Global Health News

Date: Wed. Sept. 23, 2015 @ 6-9pm
Location: McNally Auditorium, Saint Mary’s University, 923 Robie Street
Presenter: Dr. Audra Simpson, Columbia University (New York City)

“Reconciliation and its Discontents: An Inquiry into the Politics of Sympathy”

“Reconciliation” has achieved a seemingly unquestioned status in Canada as the good thing that is to usher in the better thing that will be. That “better" thing is a repaired past, a better future, an ethical and balanced present. This move to reconcile has emerged from three decades of overt and unambiguous Indigenous foment, resistance and refusal in the face of neoliberal and dispossessive settlement and statecraft; statecraft that is now manifest and embodied in especially unambiguous ways by Stephen Harper’s Conservative government. It is his government however, that ushers the twin move of official “reconciliation” and simultaneously violent resource extraction, although on a continuum this moment appears as an apogee of sorts. 

Dr. Simpson’s book, Mohawk Interruptus, was awarded the North American Indigenous Studies Association book-of-year award in June 2015. 

The organizers are honoured to welcome Mi’kmaw elder, author, and honorary doctorate recipient Dr. Isabelle Knockwood to conduct the opening ceremony and prayer. Dr. Knockwood is the author of the recently re-published Out of the Depths, one of the first auto-biographical accounts of residential schools ever published.

For more information please contact Dr. Darryl Leroux (darryl.leroux@smu.ca) or Dr. Val Marie Johnson (valjohnson@ns.sympatico.ca).