Keynote Speakers
Marie Battiste, a Mi’kmaq educator from Potlo’tek First Nations, is a Professor in the College of Education and Coordinator of the Indian and Northern Education Program within Educational Foundations, and Academic Director at the Aboriginal Education Research Centre, University of Saskatchewan. Her historical research of Mi’kmaw literacy and education as a graduate student at Harvard University, and later at Stanford University where she received her doctorate degree in curriculum and teacher education, provided the foundation for her later writings in cognitive imperialism, linguistic and cultural integrity, and decolonization of Aboriginal education. A recipient of two honorary degrees from St. Mary’s University and from her alma mater University of Maine at Farmington, she has worked actively with First Nations schools and communities as an administrator, teacher, consultant, and curriculum developer, advancing Aboriginal epistemology, languages, pedagogy, and research. Her research interests are in initiating institutional change in the decolonization of education, language and social justice policy and power, and educational approaches that recognize and affirm the political and cultural diversity of Canada and the ethical protection of Indigenous knowledge. To access a detailed list of her publications please visit: http://www.usask.ca/education/people/battistem.html
Poet, critic, editor, and cultural activist, Roy Miki was born in Manitoba in 1942 on a sugar beet farm that his parents had been forcibly sent to six months earlier. A third-generation Japanese Canadian, Miki played an instrumental role in the successful Redress Movement. His book Redress: Inside the Japanese Canadian Call for Justice (2004) documents the history of the movement and his involvement. His critical publications include Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement (Co-authored with Cassandra Kobayashi), Broken Entries: Race Subjectivity Writing, and more recently Trans.Can.Lit.: Resituating the Study of Canadian Literature (co-edited with Smaro Kamboureli). He has published articles and poetry in numerous journals. His editorial work includes Meanwhile: The Critical Writing of bpNichol, Roy Kiyooka’s collected Poetry, Pacific Windows and The Artists and the Moose: A Fable of Forget. Hailed as one of the most original and powerful English-language poets, he received the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for his book Surrender in 2002. His other poetry titles include Saving Face: Poems Selected 1976-1988, Market Rinse, and Randon Access Files. He taught for many years at Simon Fraser University where he is now a Professor Emeritus.
François Paré‘s work is in the area of minority literatures, literature as a cultural institution, and 16th-century France. His book, Les littératures de l’exiguïté (Le Nordir, 1992, 1995, 2001), was awarded the Governor General’s Award in 1993. His other publications include Louis Hamelin et ses doubles (2008), with François Ouellet; Le fantasme d’Escanaba (2007); which was shortlisted for the Prix Victor-Barbeau in 2008; Jean Marc Dalpé. Ouvrier d’un dire (2007), co-edited with Stéphanie Nutting; and La distance habitée Ottawa (2003), winner of the Prix Victor-Barbeau in 2004. He is presently working on three different projects: a photographic essay on Sudbury; an essay on diasporic cultures; and an epistolary essay with François Ouellet on Québec novelist Louis Hamelin. He is Professor and Chair in the Department of French Studies at University of Waterloo.
Roundtable Guest Speakers
Ruby Arngna ‘Naaq is an Inuk from Baker Lake, Nunavut, now residing in Ottawa. She was a founding member of the art-producing Sanavik Inuit Cooperative in Baker Lake in 1970 and one of Sanavik’s first printmaking shop managers and art directors. She co-produced “Inuit Myths and Legends” for the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) and co-directed “Ikajurti: Midwifery in the Canadian Arctic” for IBC in 1990. She has worked in the Inuit cultural sector as a political activist, a representative on arts boards and marketing agencies, and as Northern Liaison for “The First Minister’s Conference on Aboriginal Rights and Aboriginal Consultation on Justice Issues.”
Jack Butler is a multidisciplinary artist in Toronto) whose practice links visual art and medical science. He has exhibited installations, video projections, and computer animations internationally. His work is in public and private collections, including the National Gallery of Canada. He is a founding member of Sanavik Inuit Cooperative, Baker Lake, Nunavut. Butler has thirty years experience as a medical model builder and published researcher in human development. He taught at Carnegie Mellon University, at the Banff Centre, and in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Western Ontario. As an adjunct to his art practice, Butler is a licensed Personal Representative with Primerica Financial Services of Canada.
