Subalterneity and the Politics of Subversion
7th Annual Decolonizing the Spirit Conference
Friday April 12 and Saturday April 13, 2013
OISE
Conference Abstracts
1.
Decolonizing Feminist Women’s Organizations: All Spirits are Welcome and
Connecting to the Authentic Self.
Jacqueline Benn-John
What role can I play to help my colleagues make the connection between spirituality and healing?
Over the last 20 years I have worked in the feminist anti-violence sector. In this sector, staff and
volunteers regularly encounter women and children who have experienced high levels of trauma at
the hands of intimate partners or while engaging with agents of the state and their systems (e.g.
Children`s Aid Society, and Ontario Works). Regrettably, women experience further victimization
when asked to check their spirit at the door in order to access social supports. How can women`s
organizations work with and nurture women in all of their identities? In order to engage in trauma
recovery work, a woman must integrate her entire self in this work. Medical models of counselling
and feminist counselling have not recognized – and in some cases refused to recognize – the
intersection of spirituality and healing. When this occurs, women`s identity, cultural knowledge
and multiple ways of knowing is rendered invisible and inferior as a path to healing and resistance.
It is a contradiction to espouse feminist values of diversity, and equity on one hand, and then erase
tools for coping that have sustained women and their children pre, during and post trauma, on the
other hand. What strategies can women’s organizations employ to nurture women’s authentic self?
My spirit has been central to my recovery and continues to guide me on my path to healing. In my
work with women, women reveal the power of their spirit that has helped them to survive trauma,
resist oppression and feel whole again. How can women’s organizations introduce spirituality as a
tool for healing and resistance in trauma and recovery work? What can help to facilitate women’s
sacred connection to their spirit? What is the connection between spirituality and resistance?
2.
Emotion as a Pedagogical Tool: Reflections on Spirituality.
Ximena Martinez, Master of Art Student at HSSSJE - OISE
Ximena Barria, Master of Education Psychology and Child Development - OISE
Reason and sensory experience are central to the philosophy of a vast majority of schooling systems
around the world. This epistemological paradigm of education is important as it underpins the
acquisition of cognitive and technical skills that serve society’s economic goals notably
participation in the production process. However, the downside of this perception is in its
narrowness on what education should be especially in serving holistic interest of society.
Ideally education should be seen as a holistic lifelong process that involves not just the cognitive
dimension but also spiritual and physical. By ignoring this basic reality, the epistemological confine
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education only to western forms of education subjugating other knowledge sources notably
indigenous and spirituality.
Our presentation aims to explore emotion as a pedagogical tool that might help to
incorporate those aspects of humanity that are not part of the current schooling system and thus, rethink the meaning of education as a transformative process that manifests itself not just through our
reason and sensory experiences but also through sensitive and spiritual experiences which are
encountered in and outside classrooms.
We aim to interrogate the institutionalized curriculum and pedagogical practices that left out
emotion and connectivity as a fundamental dimension of the learning experience. We seek to build
on the salient feature of our experiences as teacherswhich is to incorporate emotion as an instrument
of engaging students thus, allowing them to be an active agent in the learning process.
3.
Decolonizing Home Videos: The Discursive Power of Desi Parody in Cyberspace.
Tasha Ausman, PhD Education student, University of Ottawa
Nichole Lowe, PhD Education student, University of Ottawa
The question as to whether the subaltern can “speak,” posed by Gayatri Spivak in her pivotal 1988
essay, sparked debate about the politics of representing the gendered and marginalized Other from
the colonial metropole of academia. For Spivak, female intellectuals are able to (indeed,
compelled) to speak about the Other, yet must be critical of their speaking positions – namely to
“unlearn” female privilege in order to remember that there is no such thing as the universal female
subject. We are two female scholars – one white and one Indo-Canadian – who engage in a politics
of “unlearning” through our viewing of popular homemade videos about desi (diasporic first
generation) women. One video in particular, “Shit White Girls Say to Brown/Desi Girls”
(KoshaDelhi, 2012) catches our attention as an anti-racist text that attempts to poke holes in of the
underlying racisms that make up our Canadian fabric, while at the same time inverting the position
of power through the conventions of at-home film construction. The protagonist in this satirical
video is a desi woman, dressed up as a white woman who makes both accidental and intentional
racist jokes about Indian culture. Indebted to a Foucaultian definition of discourse, we assert that
YouTube videos like this one provide a controlled (colonized) space for dissidence yet open up
spaces where women of colour are able to tell their histories of resistance without being reduced to
discourses of oppression. We contend that diasporic Indo-Canadian women are able to articulate
themselves and their positions against dominant discourses– in this case through parody -- even
from within a colonized/ing space such as the internet and its largest video provider, in order to
engage in acts of subversion that tear open places from which to speak.
