Opening Keynote 10/04/19 with Margo Tamez “Truthing and Naming Cataclysms, Unspeakables, and Upsurgences through a DeneNde’ Poetics and Politics of Belonging” chaired by Wendy Kroeker, with opening remarks by G. Michelle Collins-Sibley (Canadian Mennonite University Chapel)
Friday, October 4th, 2019 at 7:00PM | Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg City in Manitoba, Canada
Opening Keynote for 2019 Annual Peace and Justice Studies Association Conference | Hosted with Peace and Conflict Studies Association of Canada (PACS-Can) at Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) & Menno Simons College (MSC) | October 4th-6th, 2019
About the Presentation:
“Genocide. Misogyny and atrocity against Indigenous women and children. Indigenous non-recognition. Dispossession. Human Trafficking. Carceral worlds. Gulag Walls. Raids. Legalized murder of Indigenous youth. Disappeared generations. Impunity. Turtle Island-Abya Yala Indigenous diasporic refugees. En masse refusal. Collective uprising. Re-imagined resistance. Earth on fire. Sentient Earth beyond humans. Since 2007, as a core organizer, historian, creative, witness, and coordinator of Tamez v. Chertoff (2007) and related Indigenous law cases confronting and holding public criminals to account–for crimes against Indigenous Peoples, I’ve been grateful to be deeply involved in the first and the only individual Native Indigenous challenge to the US Secure Fence Act of 2006–the biggest en masse land grab, in one policy, enacted by the US in its history. In this talk, I will share personal insights as one directly impacted and a first-hand witness to state violence, repression, and suppression of Indigenous women land protection and defenders. My personal storying of knowing and remembering, reveals an understanding of intensified and escalated violence and its psychological, spiritual, and affective impacts. I’ll offer examples of how my views and understanding of violence has been profoundly impacted by Indigenous artists, poets, activists, laws, oral tradition, history, philosophy, internalized anti-Native behaviours plaguing settler and Indigenous communities, and the struggle to confront and dismantle patriarchal Native governance systems which expand capitalism’s reach and violence in Indigenous communities. The Indigenous uprising, resurgence, and revolution is being re-imagined and led by crucial Indigenous actors. The most influential Indigenous actors are not the ‘Indian’ the settler within liberal, leftist, ‘radical’, ‘progressive’, ‘democratic’ tiers of social justice circles were expecting. We’re not only talking back, we’re creating new forms and languages to our own experiences, and truthing and naming the obvious, without apology”
About Margo Tamez:
Margo Tamez is a Lipan Apache author of the Hada’didla Nde’ (“Lightning Storm People”), Konitsaii Nde'(“Big Water People”) and an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Band of Texas. Tamez is an Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies, in the Community, Culture, and Global Studies Department at the University of British Columbia, unceded Syilx territory, Okanagan campus. She is the author of Naked Wanting (2003), Raven Eye (2007) and numerous chapters, essays, and scholarly articles. Her poetry has been anthologized in the U.S., Mexico, Columbia, and France.
A scholar, poet, and human rights defender, Tamez grew up in South Texas, the Lower Rio Grande Valley and along the Texas-Mexico border. Her 2007 work, Raven Eye, is considered the first Apache-authored literary work which ‘indigenized’ the post-modern American poetry form known as the ‘long poem’. Her prose reflects the critical understanding of historical processes and on-going effects of historical erasure on Indigenous peoples, making crucial links between history and present forces (colonization, militarization) impacting Indigenous peoples from the region bifurcated by the U.S.-Mexico border who remained in traditional places but largely ignored by the state. A long-time advocate and proponent in the Ndé Indigenous self-determination movement she has opened space for Nde’ women to participate and reclaim key roles in asserting Indigenous rights to land, protection, defense, cultural revitalization, land based economies, freedom of movement, freedom from all forms of oppression, freedom from colonialism and settler colonial violence, and the rights of Nde’ River Peoples to autonomous self-governance.
Video Editor: Caitlin Marsengill
