilive Prize and a 2019 Quebec Writer’s Federation first book prize, and has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award and an Indigenous Voices Literary Award. 

Eva Jewell

Dr. Eva Jewell (she/hers) is Anishinaabe from Deshkan Ziibiing and a member of Chippewas of the Thames First Nation with paternal lineage from Oneida Nation of the Thames. Her scholarship supports community-led reclamation of Anishinaabe governance as well as urban Indigenous perspectives on gender, work, and care. She is the research director at Yellowhead Institute and an Assistant Professor of Sociology at X University.

Kelly Aguirre

Dr. Kelly Aguirre (she/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. A queer mestiza of Nahua and ñuu savi ancestry, she was born in Mexico City and grew up in Winnipeg, MB Treaty 1 Territory, Anishnaabe, Cree and Métis homelands among their mother’s settler family of German-Russian and Welsh descent. Kelly’s areas of research are Indigenous politics, decolonial and critical theory, methodological ethics, rhetoric and poetics, and the roles of political theorists as storytellers of political life. She is newly embarking on work considering IBPOC (Indigenous, Black and people of colour) experiences of disability and neurodiversity in decolonial movements and contributions to otherwise political imaginations or reworlding projects.

Megan Scribe

Dr. Megan Scribe (She/Her/Hers) is Ininiw iskwew from Norway House Cree Nation. She is an interdisciplinary Indigenous feminist researcher, writer, and educator. Scribe’s research interests include Indigeneity, systems of power and oppression, and Indigenous worlding through speculative fiction and poetic inquiry. Scribe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at X University, an Associate Research Fellow with Yellowhead Institute, and a Council Member for Aboriginal Legal Services’ Community Council Diversion Program.

Isabel Altamirano Jimenez

Dr. Isabel Altamirano Jiménez (she/her) is Binizá or Zapotec from the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Mexico, and is Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Comparative Indigenous Feminist Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research cut across the North America/Latin America divide and interrogates the connection between colonialism, natural resource extraction and how these processes are experienced by Indigenous communities, specifically women, in Canada and Mexico

Arielle Twist

Arielle Twist (she/her) is a Nehiyaw, Two-Spirit, author and multidisciplinary artist originally from George Gordon First Nation, Saskatchewan, now based out of Toronto, Ontario.. Her debut collection ‘Disintegrate/Dissociate’ has won The Indigenous Voices Award for Published Poetry and won the 2020 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for Emerging LGBTQ authors. 

Her work has been exhibited at The Art Gallery of Mississauga, Art Gallery of Nova Scotia and The Agnes Etherington Art Gallery. In 2019 she was awarded the Indigenous Artist Recognition Award from Arts NS for her body of work. She is currently a MFA Candidate at OCAD University

Hokulani Aikau

Dr. Hōkūlani K. Aikau (she/her) is Kanaka ‘Ōiwi and is a professor at the University of Victoria in the Indigenous Governance Program. Aikau is an interdisciplinary scholar with training in American Studies and Sociology and teaching experience in Political Science, Indigenous Politics, Native Hawaiian Politics, and Pacific Islands Studies.She has published three books: A Chosen People, a Promised Land: Mormonism and Race in Hawaiʻi (University of Minnesota Press, 2012), Feminist Waves, Feminist Generational Cultures: Life Stories from Three Generations in the Academy, 1968-1998 (co-edited with Karla Erickson and Jennier L. Pierce, University of Minnesota Press, 2007) and Detours: A Decolonial Guide to Hawaiʻi (co-edited with Vernadette V. Gonzalez, Duke University Press, 2019). Her next full-length monograph Becoming Hoa with ʻĀina: Returning People and Practices to Heʻeia is an ethnography of a wetland restoration project in Heʻeia, Oʻahu. Aikau has served as associate editor of American Quarterly, and serves on editorial boards for book series at the University of Arizona Press and the University of Hawaiʻi Press. While at the University of Utah, Aikau served as director of the Pacific Islands Studies program and with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation, created new curricular and research opportunities for Pacific Islander students. 

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Dr. Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is from the Driftpile Cree Nation in northwest Alberta. He is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. His books are THIS WOUND IS A WORLD, NDN COPING MECHANISMS, A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY, and the forthcoming A MINOR CHORUS.

Alex Wilson

Dr. Alex Wilson (she/her) is Neyonawak Inniniwak from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. Alex is a professor in the Department of Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan. Her research and community work focuses on queering land-based education, schools and communities, Indigenous research methodologies, anti-oppressive education, and developing sustainable housing. 

Cara Peacock

Cara Peacock (she/they) is an MA student with the University of Calgary's Political Science Department. She is Nehiyaw from Treaty 8 territory, where she was born and raised. She is also Anishinaabe and a registered member of Nipissing First Nation, located in the Robinson-Huron Treaty territory. Her research broadly examines political thought at the nexus of race and colonialism, decolonial feminisms and political thought in particular. 

Emily Riddle

Emily Riddle (she/her) is Nehiyaw and a member of the Alexander First Nation (Kipohtakaw). A writer, editor, policy analyst, and visual artist, she lives in Amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton). She is the Senior Advisor, Indigenous Relations at the Edmonton Public Library where she helped establish the city’s first dedicated public ceremony site, PÎYÊSÎW WÂSKÂHIKAN. Her writing has been published in The Globe and Mail, Teen Vogue, the Malahat Review, and Room Magazine, among others. Nightwood Editions will publish her debut poetry book in spring 2023. She has served on the Board of Advisors since the inception of the Yellowhead Institute. Emily Riddle is a semi-dedicated oilers fan and a dedicated Treaty 6 descendant.
About the Book

The Making Space volumes are a renowned collection of works by Indigenous feminists and allies that bring a feminist lens to the contemporary issues faced by Indigenous people worldwide. Making Space comprises the premiere volumes in this subject area on the market today and is widely used by scholars and students in women and gender studies, Indigenous studies, political science, and law at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. In addition to being an important scholarly text, it is written in non-technical language for the general public, including those working in policy development as well as grassroots and community activism and organizing. More information on the book is available through Fernwood Publishing.

Sponsors 

Sponsored by the University of Victoria's:

In collaboration with the:

UVic's Graduate certificate in Indigenous Nationhood

Students will be exposed to theoretical and applied lines of inquiry centered in Indigenous Nationhood through the lens of decolonization and resurgence, Aboriginal and Treaty Rights and Indigenous legal traditions, critical dialogues on diplomacy and sustainable relationships, critical race theory and settler colonialism, and Indigenous-state relations and constitutionalism.

For more information contact Heidi Stark at