4.
Subaltern Narratives, Subversive Knowledges: (Auto)ethnographic Possibilities
Lily Han, PhD Student, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University
The methods and means by which knowledges are produced function to legitimate or de-legitimate
various epistemologies. Within the higher education system, where epistemologies are defined and
demarcated, knowledge is constituted by and through an ‘academically rigorous’ framework built
on principles of logic, rationality, and empiricism. These approaches dictate what is know-able,
what counts as knowledge, and what is worthy of being known, as well as pre-determining who is
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deemed capable of knowing. The subject stance, or he who is capable of deploying legitimized
approaches to knowledge production, is a Eurocentric figure, epitomized in the white, western,
heteronormative male. Ways of knowing and the ability to know are thus narrowly and mutually
constituted; that is, knowledge may be obtained through reason and it is the western male subject
who possesses an innate rationality. This presents a clear problematic for those who occupy
marginal positionalities. How can we contribute to the production (or construction) of knowledges
if we are not deemed as know-able subjects? I suggest that a potential for intervention lies in the
use of critical (auto)ethnography. Through an exploration of the politics of the (auto)ethnographic
form, I make a case for privileging visceral, embodied experiences as legitimate (subaltern) sources
of knowledge. Furthermore, I explore how we can use critical (auto)ethnography to bring forth
subaltern voices as subversive epistemological standpoints and politically potent bodies of
knowledge. Finally, I propose critical (auto)ethnography as a form of epistemic disobedience and
an act of resistance to hegemonic epistemological norms. Through critical (auto)ethnographic
narrative, we can move closer to opening a space for subaltern voices and re-defining subject-hood
to include diverse epistemologies and new visions for social justice.
5.
“Knowledge is like a baobab tree”: Storytelling as critical pedagogy.
Adwoa Ntozake Onuora, PhD, OISE
In this paper, I present a counter to the colonizing tendencies of the academy through my
presentation of Afro-indigenous orature as pedagogical tools for engendering critical thinking and
for educational transformation. Through the use of an Anancy folktale, and Ewe/Ashanti proverb
and by centering my mother tongue—the Jamaican language in an English-speaking classroom, I
engage in ‘teaching back’ to academic conventions. Drawing on my personal account of teaching a
lower level interdisciplinary course at the post-secondary level, I illustrate how facilitators of
learning can create space to engage students in oral literary criticism (Dundee, 1966) and critical
thinking about the intersection of epistemological equity, knowledge production, and colonialism.
6.
Rupturing from Within: Narrative Reflections of Colonization in Education.
Raneem Azzam
Pierrette Walker
This paper uses a critical co-constructed authoethnographic method (Cann & DeMeulenaere, 2010,
2012) to explore the challenges to and potential for a liberatory anti-colonial pedagogy in the
Ontario public school classroom. Situating our work within the fields of feminist, anti-racist, anticolonial scholarship, we examine our own identities as women of colour to show the ways we are
implicated in and disciplined by a colonial educational system. Through a dialogue informed by
Fanon’s theory of violence in Wretched of the Earth, (1963) we examine the possibilities of healing
through a project of decolonization. As one Arab woman (Raneem) and one Black woman
(Pierrette) we explore the potential for forming alliances that cross racialized subjectivities.
7.
Decolonizing Community and Self-care
Latisha Reddick
“Socacize your Heart” is a multi-part event that aims to deconstruct colonial concepts of community
and self-care. The first part of Socacize your Heart is an exhilarating Caribbean themed exercise
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that challenges and resists dominant ideologies concerning how marginalized communities
conceptualize exercise and physical activity. The nutritional aspect unpacks the ‘healthy lifestyle’ as
a hegemonic practice and concept, the accessibility of self-care and the politics of who has access to
self-care. In particular, the linguistic, economic, and educational barriers that deny the subaltern
body access to self-care are investigated. Finally, community members and allies engage in
conversation on how to reconcile the deviance downloaded on the racialized disabled body as being
out of place and out of line with the White Heterosexual European counterpart.
Socacize your Heart aims to build upon the intersectionality of multiple identities that
influence the access or denial of self-care to particular individuals. Institutions have capitalized on
the popular discourses of healthy living and self-care. Consequently, bodies that lack the financial
capacity, physical ability and health knowledge have been produced as being inherently lazy and
unfit. Furthermore, African, Caribbean and Indigenous knowledges of self-care have been
historically perceived as primitive and inferior. The privileging of European knowledge of self-care
in the discourses of healthy lifestyles naturalizes the myth of a racial hierarchy.
