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EQUITY ISSUES

Equity Panels at Congress 2009

December 10, 2008 marked the 60th anniversary of the Universal Human Rights Declaration. Twenty-five years ago, then Judge Rosalie Silberman Abella issued the Report of the Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, which coined the term ‘employment equity’ and identified four groups as experiencing systemic discrimination that blocked fair and equitable access to employment in Canada – women, members of visible minorities, Aboriginal peoples and persons with disabilities.

Today, what is the status of the equity-seeking groups in the Canadian Academy? This is the central question that will be addressed by the Federation Equity Issues Portfolio at Congress 2009.

As part of this historic retrospective on equity in employment, member associations were encouraged to share their planned equity issues panels in the Equity Highlights Calendar.

A More Equitable and Inclusive Academy? Rhetoric and Reality
Sunday, May 24
10:00 TO 11:30
5050 Minto Building

  • Marjorie Griffin Cohen, Simon Fraser University
  • Carl James, York University
  • Ashok Mathur, Thompson River University
  • Dolana Mogadime, Brock University
  • James Deaville, Carleton University

Academia/Women/Government: Ground Lost in NeoLiberal Times
Marjorie Griffin Cohen

Political changes in the way post-secondary education is treated by the federal government brought about increased precariousness for both women's studies and women professors in post-secondary institutions. This presentation will deal with the way the federal government sets priorities for funding and how university administrations seem quite prepared to accept the marginalization of women's issues within Universities. The focus will be on Federal government's budget decisions, Industry Canada's Canadian Research Chair Program, and the responses of university administrators.

Bio: Marjorie Griffin Cohen is a political economist who is professor of Political Science and Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University. She is an activist who writes on public policy and economics with special emphasis on issues concerning labour, women, energy, and the Canadian economy. She is currently the principle investigator of a five year SSHR Community-University Research Alliance Grant (CURA), The Economic Security Project. Her most recent book is Public Policy for Women: The State, Income Security and Labour Market Issues, University of Toronto Press, 2009.

"You know why you were hired, don't you?" The challenges in meeting the expectations of university appointment
Carl James

This paper explores the experiences of racialized university faculty members noting the expectations and challenges that they must navigate and negotiate in contexts which profess to "welcome" the diversity of faculty in terms of race, gender, dis/ability, aboriginality and in some cases, sexuality. Picking up on Minelle Mahtani's (2006) assertion that minority female faculty members are expected ‘to take on gargantuan tasks simply because they were seen as being a ‘“two-fer” – both a woman and a woman of colour,’ I wonder about the particular expectations, experiences and challenges for racialized males as they seek employment and when they are employed.

Bio: Carl James teaches in the Faculty of Education at York University and is currently the Director of the York Centre for Education and Community (YCEC). In the past, he worked as the university's Affirmative Action Officer. His research interests include examination of: social and educational issues related to race, ethnicity, gender, class, and citizenship/immigrant status; educational and occupational access and equity for marginalized/racialized people in postsecondary institutions; and the practices and implications of multiculturalism as a state policy in addressing racism and discrimination. His publications include Seeing Ourselves: Exploring Race, Ethnicity and Culture (2009) and Race in Play: The Socio-Cultural Worlds of Student Athletes (2005);
Co-sponsor: York University, www.yorku.ca

Sixty seconds on the history of equity, and making good art happen out of bad situations
Ashok Mathur

This presentation will begin with a one-minute multi-media presentation that plays with the history, context, and rhetoric of equity work on a local, national, and global scale. Addressing the abolition of slavery in Canada, the problematics of the Indian Act, enfranchisement of women and various minoritized communities, global truth and reconciliation commissions, the Abella commission and its aftermath, the institutionalizing and systemic dismantling of equity policies in universities, and the shifting face of 21st century politics, this 60-second romp through history will follow with a somewhat more substantial debrief that will discuss the generative possibilities of artistic practice and research as it pertains to equity in the university, the local, and the global.

Bio: Dr. Ashok Mathur is the Canada Research Chair in Cultural and Artistic Inquiry at Thompson Rivers University (Kamloops, BC) where he directs the Centre for innovation in Culture and the Arts in Canada (CiCAC), an artist-research think-tank and residency programme. He is a writer, artist, cultural organizer interested in border zones, the interstices of creative/critical spaces, and interdisciplinarity. Co-sponsor: Thompson Rivers University, www.tru.ca

Challenging the Status Quo on Equity: Naming and Countering Privileges in the Canadian Academy
Darren Lund

Despite solid anti-racism research and robust critical theory, the efforts to decolonize our academic institutions in Canada continue to fall far short of what is needed to begin to level the playing field for scholars of colour and other traditionally marginalized people.

