Guest speaker Joyce Green presents talk on ‘Enabling Reconciliation or Enabling Colonialism’

The Centre for Feminist Research Indigenous Women’s Speakers Series and the Faculty of Health Indigenous Lecture Series on Decolonising Health present the Joyce Green Symposium, a workshop, talk and Q-and-A that explores the practice of colonialism.

“Enabling Reconciliation or Enabling Colonialism? Transforming in Conditions of Colonialism and Ecological Crisis” takes place on Nov. 14 and features a workshop from 10 to 11 a.m. and a keynote and Q-and-A from 1 to 3 p.m.

Image result for joyce green indigenous
Joyce Green

Joyce Green, a professor of political science at the University of Regina, presents the keynote for this symposium. She will discuss how the justification for depriving Indigenous peoples of land, resources, jurisdiction, sovereignty, and respect relies on racist ideology, theology and views of development, inevitability and superiority. In what is now called the settler state of Canada, the solution to the imposition and continuation of colonialism on Indigenous nations has been deceptively marketed as reconciliation – not decolonization.

The practice of colonialism has led to destructive approaches to the ecosystems in which we are all located. While the situation is dire for both Indigenous peoples and our climate, there is hope and transformation to be found in solidarities emerging across communities, countries, and generations.

Green has taught in the fields of Canadian politics, women and politics, and Native studies. Her research interests have focused on issues of decolonization in Canada, and of democracy in Canada. Most recently she has been preoccupied with the project of Indigenizing the university and with reconciliation problematics. Her published work has dealt with Indigenous-state relations; Indigenous feminism; citizenship, identity, and racism in Canada’s political culture; Indigenous human rights and with reconciliation in Canada. She is the editor of Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (Fernwood Publishing and Zed Books, 2007; 2nd. ed 2017) and of Indivisible: Indigenous Human Rights (Fernwood Publishing 2014).

Green is of English, Ktunaxa, and Cree-Scottish Metis descent, and her family’s experiences have provoked much of her scholarly and political work. She currently lives in ʔa·kiskaqⱡi?it, in ʔamak̓is Ktunaxa  (Cranbrook, B.C., in Ktunaxa territory).

This even is co-organized by Elaine Coburn (International Studies, Glendon) and Sean Hillier (Health). Click here to request to attend the workshop.

The keynote will serve light refreshments beginning at 12:45 p.m. It takes place in the Second Student Centre, Second Floor Convention Hall and is open to all.
Click here to RSVP

For more, contact CFR coordinator Julia Pyryeskina at juliapyr@yorku.ca.

The event is co-sponsored by the Department of Equity Studies, Faculty of Environmental Studies, Office of the Dean-Faculty of Graduate Studies, Graduate Program in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies, Graduate Program in Social and Political Thought, York Indigeneity in Teaching and Learning Fund-Office of the Vice Provost Academic, Glendon Indigenous Affairs Council.