As a community we possess a shared and complex history of oppression that has deeply
affected us. Building on the connections of our identities can move us towards a journey of
connecting beyond a colonial, ablest, heteronormative and racists understanding of the self. As an
effort to resist the structures of domination local level, Socacize your Heart offers a safe space to
celebrate the communal knowledge and sharing. It utilizes the intersectionality of multiple identities
to deconstruct the colonial concept of community and self-care.
8.
Uncovering the spiritual and embodied dimensions of personal transformation.
Saeeda N NoorIlah
This work-in-progress research will explore the significance of spirituality and embodiment in
women after a personal health crisis in the lives of South Asian women. It aims to explore how
women engage introspectively with their spiritual sense of self, their body's way of knowing and the
universe around them as they move towards well-being. This research will analyze and discuss how
South Asian women in Canada establish a relationship with their spiritual and embodied selves and
use it as a survival mechanism and a form of resistance against direct and indirect societal
oppressive forces, their own traditional cultures and that of the new society they find themselves in.
This qualitative work will rely on Narrative and Feminist inquiry to honour the stories of women
who have survived a health crisis like breast cancer and the repercussions of their invasive medical
treatment. The implications of this work include contributing to literature that values holistic
learning, the spiritual self and women’s bodies as authentic sources of learning and resistance and
their role in personal transformation and triumph for survival.
9.
Subalterneity and Ethnicity in the UAE and Canada: A Comparative Narrative of
“Multiculturalism”.
Nadia Qureshi
With population growth in Canada being mainly a result of immigration, this nation represents an
extremely diverse population. The glorified notion of Multiculturalism in Canada as a means for
equity and inclusion of these diverse populations has been criticized by previous research (Dewang
and Leman, 2006; Gerin-Lajoie, 2008). However, multicultural policies and practice continue to
manifest themselves in Canada, particularly through the educational system.
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Comparatively, the UAE’s population also represents a racially, ethnically, religiously and
socially diverse population (Heard-Bey, 2005). Foreign labour makes up approximately 75 percent
of the population in this nation, and expatriates make up approximately 90 percent of the jobs in the
country (Gallant & Pounder, 2008). Thus Multiculturalism and multinationalism even, play large
roles in this country.
This paper seeks to provide a critical and comparative analysis on the experiences of living
in Canada and the UAE, while being marginalized due to ethnicity. Some parallels are drawn on
how systematic marginalization manifests in both nations. However, the strategy used to mitigate
oppression due to this marginalization is drastically different. In Canada, ethnic groups resist this
marginalization by forming allegiances with other minorities of their ethnicity. They empower one
another through a shared knowledge of the “culture of power” (Delpit, 1988) and how to assimilate
in order to navigate the system. Whereas in the UAE, cross cultural dialogue and forming
relationships with local people, while maintaining one’s “otherness” is indicated as the strategy of
choice in promoting a dialogue between the oppressors and the oppressed.
The paper’s findings are informed by a literature review, and the author’s personal
experiences living as a marginalized body in Canada, who then moved to the UAE and experienced
ethnic marginalization in a different capacity.
10.
Abstract Title: Song, Dance, and Oratory: Cultivating Indigenous Institutions.
Mykelle Pacquing
In my presentation I will be presenting the potential for research in the Indigenous institutions of
song, dance, and oratory. These institutions have been under attack by the Western academy for the
past 500 years and significant losses have been inflicted upon Indigenous societies around the world
including the loss of respect for these institutions within Indigenous communities. Despite this,
Indigenous institutions continue to persist and survive today in informing contemporary Indigenous
knowledge. Whereas the Western academy privileges institutions of the written word, Indigenous
knowledge is primarily based on the institutions of song, dance, and oratory. Whereas the Western
academy compartmentalizes fine arts and knowledge, Indigenous knowledge is inseparable from
creative expression.
I will be utilizing the Canadian legal case of Delgamuukw vs. the Queen to demonstrate that
efforts have been made to recognize the oral tradition of Indigenous peoples. In 1997, the Supreme
Court of Canada accepted dance as documentation of a First Nation’s claim to Aboriginal title. In
my presentation, I will also be utilizing my voice as a singer—rather than a digital recording—to
demonstrate key points within an oral Indigenous tradition, and the limitations that are inherent
within the literary tradition.
The epistemological implications within the Indigenous cultural institutions of song, dance,
and oratory must be brought forward to the Western academy in order to ensure the survival of
Indigenous communities and knowledge systems.
11.
Exploring how Helping Professionals Understand and Incorporate Resistance in Their
Practice.
M. Syed
This working paper hopes to explore how helping professionals such as social workers understand
and undertake resistance in their everyday practice when working with women survivors of a health
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crisis such as Breast Cancer. I hope to explore the professional challenges faced by helping
professionals in delivering mainstream and standardized support services to women in order to meet
their unique client needs. This work will hope to discuss how professionals understand
decolonization within their own practice and how they practice resistance to dominant
organizational models of support.