Many institutions such as the University of Calgary are only now beginning to take the first small, long-overdue steps toward equity within the academy. In the past, the inadequate approach of seeking a kind of “colour-blindness” pervaded many institutions, effectively preventing meaningful analyses and rendering struggles for equity invisible. Scholars positioned in minoritized roles find the expectations for their participation in the academy highly scripted along narrow parameters that do not allow disruptions of the status quo, thereby silencing discord around legitimate equity issues. Even universities that have enjoyed more formalized equity provisions for a few decades now still harbour deleterious conditions for “non-white” and “non-mainstream” faculty. Within institutions founded on Eurocentric norms with unspoken privileges based on whiteness and maleness, scholars of colour struggle daily against both formal and informal forms of oppression. A growing emphasis on neoliberal, market-driven conceptions of the university has also curtailed meaningful progress on social justice concerns. From fair hiring practices, tenure and promotion procedures, course allocation, student evaluation methods, and daily issues around representation, non-white scholars face a myriad of pressures and barriers that are inevitably problematic to pinpoint or document. Only by naming and confronting unearned power and privileges in substantive ways will conditions begin to be more equitable for all faculty members regardless of their racialized or other identities.

Bio: Dr. Darren Lund is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education at the University of Calgary, where his research examines social justice activism in schools and communities. His most recent books are co-edited with Dr. Paul Carr: The Great White North: Exploring Whiteness, Privilege and Identity in Education (2007, Sense Publishers), and Doing Democracy: Striving for Political Literacy and Social Justice (2008, Peter Lang Publishers). Darren has been named Exemplary Multicultural Educator of the Year, a Peace Hero, and a Reader’s Digest National Leader in Education. He won Alberta’s inaugural Human Rights Award, and has twice been a Killam fellow. Co-Sponsor: University of Calgary, www.ucalgary.ca

Stuck in the Poisoned Tree: Pedagogy, Curriculum, and the Promises of Activism
Aruna Srivastava

I will be engaging in personal reflections and critique of the bracketing and silencing of equity concerns, particularly around a critique of racism and support of anti-racism initiatives, in an academic culture that maintains, rhetorically, its commitment to them. Part of this continued and often effective silencing of those of us attempting to work in an integrated way on social justice within our academic work, at all levels, is the atomization (disciplinary, pedagogical, curricular, administrative) of the work we do, the deep, if civil, suspicion in many fields of activism in the field of intellectual and academic endeavour, and a failure to recognize the historical and contemporary practices, individual and systemic, that maintain a climate of democratic racism as a status-quo. My main focus will be on the classroom, and on curriculum, particularly on resistance to change even as revision, renewal and progress are championed.

Bio: Aruna Srivastava is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Calgary, with teaching and research interests in critical pedagogy, postcolonial studies, critical race theory, indigenous studies, the politics of reconciliation, disability studies and the fate of identity politics. She is currently a member of a team working on an anti-racism education project with the Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre. Co-Sponsor: University of Calgary, http://www.ucalgary.ca/

Colour-Blindness, Privilege, and Paradox: Context for a Central Academic Problem.
Anthony Stewart

In his essay, "The Richmond Narratives," Thomas Ross makes the following point: "Affirmative action demands the paradoxical solution of first taking account of race in order to get to a world where it is not taken into account." The paradoxical nature of Ross´s observation accounts for at least some of the difficulty inherent in explaining the justice of diversity hiring initiatives to colleagues who cling to the inherent sense of justice carried in the term "colour-blind." The paradoxes of both positions are the subject of my paper, as I work with these paradoxes in order to place the notion of diversity hiring into its proper, constructive context.