Born to the Bear Clan of the Chicksaw Nation and Cheyenne Tribe of Oklahoma, James (Sa’je’j) Youngblood Henderson, I.P.C. is Professor and Research Director of the Native Law Centre of Canada at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan. He holds degrees from the Harvard Law School (Juris Doctorate) and from Carlton University )Honourary Doctor of Law). He is a noted international human rights lawyer and an authority on protecting Indigenous heritage, knowledge and culture. He is currently a member of the Sectoral Commission on Culture, Communication and Information of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. His publications include Indigenous Diplomacy and Rights of Peoples: Achieving UN recognition, Treaty Rights in the Constitution of Canada, and First Nation Jurisprudence and Aboriginal Rights: Defining the Just Society. He has also published numerous articles and is the co-author of Our Nations; Our Government Choosing at Path, AFN Recognition and Implementation of First Nations Governments.
Patrick Imbert is Professor at the University of Ottawa (Department of French), professor of the year in the Faculty of Arts 1998, University Research Chair Holder, Executive Director of the International American Studies Association, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is co-founder and vice-president of the City for the Cultures of Peace. A most prolific scholar, he has published over 170 articles and over twenty books. Some of his publications include Roman québécois contemporain et clichés, L’Objectivité de la presse, Construction et discours, Le réel à la porte, The Permanent Transition, Transit (novel), Réincarnations (novel) and Trajectoires culturelles transaméricaines.
Nathalia E. Jaramillo is Assistant Professor in the Department of Educational Studies in the College of Education at Purdue University. She holds a PhD from UCLA in Education Studies, and an EdM from Harvard University in International Educational Policy. She has co-authored (with Peter McLaren) Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism, and is the author and co-author of chapters in books forthcoming in the areas of indigenous pedagogy and pedagogy and revolutionary change.
Shauna McCabe is Canada Research Chair in Critical Theory in the Interpretation of Culture at Mount Allison University. Living in Atlantic Canada since 1998, she was the senior curator at the Confederation Centre for the Arts until December 2005. Recent exhibitions include Curb Appeal: Urban Research Territories, Beauty Queens: Islands in Contemporary Culture, Douglas Coupland: Play Again? and Intangible Evidence. She currently holds the position of Director of the art gallery within The Rooms, a public cultural space in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, that combines the provincial art gallery, museum, and archives. In the fall of 2005, Dr. McCabe published ancient motel landscape, a book of poetry as well as photography that explores the interrelationships of memory and landscape. With her interdisciplinary background and diverse curatorial experience, she is regularly invited to contribute to exhibit monographs, and has worked on research projects involving such artists as Francis Alÿs, Jason McLean, David Askevold, Andrew King, Thaddeus Holownia, Jeffrey Burns, Alison Norlen, Graeme Patterson, and Jin-me Yoon.
Peter McLaren is a Professor at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA. He received his PhD in Education from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto. His research interests are in access and equity in education, college choice and admissions, sociology of education, organization theory, higher education policy analysis, stratification of individuals and institutions in education, and qualitative research. His publications include Rage and Hope: Interviews with Peter McLaren on War, Imperialism and Critical Pedagogy, Capitalists and Conquerors: Critical Pedagogy Against Empire, Red Seminars: Radical Excursions into Educational Theory, Cultural Politics, and Pedagogy, Life in Schools, Teaching Against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism. A Critical Pedagogy (with Ramin Farahmandpur) and Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism (with Natalia Jaramillo).
Catriona Mortimer-Sandilands is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies and Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture at York University, teaching courses in environmental cultural studies and environmental writing. She is the recipient of the 2004 Canada Research Chair in Sustainability and Culture (Tier I, to 2009) and the 2000 Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship, University of Oregon. Her most recent publications include “Queering Ecocultural Studies,” (Cultural Studies, May 2008) and “Finding Emily,” in Method and Meaning in Canadian Environmental History (in press).
Donna Palmateer Pennee is a Professor of Canadian Literature and Dean of Arts and Humanities at The University of Western Ontario. A graduate of McGill University and The School of Criticism and Theory (Dartmouth College), she is co-editor of New Contexts of Canadian Criticism, the author of two monographs on Timothy Findley, articles on Margaret Laurence, Sheila Watson, Adele Wiseman; cultural nationalism, postcolonialism, and state policy under globalization; pedagogy and curriculum; and the limits of white liberal feminism. An award-winning teacher, she has served as Vice-President, Equity Issues, for the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2004-08), and promotes accountability for equity in post-secondary education.