12.
“Ain’t I a Black Woman”(?): Unsettled Settler-hoods, Re-visioning Fanon’s
Decolonization.
Loren Delaney
This is a discursive, affective and material discussion informed by readings on race, class and
gender intersections. The paper takes a Fanonian standpoint in our discussion of settler-hood.
Settler-hood in the paper is explored as White privilege, which allude us to the compromised
position of settlers of color as bodies of color produced into a spectrum undergirded by racism that
is inherently violent. Moreover, we question who is asking for said bodies to occupy this whitened
position of settler and/or showcase the position this compromise alludes us to, and for what end?
The term, settler of color, is one of “contradiction and thus negation” and the argument put forth
asserts the linguistic mechanics of “settler of color” as one that becomes a discursive trend that
produces the Fanonian Manichean delirium and divide, to in any event re-organize colonial
relations of domination. It argues that there are diverse Indigeneities unsettled on Indigenous lands
and with such engages anti-racism, anti-colonial and post-colonial theory to unearth the perverse
problematic in which raced bodies are at once produced to sustain and reify ongoing colonialism,
among, against and to the detriment of each another in a White settler society. The notion of
responsibility is addressed, alongside the complex and violent dynamics of what George Dei has
called a ‘co-relational relation’ between the colonized-colonizer/Black-white/Indigenous-settler The
paper concludes by revisiting Audre Lorde’s forewarning to which ‘the Master’s tools will never
undue the Master’s house’, and posit thoughts for consideration.
13.
Using Storytelling and Art as A Way to Move into the Future.
C. Smillie-Adjarkwa, HBA/MISt, UofT; PhD, AECP, OISE, Uof T
This presentation will focus on Storytelling about our lives as Aboriginal people as an act of
reclaiming historical and cultural memory and as an act of resistance. Indigenous knowledge is
important to both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians because only half of Canadians claim
any understanding of Aboriginal issues. By using the Anishnaabe 7 stages of Life, the medicine
wheel, and other methods, I hope to bring to light situations affecting Aboriginal individuals and
communities, both positive and negative. By utilizing this approach we can work towards
Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty.
This presentation will also focus on art as a healing tool. The main focus will be on the use
of photo voice and collage. Through art we often come to feel what we cannot see directly. Arts
based research creates visual words, evoking empathy and offers alternative ways of seeing reality
and viewing one’s life. Arts-based therapy has been very helpful for people recovering from
problems associated with intergenerational trauma and grief.
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14.
The role of Indigenous principles in Caribbean research: A thoughtful reflection on
Guyana and Nursing Research.
Ruth Rodney
While the profession of nursing is based on the principles of nonmaleficence, benevolence and
justice, health has often times been used as a form of power and oppression in low, middle-income
and developed countries. Medical treatments and care are offered from a westernized and therefore
colonized view of health. As the world becomes smaller, and health is continuously accepted as a
right, those living in developed nations travel to administer health care. How might these journeys
be shaped by systemic asymmetries? What are the contemporary legacies of the notion of saving
people from their own perils, when shorelines in Africa and the Americas were invaded to bring
civility to the ‘savages’? How do we as health professionals reject this easily adopted and
unquestioned standpoint as we travel to provide care in disasters, medical missions and conduct
research? The answer is in our approach, and questioning how to better what we currently do.
Caribbean research within the health and social sciences frequently adopt western methodologies as
gold standards on which to conduct and analyze research. However, these should be challenged by
alternative methodologies whose founding communities have been affected similarly by
colonization, as seen by the work of Mentore (2007) in examining Amerindian modes of knowledge
in combating racism within Guyana.
When we look closely at Guyana, the first nations principles of Ownership, Control, Access and
Possession (OCAP)(Schnarch, 2004), could be more beneficial to promote change than what is
currently used. The Aboriginal community within Canada has been exposed and exploited in
westernized research practices, and continues to produce and implement ideologies that service their
communities more effectively. This paper will reflect on how beginning with this different starting
point can positively affect the health care given by nurses who travel to provide healthcare within
the Caribbean.
15.
Interchanges: Internationally educated teachers’ agency in schools.
