Keynote Speaker Video

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Event Schedule

• 4 to 5:15 p.m. – Keynote and Q&A with Professor Handel Kashope Wright,  Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity & Education at the University of British Columbia,
• 5:15 to 5:30 pm – 15-minute Break
• 5:30 to 6:50 p.m. – Panel A with Q&A
  • Jean Ntakirutimana Associate Professor, Modern Languages, Literatures & Cultures, Social Justice Research Institute Affiliate
  • Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker, Professor, Department of Educational Studies, Social Justice Research Institute Affiliate
  • Liam Midzain-Gobin, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
  • Dolana Mogadime, Professor, Department of Educational Studies, Social Justice Research Institute Affiliate
• 6:50 to 7 p.m. – 10-minute Break
• 7 to 8:30 p.m. – Panel B with Q&A
  • Catherine Longboat, Assistant Professor, Tecumseh Centre for Aboriginal Research and Education, Faculty of Education
  • Stanley Henry Instructor, Tecumseh Centre for Aboriginal Research and Education, Faculty of Education
  • Karl Dockstader
• 8:30 p.m. – Closing Remarks
  • Dean of Education, Professor Michael Owen

Panelists & Keynote Speaker

Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker, Professor, Department of Educational Studies, Social Justice Research Institute Affiliate

Title:  A Narrative Framework for Excavating Bias: A Moral Imperative for Advocacy

My research program has focused on poverty and education in K-12 schools for the last thirteen years. In these years I have studied the disproportionate amount of poverty in racialized communities and how communities and school systems are influenced by factors such as race, language barriers, gender, ethnicity, identity, ability and mental health. I use narrative inquiry as a way to study lived experiences as stories written, told and retold, to foster deeper understanding of the effects of systemic barriers and discrimination in schools.

I have termed and incorporated my research using a 3R Narrative Framework into my teacher education practices as a way to narrow the gap that often exists between diverse personal lived experiences and teaching. In this panel I will describe the framework I use whereby, together with teacher candidates, we use narrative ways of excavating storied experiences and biased assumptions as a matter that is addressed, in order to understand what it means to “listen, act, and unite” with others’ life narratives that are not our own. This may mean challenging and making visible our own deficit-based assumptions that have been left unchallenged. This watershed year, in particular, demands a reckoning of the injustices experienced by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour), which continue to infiltrate our systems. I am in process, always, challenging complicity, and I work with these tensions to listen, learn, understand, and act, as a moral imperative for advocacy and solidarity. With my BIPOC students, colleagues, and family, I move towards, and not away from, action in social justice allyship service work, collaboration with administrative policy makers, and equity-conscious anti-racism reform.

Biography: Darlene Ciuffetelli Parker is professor in the Faculty of Education at Brock University. Her  research fosters deeper understanding of diverse topics and the effects of systemic barriers and discrimination in schools (i.e. poverty, race, identity, gender, ability, mental health). Ciuffetelli Parker advances partnerships in communities and readily is an invited keynote/speaker, providing impactful talks to various organizations. She was a prior school administrator, literacy consultant, and teacher in Toronto and has received the Early Career Award of the Narrative Research Special Interest Group in the American Education Research Association, the Award for Excellence in Teaching at Faculty of Education at Brock University, and the Brock University Award for Distinguished Teaching.

Liam Midzain-Gobin, Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science

Title of Presentation: Decolonizing the Academy: Lessons from International Actions

Recent years have seen a rise in student-led movements demanding changes in university curricula alongside broader efforts to decolonize the academy. Rhodes Must Fall began at the University of Cape Town in 2015 and has spread across the globe to include the most prestigious of universities, including Oxford. This presentation offers some reflections on the movement, putting it into the context of moves to decolonize Canadian syllabi and the teaching of politics through the inclusion of Indigenous knowledges and voices.

Biography: Dr. Liam Midzain-Gobin is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Brock University. He is a settler scholar whose work focuses on settler coloniality, Indigenous governance, and decolonization.

Dolana Mogadime, Professor, Department of Educational Studies, Social Justice Research Institute Affiliate

Tile of Presentation: Are Canadian Faculties of Education Ready to Mainstream Black feminism?

Doing the archival dig for knowledge about Black women’s history and contributions to society inevitably leads to the fact of how Black women have been persecuted, on a global scale, through Anti-Blackness and White supremacy. Perhaps that reality has been too difficult for the education field to mainstream. I argue that in silencing Black women’s contributions, through an unwillingness to hear the historical and contemporary basis for Black women’s marginalization, the educational field is diminished with half-truths. Conversely, in learning about Black women, educators stand to gain epistemic knowledge that is rooted in resilience, human dignity and the spirit of truth. The presentation includes a discussion of archival research into records that are little known about South African Black women’s contribution to the liberation struggle against White Supremacy during Apartheid.

Biography: Dolana Mogadime is a Full Professor in the Department of  Educational Studies, Brock University in August 2020 she became the Faculty Chair of the President’s Advisory Committee on Human Rights, Equity, and Decolonization (PACHRED) for a term of up to 3 years, she is past PhD Program Director, 2017 – 2019 for the Joint PhD in Educational Studies Program (Brock Home University). Her research interests are in human rights and curriculum studies, critical sociology of education, equity studies and feminist theories. She has published in international and national academic journals and anthologies on topics such as; women in leadership; gender-based violence; human rights education; teachers life stories and commitments to equity in the curriculum; and human rights education.

Handel Kashope Wright,  Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity & Education at the University of British Columbia

Keynote Title: The Urgency of Black Studies and the Insufficiency of Anti-Racism

In the wake of the supposed final straw that was the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota a justified outrage around police violence and anti-Black racism has erupted not only in the United States but in many countries around the world, including Canada. Several Canadian university administrations have issued statements condeming anti-Black and anti-Indigenous racism and academic activists have organized a two day labour action, teach-in, social justice Scholars’ Strike.  It is in this context that I take a page from Stuart Hall (who declares that one needs to speak autobiographically in order to avoid speaking authoritatively) and offer an autobiographical argument for the establishment and substantial support for Black Studies at Canadian institutions of higher education.  As someone from Sierra Leone and hence what V.Y. Mudimbe has called an invented Africa, who was not Black there but rather was interpellated into Blackness upon arrival in Canada, I have continually found that it is hard being Black in Canada and harder being Black in British Columbia. While I appreciate my own and other institutions’ attempts at undertaking anti-racism work in general and anti-Black racism work in particular, one of my central arguments in this paper is that such work is quite insufficient in the face of the gross underrepresentation of Blackness on university campuses and in academia.  I point to diversity and politics of difference within Blackness, a variety of approaches to conceptualizing Black Studies and to the need for and characteristics of a critical Black Canadian Studies.  My conclusion is that the robust presence of Blackness in Canadian academia, including critical Black Canadian Studies, is the more comprehensive goal in and of itself which will in turn contribute to addressing anti-Black racism and the evolution of what is being called inclusive excellence at Canadian institutions of higher learning.

Biography: Handel Kashope Wright has been variously Canada Research Chair of Comparative Cultural Studies and David Lam Chair of Multicultural Education and is currently Professor of Educational Studies and Director of the Centre for Culture, Identity and Education, University of British Columbia  https://ccie.educ.ubc.ca/  Prof. Wright is co-editor of the book series African and Diasporic Cultural Studies (University of Toronto Press) and Associate Editor of the journal Critical Arts.  He serves on the editorial board of several cultural studies and education journals and book series including the European Journal of Cultural Studies, the Canadian Journal of Education and  Postcolonial Studies in Education, the University of East London’s Radical Cultural Studies and Cardiff University’s Critical Perspectives on Theory, Culture and Politics (both Rowan & Littlefield).  Prof. Wright has published extensively on continental and diasporic African cultural studies, cultural studies of education, critical multiculturalism and its alternatives, qualitative research and curriculum theorizing, including being author of A Prescience of African Cultural Studies (Peter Lang, 2004) and co-editor of Africa, Cultural Studies and Difference (Routledge, 2011); Transnationalism and Cultural Studies (Routledge, 2012); Precarious International Multicultural Education (Sense, 2012);  The Dialectics of African Education and Western Discourses (Peter Lang, 2012) and  The Promised Land: History and Historiography of the Black Experience in Chatham-Kent and Beyond (University of Toronto, 2014). His work in progress includes two co-edited books on Black British Columbia (Fernwood, forthcoming) and The Nuances of Blackness in the Canadian Academy (University of Toronto Press, 2021).  Dr. Wright’s community engagement includes service on the Mayor of Vancouver’s Advisory Committee on Black History Month and the City of Vancouver External Advisory Committee on Equity and Diversity.

Karl dockstader

Abstract Title: 1492 Land Back Lane 

On the evening of July 19th, land defenders moved onto unceded Haudenosaunee lands that were close to being heavily developed despite no free, prior and informed consent being given. They named this territory 1492 Land Back Lane and said building Mackenzie Meadows – the name the developer Foxgate gave the lands – would destroy the ability to resolve the underlying dispute over this contested parcel.

Over the course of 100 days Karl was arrested while covering this story. Thirty-two other people have been arrested. Courts issued a permanent injunction asking for protestors to be removed from Land Back Lane. The courts also issued an injunction against blocking any road in Haldimand for the rest of time. They did all of this without hearing a single word of defense from land defenders against the injunction on technical points.

The federal government has promised to intervene but is nowhere to be found on the ground. Currently land defenders are holding the sight, blocking multiple roads and a rail line, and their request to end this conflict is simple: Haudenosaunee people want land back.

Biography: Oneida Bear Clan – is one half of the award-winning duo that hosts the entertaining, engaging, and occasionally accurate radio hit One Dish, One Mic Sunday morning radio show on 610 CKTB. Karl and his co host Sean Vanderklis were selected by the Canadian Journalism Foundation for the prestigious CJF CBC Indigenous fellowship award. Karl was recently arrested when he was covering the 1492 Land Back Lane story as a freelance journalist.