When:
Wednesday, November 23rd
Doors open 6:30 | Event starts 7:00pm

Where:
The Community Room | St. John’s Farmers’ Market (245 Freshwater Rd.)

Event Description:
On the heels of recent revelations of past and ongoing injustices, reconciliation and solidarity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people is increasingly urgent. But it is a complex endeavor. In her new book, The Solidarity Encounter: Women, Activism, and Creating Non-Colonizing Relations, Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis grapples with this key tension: colonizing behaviours that result when white women centre their own goals and frameworks as they participate in activism with Indigenous women and groups. D’Arcangelis links interviews with activists and her own self-reflections to current scholarship to take readers into the fraught terrain of solidarity organizing.

Join author Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis for an author talk followed by a roundtable with special guests Joanne Harris (Ktaqmkuk Mi’kmaw), Beth Jacobs (Anishinaabe), and Andrea Procter (white settler) who will reflect on how the book relates to their Indigenous/Non-Indigenous solidarity experiences. The event will be hosted by Dr. Sonja Boon, Professor, Department of Gender Studies.

There will be light refreshments.

Participant Bios

Carol Lynne D’Arcangelis is an Associate Professor in Gender Studies at Memorial University, where she received a Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence. She is a white settler member of No More Silence, a grassroots network dedicated to raising awareness about missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. Throughout the 1990s, she worked in different human rights and social justice organizations in Central America, including the United Nations Mission in Guatemala (MINUGUA). She has published on Indigenous/non-Indigenous solidarity and white settler feminist self-reflexivity in journals including Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, Atlantis: A Women’s Studies Journal, and Canadian Woman Studies. She is the co-author of “Conversations on Decolonizing Justice” in Social Work Abolition // Abolition Social Work (forthcoming).

Joanne Harris is a first-generation urban Ktaqmkuk Mi’kmaw with French, Scottish, and English ancestry. Her home is St. John’s, but her roots are in the Codroy Valley and Trinity Bay. Joanne is a graduate of Memorial University with a BA in Archaeology and Aboriginal Studies, and an MPhil. While a master’s student, she presented her work in Canada and beyond, including at the Nordic Feminist and Gender Research Conference in Iceland. Joanne is currently the Indigenous Resource Development Coordinator at the Office of Indigenous Affairs, Memorial University. Previously, she was the Comprehensive Community Plan Coordinator and a Traditional Ecological Knowledge Research Assistant with Qalipu First Nation, as well as Research Policy Development Coordinator at First Light: St. John’s Friendship Centre. Joanne is a drum carrier, trained Gladue reporter, artist, dog-parent, cyclist, and gardener.

Beth Jacobs is a Two-Spirit Anishinaabe from Bkejwanong Territory (Southern Ontario) with ancestors from Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). Currently an undergraduate student at Memorial University, Beth is deeply committed to campus life. They are a board member of both MUNSU and the university’s Sexual Harassment Office, the MUNSU representative for the Bachelor of Social Work Program, and the National 2SLBGQTIA+ Representative of the Circle of First Nations, Metis, and Inuit Students with the Canadian Federation of Students. Embracing a trauma-informed and anti-oppressive approach to community work, Beth also volunteers with the NLSACPC. Above all, they strive to empower people on their own paths of self-discovery, identity, healing, recovery, anti-racism, and the Indigenization of knowledge frameworks and resources.

Andrea Procter is a white settler anthropologist with twenty years of experience working with Indigenous communities in Labrador. In 2017, the Nunatsiavut Government and the NunatuKavut Community Council asked her to join the Residential School Healing and Commemoration project to document the stories of Labrador’s boarding schools. Her book, A Long Journey: Residential Schools in Labrador and Newfoundland, has been recognized as a model of collaborative research with Indigenous communities, and has won numerous awards, including the Atlantic Canada Book Award for Scholarly Writing, the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio Prize, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Prize for Non-Fiction. Her latest book, TautukKonik / Looking Back: A Portrait of Inuit life in Northern Labrador, 1969-1986, is a co-creation with eleven Inuit authors from Nunatsiavut and photographer Candace Cochrane.