Lee Anne Block, PhD, Faculty of Education, University of Winnipeg
Internationally educated teachers (IETs) can change how cultural differences are perceived in
Canadian school communities. Rather than mirroring dominant social norms, IETs can become an
alternative to stereotypes and thus extend all students’ understanding of difference as interchanges
occur in the teaching and learning context. Not all interchanges are easy. IETs experience bias in
hiring practices and in the workplace. IETs’ experiences of discrimination do not necessarily lead to
them self-identify as marginalized. Their identification of discrimination is not equivalent to
accepting the terms of those who discriminate. They resist through their professional identities as
teachers. This study examined how teacher agency is expressed by IETs in the context of a bridging
program and in schools where IETs are employed as teachers in Manitoba. Their role in the school
system is approached through considering agency as an effect. The analysis suggests that IETs act
as cultural mediators and have the potential to become agents of change, if they find teaching
positions within which they choose to position themselves as critical cultural mediators.
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16.
A Generative Dialogue on Identity: PanAfrikanism and Feminism.
Clem Marshall, PhD, author of Transcendent Cheddo: PanAfrican Ritual, Rhythm, Reasoning,
Rebirth, Atropos
Angela Miles, PhD, Author of Integrative Feminisms: Building Global Visions, Routledge
With reference to these two books we will argue that the dichotomous nature of the discourse that
pits Unity against Diversity and the Many against the One is a socially constructed but self-locked
cage from which the power of integrative critical analysis and transcendent imagination can free us.
This generative dialogue sets out to explore the ways two critical centres of Identity ‘Women’ and
‘Afrikan/Black’ can be and are used politically to gather the power to define and change the world.
It will expore what happens to the possibilities we experience in our lives of collective struggle
when we find ourselves in political and academic circles that are inclined - to tell homogenized
stories of racism or sexism in order to protect fabricated Fanonesque traditions of ‘solidarity of the
oppressed’; - to claim ‘sisterhood’ through the suppression rather than celebration of differences
among women; nullify and deny achieved political Identity as crippling self-delusion, oppressive
mystification and/or naïve romanticism.
17.
Taking the Tribes’ Trail: Advancing Equity through Co-curricular Experiential
Learning
Susan Lee
Student engagement in local equity initiatives and everyday social relations can offer the potential
for them to enhance their connectedness to national and global concerns. Consequently, with the
experiences gained, they may take on greater roles to resist and challenge structural, environmental
and attitudinal barriers as subalterns and allies. University students can build their awareness and
agency about equity through co-curricular experiential learning initiatives. This presentation will
explore, critically examine and celebrate the learning that has taken place by students and their
allies in working with and for under-represented communities within the culture of physical activity
and sport, while engaging in dialogue and practice in the intersections of different social identities
within a Canadian university context. From theory to practice, the Tribes framework will offer a
theoretical understanding for the development of these student learning communities who are
committed to social justice and change. Learn about the development of the Student Equity
Initiatives Team (SEIT) at the University of Toronto which works toward a more inclusive campus
environment through the implementation of programs and initiatives which include the SEIT
Retreat, SOAR Aboriginal Youth Gathering, Black History Month, Mental Health Awareness
Week, and Asian Heritage Month. The roles of students and staff mentors, the collaborative
outreach efforts, and the mechanisms to channel the energies of a collective effort to embrace and
enhance equity will be highlighted. A survey of the impact on the students’ learning beyond the
classroom will affirm the benefits and efforts of advancing equity through co-curricular experiential
learning, by offering opportunities for student development, activism and reflection
18.
Turn Up the Lights: On the incommensurabilities of decolonization.
Charlotte Henay, PhD student in Education Leadership and Policy at Lakehead University
This paper addresses my concern with the seeming incommensurability of Indigenous futures and
decolonizing projects in the mainstream education system, including academe. I position myself in
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the centre of Settler-Native-Slave relationships and their legacies (Tuck and Yang, 2012) and
discuss questions of Indigenous decolonization and future. I borrow from Charmaine Williams
(2001) and Kathy Absolon (2010) in recognizing the bind that scholars of colour are faced with and
the position that presents both opportunities and barriers to recognition as academics and activists. I
intervene through storywork, in an Indigenous Methodologies framework, in the discordant
experience of leadership, education and academe from the borders, in subversive writing that
affirms self-determination and transgressive pedagogies. In articulating my experience of more than
two decades with-in the education system and academe, I question whether in theorizing
decolonization, colonialism is effectively recentred. How removed is the inquiry from Indigenous
experience? What happens when theory posited as transformative is twice filtered through nonIndigenous eyes? I question the potential of colonial educational institutions to partner with
Indigenous peoples in a way where we have a voice in remaking these same places into spaces of
healing (Jacob, 2012). I story from within a triple bind as female, Indigenous and ‘educator’ who
refuses typologies and colonial subjectivity. I use my stories to ground issues in the discussion of
the glaring absence of anti-colonial analysis in decolonizing leadership. I find that the boundaries
are rich for growth, exchange and shapeshifting, analogous to spirit. Allowing witnessing is to be
seen and experienced in a transformative way, an experience in reclamation. I share this experience
and the importance of where we resist from in entering into alliances to reset the political agenda in
our times.
