Refusal, Relations, Repair

Time :: Thursday, January 11, 4-6pm
Location :: University of Toronto, History Conference Room, Sidney Smith 2098, 100 St. George St.
Speakers :: Kristen Simmonds (Chicago) on “Refusal; Relations“ & Anne Spice (CUNY) on “Relations; Repair”
Stirrers :: Emily Simmonds (York University) and Michelle Murphy (University of Toronto)

Kristen Simmons is a citizen of the Moapa Band of Southern Paiutes and a doctoral student in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago. Her work engages energy projects in the Mojave Desert as part and parcel of the settler colonial project, from white supremacist militia land battles, solar energy development, national security projects, and new New Age movements.  Key to her work is unsettling treatments of indigenous political nations: in settler states, institutions, and disciplines.

Anne Spice is a Tlingit member of Kwanlin Dun First Nation in Whitehorse, Yukon. She grew up on Treaty 7 territory in Alberta, Canada, and has earned degrees at the University of Lethbridge and Dalhousie University. Anne works with Indigenous peoples resisting resource extraction, and her political and academic interests intersect on the frontlines of Indigenous territory defense movements. She is researching ways to build networks of solidarity between Indigenous movements against settler colonization and land expropriation. She is especially attentive to the spaces opened by and for queer, trans, non-binary, and two-spirit people as a part of their work for decolonization.  She teaches and studies in Lenapehoking (so-called New York City) as a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the CUNY Graduate Center.

fishy futures – refracting the future

Time :: Friday, February 2, 4-6pm
Location :: RT 1065, Rotman School of Management, 105 St. George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3E6
Speaker :: Zoe Todd (Carleton)
Stirrers :: Erica Violet Lee (University of Toronto) and Aadita Chaudhury (York University)
Chair :: Kristen Bos (University of Toronto)

Zoe Todd (Métis/otipemisiw) is from amiskwaciwâskahikan (Edmonton), Alberta, Canada. She writes about fish, art, Métis legal traditions, the Anthropocene, extinction, and decolonization in urban and prairie contexts. She also studies human-animal relations, colonialism and environmental change in north/western Canada. She holds a BSc (Biological Sciences) and MSc (Rural Sociology) from the University of Alberta and a PhD (Social Anthropology) from Aberdeen University. She is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University. She was a 2011 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar.

Tipi Confessions: A Research-Creation Laboratory

Tipi Confessions is comprised of sexually-themed performances that take creative research methodologies to the stage. Three Indigenous women from the University of Alberta—Professors Kim TallBear and Tracy Bear, and social media maven Kirsten Lindquist produce several Tipi Confessions shows annually in Edmonton, across Canada, and internationally. With advising from University of Alberta drama faculty, and with mentoring from the original Bedpost Confessions™ in Austin, Texas, Tipi Confessions Indigenizes sexy storytelling and performance. The show is a key initiative of ReLab, a research-creation laboratory founded by Dr. TallBear at the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Foregrounding Indigenous analytics, standpoints, and contemporary practices, the ReLab produces research, performance, and art. With good relations in mind, that research and creative practice intersect two areas of inquiry, Indigenous sexualities and Indigenous “naturecultures.”

Time :: Monday, February 26th, 5-7pm
Location :: Robert Gill Theatre, 214 College St, Toronto, ON M5T 2Z9
Speakers :: Kim TallBear (University of Alberta)
Moderator :: Michelle Murphy (University of Toronto)

Kim TallBear is Associate Professor, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta, and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience & Environment. She is building a research hub in Indigenous Science, Technology, and Society. TallBear is author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science (University of Minnesota Press, 2013). Her Indigenous STS work recently turned to also address decolonial and Indigenous sexualities. She founded a University of Alberta arts-based research lab and co-produces the sexy storytelling show, Tipi Confessions, sparked by the popular Austin, Texas show, Bedpost Confessions. Building on lessons learned with geneticists about how race categories get settled, TallBear is working on a book that interrogates settler-colonial commitments to settlement in place, within disciplines, and within monogamous, state-sanctioned marriage. She is a citizen of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota.

This event is a part of Indelible Refusal and co-hosted with The Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies. It is free and all are welcome

Indelible Refusal is sponsored by the Jackman Humanities Institute, The Centre for Drama, Theatre & Performance Studies, University of Toronto, Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), University of Toronto, Sexual Diversity Studies University of Toronto, The Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto, and the Centre for Indigenous Studies, University of Toronto.