Past Events

E.g., Mar 29, 2024

General Meeting February 9, 2022

Photo of Daniel Heath Justice

Schedule: 

2:00 pm Business Meeting
2:15pm Guest Speaker Daniel Heath Justice
3:00pm Q&A
3:15pm End of meeting

Daniel Heath Justice (O.C., FRSC) is a Cherokee Nation citizen raised in the Ute homelands near Pikes Peak, Colorado. He is Professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English at UBC. His books include Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History (2006), Why Indigenous Literatures Matter (2018), and the animal cultural histories Badger (2014) and Raccoon (2021). He is also co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literatures with James H. Cox (2014) and the forthcoming Allotment Stories with Ojibwe historian Jean M. O’Brien (March 2022).

"Land Back and the Legacies of Allotment: Settler Privatization Schemes and the Restoration of Indigenous Land Relations"

The US Supreme Court’s 2020 decision, McGirt v. Oklahoma, begins with this memorable line: “On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise.”

That was a promise that, after the US forcibly relocated them from their southeastern homeland to what is now Oklahoma in the early nineteenth century, the Muscogee (Creek) people hold those lands forever, a promise echoed in the US government’s agreements with the Cherokee, Choctaw, Seminole, and Chickasaw Nations. By the end of that century, the US moved to destroy tribal sovereignty and territorial autonomy through privatization legislation to accelerate assimilation and expand white access to Indigenous lands and resources. As a result of various allotment policies and the accompanying theft and corruption, Indigenous nations in what is currently the US lost roughly 2/3 of their 1880 land base (or around 100 million acres).

The 2020 McGirt decision found that Congress had not, in fact, dismantled the reservation boundaries of the Muscogee Nation, and subsequent court decisions have upheld the continuity of reservation boundaries for other tribes in Oklahoma, but conflicts with the state over its authority and resource claims continue. This presentation will offer a short history of allotment and other global settler privatization schemes and discuss the author's forthcoming co-edited collection, Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations under Settler Siege, which grounds analysis of privatization in the wake of McGirt within Indigenous response, resistance, and resurgence.

Registration for Zoom

Wednesday, 9 February 2022 - 2:00pm to 3:15pm
Registration link for Zoom in text
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Canada

Senior Scholars' Series - February 8, 2022

Senior Scholars' Series: The Passions that Drive Academic Life

Link to Zoom registration

Photo of Frank Tester

Frank Tester
Professor Emeritus of Social Work (2016)

Do I Belong? Activism, Social Change and Commitment to ‘the Other’

As a student Frank lived in Arctic Bay, Baffin Island, and has worked in China, Mozambique, Tanzania, Nicaragua and Vanuatu. He is currently technical advisor to Pond Inlet, and 4 other communities on Baffin Island, affected by a proposal to expand the Baffinland Iron Ore Mine at Mary River. He is writing a book for James Lorimer on Arctic relocations.

Frank is President of the Vancouver Association for Restorative Justice (VARJ), and is working with former students and others to produce a video short based on Indigenous playwright René Morriseau’s play about restorative justice. His work with VARJ includes training the Safe and Caring School Liaisons who have replaced City of Vancouver Police Officers in Vancouver Schools. Frank has degrees in Medical Research, Environmental Design, Social Work and Geography. He taught at York University, the University of Calgary, the University of Waikato, UBC, and the University of Edinburgh.

Rhodri Windsor-Liscombe - moderator
Professor Emeritus of Art History, Visual Art and Theory (2015)

Tuesday, 8 February 2022 - 3:30pm to 5:00pm
Zoom registration to follow
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z1
Canada

Mini-symposium in Honour of Professor Fred Brauer

Pacific Institute for the Mathematical Sciences
Mini-symposium in Honour of Professor Fred Brauer

Wednesday, February 2, 2022
2:00 pm PDT
Online event
Open to everyone. For more information and to register: Registration is required.

Wednesday, 2 February 2022 - 2:00pm
Link in the text
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z4
Canada

Film Group Jan 26, 2022

Series Fourteen –  Immigration

Zoom discussions of each film will take place on last Wednesdays at 4pm: Jan 26, Feb 23 and Mar 30

Hosted by John LeBlanc

To join the group, please email john.leblanc @ ubc.ca

Series Fourteen: Immigration continues to become a central reality of our time, increasing in scale and complexity and eliciting a wide range of responses from positive promotion (Canada desires and needs more immigrants) to condemnation (strong man countries erecting walls of various sorts).  Feature films have addressed issues of immigration since film began in the late 19th century, but our series will focus on more recent efforts, beginning with El Norte from 40 years ago when the general public was just beginning to gain a more in-depth awareness of such social issues.  Mediterranea provides a more contemporary (and more geographically removed) window into the situation facing immigrants.  Finally, Amreeka sees immigrant experience from a more positive perspective, adding balance to the seemingly insurmountable problems. 

Jan 26 – El Norte (1983) – directed by Gregory Nava focuses on indigenous (Mayan) refugees from the (American abetted) civil war in Guatemala, who make their way to California and become part of the, ongoing, broader Latin American immigration to the United States.  The film is divided into three parts: 1) events in Guatemala that lead the two protagonists (Enrique and Rosa) to flee the military dictatorship, 2) their journey from Guatemala to California and 3) their “new” life in Los Angeles.  The film was a trailblazer for being told from the immigrants’ point of view, rather than filtered through an American character, as in other 80s films focused on the region, such as Salvador (1986).  STREAMING AVAILABLE THROUGH THE UBC LIBRARY CATALOGUE.

Wednesday, 26 January 2022 - 4:00pm
2008 Lower Mall
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Canada

Council Meeting - January 26, 2022

The Council will meet online.

Wednesday, 26 January 2022 - 10:30am to 12:30pm
Zoom link available to Council members only
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Canada

Poetic Odysseys - January 25, 2022

All who are interested in writing, reading or listening to poetry are welcome. 
Contacts:
Philip Resnick (Professor Emeritus, Political Science - philip.resnick@ubc.ca)
and George McWhirter (Professor Emeritus, Creative Writing).
 

Tuesday, 25 January 2022 - 2:00pm
Contact meeting organizer for Zoom link
Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2
Canada

Pages