19.
“Are My Hands Clean”? A Critical Race Analysis of How Leaders in Marginalized
Bodies Resist and Challenge Structures of Domination in Higher Education
Majorie Brown
As a black, middle-class, woman, born on the island of Jamaica in the Caribbean, I recognize my
privileged status as an able-bodied, heterosexual, immigrant settler living in Canada, grandmother
of Canadian-born second and third generation offspring also living in Canada. I am seeking to
collaborate in order to ‘challenge the one-size-fits-all view of how to deconstruct and analyze
sociocultural environments and the traditional wisdom of what should and should not count as fully
legitimate scholarship, [and to] challenge the normative values of how [I] understand and live [my]
life in a highly racialized world’ (Hughes & Giles, 2010, p. 55). Anxious to improve my practice in
higher education, I want to interrogate my assumptions and ask questions as I listen, hear, and seek
to be heard, expecting to grow and become transformed by the process of reflection and action. As
an educator, I want to join my voice with those pioneer and present-day scholars who have paved a
way for me, so that I am able to raise resilient children in my parenting and community
engagement. I recognize that as someone who has been oppressed, colonized, and marginalized, I
must exercise agency and consciously resist dominance while simultaneously attempting to create
better situations for myself and others. However, I need to address the intersectionality of race and
other social identities when thinking about social experiences. Using Critical Race Theory (CRT) as
a lens, allows me to acknowledge how these various identities are interrelated and furthers the
complexity of these social constructions, which, if ignored, leaves questions unanswered (McCall,
2005). I agree with Ferdman and his colleagues who believe that to be able to help others manage or
work with diversity, I must first work on my own ability to expect and value difference (Ferdman,
2007; Patton & Catching, 2009). You?
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20.
Subaltern Children’s Voices in the Research of Inclusive Education: A Reflection on
Bangladesh.
Tahiya Mahbub, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill
University
Poor children in Bangladesh are one of the most exploited groups of that nation’s population. They
are frequently denied their basic rights to education, freedom, shelter, and food. Habituating on the
side-lines of their older family members, and within the hegemonic power structures of patriarchal
family systems, they are also one of the most voiceless groups within the Bangladeshi society. They
are often considered unsophisticated and immature, lacking the capacity for abstract thinking when
in reality Bangladeshi children have displayed great resilience towards atrocities and regularly taken
on adult roles within their needy families.
Research has proven this point repeatedly. However, very little research has recorded the
experiences of children in Bangladesh and spoken to them directly about issues that impact their
lives. My goal is to do just that. In this paper, I advocate the imminent necessity of doing research
with children in Bangladesh. I believe that education and especially Inclusive Education (IE) offers
a viable opportunity to do so in order to peel away hegemonic tendencies that keep children as
subaltern members of society. IE can be explained as a principled approach to education and a
major growing response to ensuring that ALL children regardless of age, ability, ethnicity, or any
other form of vulnerability have access to appropriate, relevant, affordable, and effective education
within their communities (Booth & Ainscow, 1998). IE’s “a principled approach to education,”
emphasizes the fact that inclusion is a never-ending process that involves the participation of ALL
stakeholders in how it is perceived and practiced. No matter the context, locally or globally,
children must be involved and engaged as important stakeholders who can freely speak about their
educational experiences and make suggestions for change. I focus on this major concern of IE, and
explore the necessities and the processes of bringing vulnerable Bangladeshi children’s voices to the
forefront of IE debates in the country. I also highlight why now is a great time to start listening to
their voices and what methodologies we can best use with them.
21.
Implementing indigenous knowledges: accommodating IENs and Canada’s diverse
population who use Canada’s healthcare service.
Nadia Prendergast
Since the first multiculturalism policy in 1971, there have been two significant waves of
internationally educated nurses (IENs) to Canada. The influx of IENs has benefited Canada’s
healthcare service by addressing nursing shortages, and meeting the cultural and health needs of
marginalized groups who have failed to adequately use the healthcare service. However,
government funded programs that assimilate these nurses into the Canadian culture of nursing fail
to focus on the multiple knowledges and expertise that these nurses could offer to Canadian nursing
praxis. With projections of a further nursing shortfall of 60,000 by 2022, Canada could benefit by
focusing on how best to recruit and retain IENs, while focusing on ways for marginalized groups to
better use the healthcare service. IENs come with multiple indigenous knowledges of their own;
some of these knowledges do not interfere with evidence informed decision making, but rather aid
the implementation of such practices. Drawn from a qualitative study of 10 IENs, the results
showed that Ancestral knowledges in the form of spirituality and valued heritages were pertinent in
the everyday lives of these nurses. This study examines the ways spirituality and valued heritages
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are used within a multicultural framework and the role IENs can play in educating and
implementing such practices when working with a diverse population. It will also show how IENs
have used Ancestral knowledges as a means of survival and having their voice heard within their
own Diasporas
22.
