Spring 2018 Colloquium Seminar
Dr. Sarah Hunt
Rupturing Colonialscapes: Politicizing the Relational Sites and Scales of Indigenous Resurgence
January 16, 2018
Tuesday, 1:15-2:30 pm
AQ 5067 (Ellen Gee Room), SFU Burnaby
Free and open to all. Brown bag lunch
Dr. Sarah Hunt, Assistant Professor, First Nations & Indigenous Studies/Geography, Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies, University of British Columbia
Biography
Abstract:
In recent years, the cultural, political and legal resurgence of Indigenous nations has taken shape through the actions of Indigenous people whose political consciousness arise from an orientation toward Indigenous, rather than colonial, law. These diverse expressions of Indigenous resurgence cannot be contained within colonially-delineated Indian reserves, but instead enact a network of territorial relations which together cover all of what is now known as Canada. Yet realities of gendered violence serve as a stark reminder of the urgent need to challenge colonially imposed divisions between public and private space, which continue to depoliticize and deprioritize much of the intimate work of decolonization. In this talk, I will discuss the relational nature of strategies of resurgence across diverse sites of decolonial thought/action and their potential to actively rupture what I call colonialscapes – the interrelated spatial rationales of terra nullius, the frontier and Indian reserves. Through a series of recent examples, I will explore the potential for multi-scalar activations of Indigenous territorial relations to create ruptures in colonialscape relations, actively resisting the closure of settlement.
Free and open to all. Brown bag lunch.