Julie Rak is Professor of English at the University of Alberta. She received her PhD from McMaster University in 1998. Her research areas include auto/biography, theories of genre, popular culture, Canadian literature and cultural studies, and print culture/book history. She has published numerous articles and is the editor or co-editor of a number of special issues of journals. She is the author of Negotiated Memory: Doukhobor Autobiographical Discourse, the editor of Auto/Biography in Canada: Critical Directions, and the co-editor of Mountain Masculinity: the Life and Writings of Nello “Tex” Vernon-Wood in the Canadian Rockies, 1911-1938 (with Andrew Gow) and On Diary, by Philippe LeJeune (with Jeremy Popkin).
Laurie Ricou is a Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. He is a former president of the Western Literature Association, and until recently an editor of Canadian Literature. His previous publications include Vertical Man/Horizontal World: Man and Landscape in Canadian Prairie Fiction, A Field Guide to “A Guide to Dungeness Spit”, and The Arbutus/Madrone Files: Reading the Pacific Northwest. His most recent book is Salal: Listening for the Northwest Understory.
Featured Readers
George Elliott Clarke was born in Windsor, Nova Scotia, near the Black Loyalist community of Three Mile Plains, in 1960. A graduate of the University of Waterloo (B.A., Hons., 1984), Dalhousie University (M.A., 1989), and Queen’s University (Ph.D., 1993), he is now the inaugural E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. Previoulsy, he taught in the Canadian Studies program at Duke University (1994-1999), served as the Seagrams Visiting Chair in Canadian Studies at McGill University (1998-1999) and as a Noted Scholar at the University of British Columbia (2002) and as a Visiting Scholar at Mount Allison University (2005). He has also worked as a researcher (Ontario Provincial Parliament, 1982-83), editor (Imprint, University of waterloo, 1984-85, and The Rap, Halifax, NS, 1985-87) social worker (Black United Front of Nova Scotia, 1985-86), parliamentary aide (House of Commons, 1987-91), and newspaper columnist (The Daily News, Halifax, NS, 1988-89, and The Halifax Herald, Halifax, NS, 1992-). He lives in Toronto, Ontario, but he also owns land in Nova Scotia. His many honours include the Portia White Prize for Artistic Achievement (1988), Governor-General’s Award for Poetry (2001), the National Magazine Gold Medal for Poetry (2001), the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Achievement Award (2004), and the prestigious Trudeau Fellow Prize (2005).
Herménégilde Chiasson is one of Canada’s cultural icons. At the time of his appointment as Lieutenant-Governor, he was a distinguished member of the teaching staff at the University of Moncton, a position he has occupied since 1988. He has worked at Radio-Canada as director, playwright, journalist, and researcher intermittently from 1968 to 1985. He was the director of the Galerie d’art de l’Université de Moncton (1974), founding president of Editions Perce-Neige (1984), president of Galerie Sans Nom (1980), founding member of the Aberdeen co-operative (1985) and the Imago workshop (1987), founding president of Productions du Phare-Est (1988), curator of the Marion McCain exhibit at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery (1994), and president of the Association acadienne des artistes professionnels et professionelles du Nouveau-Brunswick (1993-1995). He has participated in over 100 exhibitions and is the author of many books including Claude Roussel Sculpteur/Sculptor (1985) and Climat (1996). He wrote some twenty plays such as L’exil d’Alexa (1993) and Aliénor (1997). He was awarded the prix France-Acadie in 1986 and 1992, the prestigious Chevalier de l’Ordre français des Arts et Lettres in 1990, l’Ordre des francophones d’Amérique in 1993, the Grand Prix de la francophonie canadienne in 1999, an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Moncton in 1999 and, most recently, the Prix quinquennal Antonine-Maillet-Acadie Vie in 2003.
Featured Literary Authors
Triny Finlay is the author of Splitting Off (2004) and the chapbook Phobic (2006). Her poetry and reviews have been published in various Canadian journals and magazines, including The Antigonish Review, ARC, Broken Pencil, The Fiddlehead, Grain, and Other Voices. Her work has also been anthologized in Breathing Fire 2: Canada’s New Poets and Qwerty Decade, and is forthcoming in Gaspereau Gloriatur: Book of the Blessed Tenth Year. She has studied at Mount Allison University and the University of New Brunswick; currently, she is completing a PhD in Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto.