Date: Wednesday May 11, 2022 - 9:00 am to 4:45 pm
This Colloquium considers the implications of decolonization for practices of research, education and knowledge production within Canadian academia, in a (settler) colonial setting. Three pairs of Canadian scholars, who through their own inter-disciplinary perspectives work on decolonization, will engage us in reflecting about how to move toward respectful and inclusive approaches to the study of religion in Canada.
"Decolonizing/Indigenizing Religious Studies: Approaches and Insights from Native Studies"
9:00 am -10:30 am
Dr. Paul Gareau and Jeanine LeBlanc (Native Studies, University of Alberta)
"Secularism and Coloniality: Research, Method and the Study of Religion in Canada"
10:45 am - 12:15 pm
Carlos Colorado (University of Winnipeg) and Jennifer Selby (Memorial University NFLD)
"Texts in Place: Rethinking Sources for Indigenous and Settler Colonial Histories"
1:30 pm - 3:00 pm
Pamela Klassen (University of Toronto) and Johannah Bird (English and Cultural Studies, McMaster University)
Concluding Roundtable
3:15 pm - 4:45 pm
All presenters
Dr. Paul Gareau
Paul L. Gareau is Métis and an associate professor in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. His research focuses on Métis Studies, Métis nationhood/peoplehood relations, and religion and relationality.
Jeanine LeBlanc
Jeanine LeBlanc is a Mi’kmaw PhD candidate in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research explores Mi’kmaw women’s lived experiences of religion and engagement with Catholicism through the cult of Saint Anne, Indigenous women’s engagement with religion, and Indigenous feminisms. Her work is rooted in Indigenous Studies, Gender Studies, as well as Religious Studies.
Dr. Jennifer Selby
Jennifer A. Selby (http://www.faculty.mun.ca/jselby) is associate professor and graduate coordinator in Religious Studies, cross-appointed to Political Science, and affiliate member of Gender Studies at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her ethnographic-based research examines the politics of secularism and gender in contemporary France and Canada, with attention to Muslim life.
Dr. Carlos Colorado
Carlos Colorado is a filmmaker and Associate Professor and Graduate Chair at the University of Winnipeg. His research focuses on secularism, colonialism, race and the politics of identity, as well as the work of Charles Taylor. He is an alumnus of McMaster.
Dr. Pamela Klassen
Dr. Pamela Klassen is Professor & Chair in the Department for the Study of Religion at the University of Toronto. Her current research focuses on religion, colonialism, and public memory in North America and Turtle Island. As part of a long-term partnership with the Kay-Nah-Chi-Wah-Nung Historical Centre, run by Rainy River First Nations, she is beginning a project on the public memory and mediation of ancient mounds and earthworks. This work also includes a collaborative digital storytelling project called “Kiinawin Kawindomowin Story Nations,” found at www.storynations.utoronto.ca.
Johannah Bird
Johannah Bird is a PhD candidate in English at McMaster University and holds a Pre-Doctoral Fellowship at Queen’s University. She has spent much of her life in the Prairies, growing up in Manitoba, and she is a member of Peguis First Nation in Treaty 1 territory. Her SSHRC-funded research considers how Indigenous writers expressed their relational epistemologies in the fraught contexts of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries in Saskatchewan and Manitoba.