Inviting peace unto my house: Using sacred geometry to cultivate mindfulness in our
daily lives.
Melissa Chance
Our reactions to everyday violence in the world may include closing our hearts and minds or
perpetuating the very negativity that we aim to cancel out in our conscious and subconscious minds.
Join me for a brief, introductory presentation and outdoor labyrinth walk to experience one of
several practices in which I engage to open my heart and mind to healing, self-awareness and
spiritual connection. Through meditative walking prayers, in particular, I spiritually detoxify and
bring “peace unto my house.” During this presentation, I will touch on the following topics:
• What is a labyrinth?
• Different ways to use a labyrinth for spiritual enlightenment
• Examples of labyrinths (Toronto Public Labyrinth in Trinity Square, Toronto Ontario
(accessible and close to public transit)
• Challenges of the “labyrinth movement”
Format:
First Part: Introductory Presentation
• Duration: 20 minutes.
• Room Set-Up: Chairs in a circle. Computer, projector and a screen.
Second Part: Rain or Shine: A walk of the outdoor, 11-Circuit Toronto Public Labyrinth in Trinity
Square Park (adjacent to the Eaton Centre Shopping Mall)
• Participants can either meet at OISE and travel as a group to the park or travel separately
and meet at Trinity Square Park at a specific time
• Duration: 3-4 hours to allow time for travel to and from the park, walking time and debrief
(if desired by participants)
• Accessible, close to public transit and child-friendly
• Depending on the number of participants snacks may be provided (free of charge to
participants)
Costs:
Participants need to provide their own transportation to and from the park. The park is
accessible and close to public transit. Weather permitting, the participants could also walk
from OISE to the park.
Logistics:
1. Ideally when the conference program is announced, I would like interested participants to
pre-register with me so that I can: 1) manage the size of the group 2) email materials, map
and directions, and 3) remind participants about the walk prior to the conference.
2. The introductory presentation could be scheduled for the morning of the first day with the
walk scheduled for the Friday Afternoon, Friday evening or Saturday morning.
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23.
Religious Patriarchal Values Obstruct Bangladeshi Rural Women’s Human Rights.
Kazi Abdur Rouf, PhD, Leadership, Higher and Adult Education (LHAE), University of Toronto
Bangladesh is a highly patriarchal Muslim dominated society where men make household decisions
and have property rights. Patriarchy and religious customary laws, private and public realm, gender
division of labour, and colonization contribute to women’s subordinate position in Bangladesh.
Women are stereotyped as passive, docile, silent, illiterate, and keeps them invisible, voiceless,
choice-less, faceless and as objects of men in the society. This gender-based discrimination in
Bangladesh has eroded 67 million women’s fundamental rights to life. 67% of women live under
the poverty line. This paper will argue gendered division of labor; patriarchy and religious
customary laws and values have denied Bangladeshi women access to equal rights. Customary laws
dominate rural women, who are governed by the rural religious male elites. This promotes a
dichotomy of private and public realm, which in turn is barrier to women’s participation in
economic activity outside home. Women are not economically independent in the family, which,
means they suffer from poverty and struggle to fulfill their basic needs like: food, clothing, shelters,
education, and health. Changing customary law, modifying traditional Muslim and Hindu laws, and
women having equal access to property rights and income-generating strategies are needed to
improve women’s access to the legal system to address the violation of human rights and to
improve Muslim family laws in Bangladesh. Gender balance adult women education and women’s
empowerment advocacy can enable women to oppose the authoritative patriarchal power structures
and customary religious laws through collective networking and action. With these aims, Grameen
Bank Sixteen decision campaign and group-based credit program creates opportunities for poor
women in Bangladesh to find free from male dependence.
24.
Ecological Economics to Protect the Planet from Ecocide and Free People from Iron
Cage Consumerism
Kazi Abdur Rouf, PhD, Leadership, Higher and Adult Education (LHAE) University of Toronto
Although economic growth is the foundation of social and economic prosperity, the existing
globalized liberal monopoly economy is based on a consumer market economy, but ecocides our
planet. Investments turn into debt crisis by creating social inequalities, unemployment, and
miserable poverty in the world. Destroy environment. Prosperity is not synonymous with material
wealth. This kind of consumer economy based on materialism is flawed because in consumer
capitalism prestige brought by possessing novelties plays an absolutely central role in establishing a
faulty social status. This restless consumption doesn’t necessarily deliver genuine social progress
but rather contributes to social recession (Jackson, 2011) and jeopardizes civil sustainable
development. Therefore, Tim Jackson (2011) in his book ‘Prosperity without Growth: Economics
for a Finite Planet’ mentions that a new social and ecological altruistic vision of prosperity based on
a green sustainable economy is urgent and essential. The consumer economy has ecocide out planet.
Ecocide is a massive environmental destruction that’s arming people, other species and out planet
(Ecocide 2012). Destruction, damage or loss of ecosystems is happening on a mass scale, every day.
To address this ecocide committed by rampant capitalism, and to generate civic common
prosperous economy for all, states should deregulate some macroeconomic policies so the iron grip
of the unethical consumerism and its immoral social logic could be dismantled. In order to achieve
this social prosperity, the development strategies should focus on green macroeconomic stimulus
packages, policies and implementations. Also, the micro-economic community development
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strategy should be handled with environmental care. Tim Jackson (2011) in his book ‘Prosperity
without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet’ suggests that innovations of eco-friendly
technological shifts should be utilized for the sake of socio-economic and environmental wellbeing
policies. He strongly advocates for introducing Cinderella economy, ecological economy as well as
altering consumerist social logic in order to boost flourishing selfless human capabilities and change
the immoral consumer capitalism. As a result, this development would create altruistic human
beings and establish eco-friendly environmental justice in the world. The UK Professor Tim
Jackson (2011) suggested the new term ‘green stimulus package’ for prosperity, which is
synonymous to the ‘people-centered green social economy’, suggested as a term by the Canadian
Professor Jack Quarter (2009).
25.
Transnationalism and Feminist Coalitions.
Jennifer M. Jagire
The paper on feminist coalitions that I am submitting will educate young feminist scholars and
activists on African gender sensitive area needs and how they can go about it in coalitions. By
reading this paper feminist and other scholars will take a critical view of the methods of studying
African women. They will acquire and take a more progressive view through antiracist views that
are more revolutionary. This paper gives a wake-up call to feminist researchers of their possible
active role in reinforcing the very stereotypes that have caused resistance to the importance of
feminist coalitions to the extent that in some African countries and possibility some sections of
Western countries, “feminism” is treated as a dirty word. This paper, while not defending or
denying the practice of “FGM” in some or a African countries within a few communities, gives a
humane face to research and the fact that feminist coalitions can still be possible, only if researchers
and scholars realize that they are still coming into contact with traditions that have persisted for
centuries and will not come to an abrupt end by spending a few weeks on the continent or taking a
few photographs of selected women. The diversity of Africa must also be taken into account even
before venturing in the continent through research methodologies that will frustrate progress
through colonial and racist attitudes that researchers and activists might not be aware are present in
them.
The author is Ugandan born, has gone to schools in Uganda, Tanzania and Canada, with a
family base in Kenya.
“THEY TAKE ONE STRAND”
A PANEL PRESENTATION
The Crisis of the Afrikan Canadian Intellectual: Taking Up Space or Agent of Revolution?
Potential Participants:
Dr. Melanie Newton, Dr. George Dei, Dr. Tamari Kitossa, Dr. Allisa Trotz, Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya,
Thandiwe Chimurenga, Dr. Grace-Edward Galabuzi, Kwasi Kafele
This panel interrogates and explores the relevance of the Afrikan intelligentsia in Canada with
respect to the struggle for emancipation and the realization or advancing of the material interests of
the Afrikan working-class, women, youth, queers and other socially-marginalized groups within the
community. The presence of the university-based Afrikan intelligentsia in Canada is conspicuous by
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its relative absence as a radical voice and participant in the material struggles of the people. It is the
case that many of these academic actors are infatuated with the notion of praxis, which is
fundamentally committed to social action or changing the world for the benefit of Fanon’s
“wretched of the earth” or “the damned”, actions that they do not, in contrast to their infatuation,
engage in. What accounts for the invisibility of the Afrikan intellectual in progressive or radical
activist or social movement organizations in the community? How could the Afrikan intelligentsia
become relevant as agents of change? What must be done to get the radical intellectuals, as
members of the petty bourgeoisie, to commit “class suicide” and become one with the people as
advised by Amilcar Cabral? To what extent are white supremacy and patriarchy factors in the
Afrikan Canadian intellectual’s seeming reluctance in being an open agent of change in progressive
social movement organizations?
List of Guest Panelists:
Dr. Arlo Kempf
Dr. Philip Howard
Dr. George Dei
Dr. Arnold Itwaru
Dr. Alireza Ashagarez
Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule
Dr. Alireza Asgharzadeh
Dr. Njoki Wane
Dr. Roland Santos Coloma
Dr. Ajamu Nangwaya
Dr. Martin Cannon
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