Bio: Anthony Stewart is Associate Professor in the English Department at Dalhousie University. His main research interest is twentieth-century African American literature and culture. He has articles accepted or in print on the work of August Wilson, Ralph Ellison, and Percival Everett. Dr. Stewart also teaches twentieth-century British literature and is the author of two articles on the work of George Orwell and of George Orwell, Doubleness and the Value of Decency (Routledge, 2003). His book, You Must Be a Basketball Player: Rethinking Integration in the University (Fernwood, 2009) has just been published. It argues that "myth" is a fiction that only maintains the ethnocultural status quo and makes suggestions about what universities stand to gain from thinking consciously about the messages they send to their students about who is welcome in their midst and who is not. Co-Sponsor: Dalhousie University, www.dal.ca

Decolonizing the Academy? The Status of Indigenous Peoples and Scholarship
Tuesday, May 26
10:00 TO 11:30
5050 Minto Building

  • Joyce Green, University of Regina
  • Rauna Kuokkanen, University of Toronto
  • Makere Stewart-Harawira, University of Alberta

Inclusion or Transformation? Indigenizing the Academy
Joyce Green

In this presentation, I reject propositions that inclusion of indigenous peoples into the academy in fact functions to destablize the preferential knowledges and power relations inherent in elite education in settler states. I propose that inclusion, while preferable to exclusion, nevertheless operates to legitimate the colonial fact, and fails to educate sufficient numbers of students to be transformative. Moreover, the pressures of compliance with elite western canons and with institutional mechanisms function to erase the radical transformative potential of indigenous thinkers in universities. A better option is the indigenization of the academy, a process that substitutes transformation for inclusion, in ways that change the canons and the institutional processes, so that the end result is a truly more universal knowledge framework. An indigenized academy better positioned to educate and to teach the essential qualities of citizenship and democracy in settler states.

Bio: Dr. Joyce Green is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Regina. Her research interests are currently focused on Aboriginal-settler relations and the possibility of decolonization in Canada; and a transformative ecology of relationship with place, epitomized by many traditional Aboriginal conceptions of land and place. Her recent publications include Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (Fernwood and Zed Books, 2008); (with Ian Peach) “Prescribing Post-Colonial Politics and Policy in Saskatchewan”, Belonging: Diversity, Recognition, and Shared Citizenship in Canada (Keith Banting, Thomas Courchene and F. Leslie. Seidle, eds.). Montreal: The Institute on Research for Public Policy, 2007. 263-284; “From Stonechild to Social Cohesion: Anti-Racist Challenges for Saskatchewan”, Canadian J. of Political Science Vol.39 (3), 2006: 507-27; and “Self-determination, Citizenship, and Federalism: Indigenous and Canadian Palimpsest”, in Reconfiguring Aboriginal-State Relations (Michael Murphy, ed.). Institute of Intergovernmental Relations, School of Policy Studies, Queen’s University, 2005. 329-52. Co-Sponsor: University of Regina, http://www.uregina.ca/

The Logic of the Gift as a Process of Decolonization
Rauna Kuokkanen

Decolonization is not as straightforward a strategy as it may first seem; history has shown that it means different things to different people. Even in academic contexts, it poses questions with no easy answers. Several measures and processes count as decolonizing research, but at a more conceptual level, decolonization presents a challenge that must be taken seriously if we wish it to succeed. Deborah Bird Rose (2003) contends: “Decolonization is a form of practice that is worked at and worked out among the peoples and other living things whose lives have become entangled in the violence of colonization.” Therefore, my paper argues that efforts to prescribe decolonization -- to formulate models and establish policies or programs -- run directly counter to the idea that decolonization must involve the participation and engagement of all parties. Rose’s emphasis on sustaining dialogue and listening attentively in the process of decolonization corresponds what I call the logic of the gift. This logic is embedded in indigenous worldviews and philosophies and characterized by reciprocation and responsibility toward the “other.”

Bio: Rauna Kuokkanen is Assistant Professor in Political Science and Aboriginal Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Reshaping the University: Responsibility, Indigenous Epistemes and the Logic of the Gift (UBC Press, 2007). She has published several articles on globalization and indigenous women, indigenous research paradigms and philosophies, education and critical theory. Her current research interests include political economy of indigenous women and autonomy, indigenous feminisms and indigenous philosophy. Co-Sponsor: University of Toronto, www.utoronto.ca

Indigenous Knowledge and Scholarship and the Political Economy of Decolonization
Makere Stewart-Harawira

My discussion in this panel is presented against the backdrop of my own diasporic experience as a Maori scholar within a western Canadian University. It is my hope that indulging in some personal reflexivity regarding my somewhat naive initial assumptions and interactions in this context may provide some useful insights into the challenges faced by Aboriginal scholars ‘out west’. This reflexive exercise also frames my consideration of the decolonization and Indigenization of education and research in the context of the emergence of knowledge capitalism, the internationalisation of the university, and a highly volatile global economy. I conclude my discussion with some musings on the meaning and nature of decolonization in the contemporary global moment and the potential role of the university.

Bio: Makere Stewart-Harawira is an Associate Professor at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on Indigenous peoples with particular regard to Indigenous ontologies, post-imperialism and the crises of governance and biodiversity. Author of The New Imperial Order. Indigenous Responses to Globalization. London: Zed Books; Huia Publishers (2005), her recent publications include 'Responding to a Deeply Bifurcated World. Indigenous Diplomacies in the 21st Century.’ In Indigenous Diplomacies. Marshall Beiers (ed.) Palgrave MacMillan (in press); 'A Two-edged Sword: A perspective from Indigenous peoples’, in National Perspectives on Globalization: A Critical Reader. Paul Bowles & Henry Veltmeyer (eds) Palgrave Macmillan (2007); 'Practicing Indigenous Feminism: Resistance to Imperialism', in Claiming Space for Aboriginal Feminism. Joyce Green (ed) Fernwood, 2007. Co-Sponsor: University of Alberta, http://www.ualberta.ca/

25 Years After: A Retrospective on the Abella Commission and Employment Equity
Wednesday, May 27
10:00 TO 12:00
5050 Minto Building

  • Isabella C. Bakker, York University
  • Shelagh Day, Director of Poverty and Human Rights Centre, Vancouver
  • Judy Rebick, Ryerson University
  • Deborah Stienstra, University of Manitoba
  • Joanne St. Lewis, University of Ottawa

From Employment Equity to the Genderless Market Citizen? The Gender Order 25 years After Abella
Dr Isabella Bakker

The Abella Commission recognized the changing demographic, social, and economic patterns of Canadian society and that women and minorities would form increasingly large segments of the labour force in Canada. 25 years later, men’s participation rate in the labour force remains stable, whereas women are increasing their participation in both employment and post-secondary education. During this period, the erosion of many aspects of the post-war welfare state along with the male breadwinner model of social provisioning has led to the assertion on the part of policy makers that we are moving toward a genderless market citizen. While recent labour market data does to some extent substantiate these claims, the convergence toward a genderless dual earner model is troubled by class, race and gender factors particularly once the work and legal framework of entitlements for social reproduction is brought into the discussion. Thus, a gender order that is both constant and changing appears to be emerging accompanied by greater individualized risk for different segments of the population particularly the most marginalized women. Within this context, this paper argues for a new effort that situates equity within a broader gender-sensitive macroeconomic framework which it is argued is required to challenge the structural barriers of systematic inequalities initially identified in the Royal Commission Report in 1984.

Bio: Isabella Bakker is a Professor of Political Science and Political Economy at York University. She was a research contributor to the Abella Commission Report and has worked extensively with United Nations, UNIFEM, UNDP, the Commonwealth Secretariat and the OECD on gender, macroeconomics and aid effectiveness. Her publications include The Strategic Silence: Gender and Economic Policy (London: Zed Press/The North-South Institute, 1994); Rethinking Restructuring: Gender and Change in Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996); Power, Production and Social Reproduction (London and New York: Macmillan-Palgrave 2003 (with Stephen Gill), and most recently, Beyond States and Markets: the Challenges of Social Reproduction (London and New York: Routledge 2008 (with Rachel Silvey). Co-Sponsor: York University, www.yorku.ca

Stuck in the Mud: Why Canada Can't Deal With Systemic Discrimination Against Women
Shelagh Day

Canadian laws and policies have failed to dismantle systemic discrimination against women in the workforce. Few systemic discrimination cases have been brought forward under human rights legislation, and human rights commissions have not been capable of, or willing to, initiate systemic discrimination complaints, even though they have the legal authority to do so. Action Travail des Femmes v. CN Rail still stands virtually alone as a marker of what human rights laws could do. The Charter, when invoked to protect advances that women have made in the workplace, as in the pay equity case - NAPE v. AG Newfoundland - has shown itself to be an unreliable shield.

Proactive employment equity policies have not been implemented by enough governments and institutions to correct deeply embedded discrimination. This paper will ask why neither law nor policy has been effective. What factors have impeded women’s progress and what steps must Canadian women take now to push forward the project to eliminate systemic discrimination?

Shelagh Day is a human rights advocate and expert. She is the publisher of the Canadian Human Rights Reporter. She was the Director of the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission, and the first President of the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). She is currently a Director of the Poverty and Human Rights Centre in Vancouver.

Searching for equity: A critical look back at the struggle for employment equity
Judy Rebick

As a participant in the struggle for employment equity federally and in Ontario from the perspective of people with disabilities as well as women, Judy Rebick, who was the co-chair of the Alliance for Employment Equity at the time, will critically examine the battle for employment equity throughout the 1980's and the lessons for today.

Bio: Judy Rebick is a well-known social justice activist, educator, writer, and speaker. She currently holds the Sam Gindin Chair in Social Justice and Democracy at Ryerson University. Judy is founder of rabble.ca, Canada’s most popular independent online news and discussion site and the author of several books and articles. Her most recent book due to be published in early March, Transforming Power: From the Personal to the Political examines the rise of a new left in Latin America and its relationship to the rise of movements in North America and Europe. Her previous books include Ten Thousand Roses: The Making of a Feminist Revolution (Penguin 2005); Imagine Democracy (Stoddard 2000) and Politically Speaking (Douglas & McIntyre 1996). Judy was the co-chair of People with Disabilities for Employment Equity and then the Alliance for Employment Equity during the 1980’s. She is perhaps best known to Canadians as a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canada’s largest women’s group. Co-Sponsor: Ryerson University, www.ryerson.ca

Marking the tapestry: Experiences with disability in a time of employment equity
Deborah Stienstra

Reflecting on the anniversary of the Abella report on employment equity for people with disabilities is an opportunity to tell the same stories that have been told for decades. These are stories of women and men with disabilities failing to get into or unable to remain in the workplace because the accommodations required were not considered ‘reasonable’, systemic discrimination based in ableism was rampant and work environments were inaccessible.

The stories we can tell are of incremental change, modest improvement in limited sectors including the federal public service and banks. They are stories of complexity – how women with disabilities continue to be paid less than women in general and men with disabilities; or of how aboriginal people with disabilities or people of colour with disabilities are invisible in these discussions and hidden from our analytic gaze. They include stories of attempts to change public discourse around disability, or how it is possible to hire people with disabilities successfully if you focus on what they contribute rather than on what they can’t do.

The stories we can tell are of men and women who experience systemic oppression or inequity because they experience disability. Yet they are also stories of how experiences of disability change all of us including our understandings of what and where work is and how and who does this work. In this piece we will weave these stories together to illustrate the legacies of Abella’s report for working people in Canada using the patterns of disability to mark the tapestry.

Bio: Deborah Stienstra is Professor in Disability Studies at the University of Manitoba. She is co-editor of Making Equality: History of Advocacy and Persons with Disabilities in Canada and the lead author of Women with Disabilities: Accessing Trade. She held the Royal Bank Research Chair in Disability Studies from 2000-2003 at the Canadian Centre on Disability Studies. She has also published books and articles on women’s movements and international organizations, gender and Canadian foreign policy, the internet and women’s organizing, and prostitution. Co-Sponsor: University of Manitoba, www.umanitoba.ca

Keynote Address on Equity
Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella
Thursday, May 28
12:15 TO 13:20
360 Tory Building

The Equity Issues Reception will follow in the lobby of the Tory Building.

For more information, please contact Malinda S. Smith, Vice president Equity Issues, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, Malinda.smith@ualberta.ca, or Ellen MacIsaac, Research Officer, Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, emacissac@fedcan.ca

Message from Abbie Bakan, REIPP/REPAP coordinator, CPSA Programme Committee, 2009

Dear colleagues,

The new Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics/Race, Ethnicité, Peuples Autochtones et Politique (REIPP/REPAP) section will be holding its inaugural sessions at this year's CPSA conference in Ottawa, May 27-29. The event will open at a welcoming dinner on Tuesday, May 26, at the Sweetgrass Aboriginal Bistro, and will be followed by an exiting series of panels and roundtables.

As the President of the CPSA, Miriam Smith, notes in her report:
"The creation of this new section reflects the richness and diversity of the work that is being done by so many colleagues in this subfield, from a broad range of methodological and theoretical standpoints ranging from indigenist and postcolonial analyses to behavioural studies. The popularity of the new conference section is a testimony to the changing priorities of our discipline and, in particular, of the field of Canadian politics."

Note in particular two trends apparent in the forthcoming sessions: the number of papers examining contemporary forms of colonialism and racism from critical perspectives; and the wide range of papers looking at intersections -- between race, ethnicity and indigeneity as well as other modes of
difference, including gender and class.

Included among the participants are both established scholars in the field and newer emerging scholars.

The panels and roundtables are:

(N) Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics / Race, ethnicité,
peuples autochtones et politique

I look forward to seeing you at the panels.

Abbie Bakan
REIPP/REPAP coordinator, CPSA Programme Committee, 2009

*******

Program (PDF 47KB)

Division N
Race, Ethnicity, Indigenous Peoples and Politics (Abigail Bakan, Chair)

May 27, 9AM:

N1(a): Workshop: 'Race', Racism and Anti-racism as Political Science: Framing and Re-Framing Relationships
Room/Local Southham 520
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Abigail Bakan (Queen's)

Papers/Communications:

  • Kiera Ladner (Manitoba), Decolonizing the Discipline: Respecting Indigenous Knowledge and Using Indigenist Methodologies
  • William Nelson Jr. (Ohio State), Race, Empowerment and Crisis Management: Black Political Leadership and Hurricane Katrina
  • Malinda Smith (Alberta), Thinking Decoloniality and (Anti)Racism in Political Science
  • Debra Thompson (Toronto), Beyond Racial Exceptionalism: Explaining the Convergence of Mixed-Race Census Categorizations in Canada, the US and Great Britain

Discussant/Commentatrice: Davina Bhandar (Trent)

N1(b): Roundtable: Immigration, Diversity and Inclusion: Case Studies from Ontario Cities
Room/Local Southam 403
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Caroline Andrew (Ottawa)

Participants:

  • Parveen Nangia (Laurentian)
  • Victoria Esses (UWO)
  • Rich Janzen (Centre for Community Based Research)
  • Erin Tolley (Queen's)

May 27, 11AM:

N2(a): Workshop: Ethnicity and Multiculturalism: Politics, Policy and the State
Room/Local Southam 520
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Abigail Bakan (Queen's)

Papers/Communications:

  • Yasmeen Abu-Laban (Alberta), Multiculturalism, the State and Political Science
  • Davina Bhandar (Trent), Reframing the Multicultural: A Call from Below
  • Rita Dhamoon (UC Fraser Valley), Multiculturalism, Security and the Regulation of Difference
  • Katherine Smits (Auckland), Negotiating Cultural Claims: Ethnic and Indigenous Multiculturalism and the Discourses of National Identity

Discussant/Commentateur: Richard Johnston (Pennsylvania)

N2(b): Framing Diversity and Rights
Room/Local Southam 403
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Chair/Président: Paul Kellogg (Trent)

Papers/Communications:

  • Ethel Tungohan (Toronto), 'We Should Matter Too': A Critical Race Analysis of Temporary Labour Migrants' Political Belonging in Canada
  • Delores Mullings (WLU), Shaping a Just Society: Recreating Racism Using Canadian Human Rights Policies
  • Caroline Dick (UWO), Intimate Homicide and the Law of Provocation: Cultural Defences and Meaningful Rights of Exit
  • Jessica Merolli (McMaster), Beyond Words: Adult ESL Education and Social Integration

Discussant/Commentatrice: Lois Harder (Alberta)

May 27, 1:45 pm

N3(a): Workshop: Indigenous Peoples: Governance, Commissions and Omissions
Room/Local Southam 520
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Abigail Bakan (Queen's)

Papers/Communications:

  • Kiera Ladner (Manitoba), (RE)creating Good Governance: Renewing Indigenous Peoples and Political Science
  • Cathy Howlett (Griffith), Indigenous Agency and Mineral Development: A Cautionary Note

Discussant/Commentatrice: Joyce Green (Regina)

N3(b): Citizenship Inclusion and Exclusion
Room/Local Southam 403
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Chair/Président: Daniel Salée (Concordia)

Papers/Communications:

  • Lois Harder (Alberta), National Belonging and the Lost Canadians
  • Dan Freeman-Maloy (York), Decolonization and the United Israel Appeal Federations Canada (UIAFC): Addressing the Basic Tension
  • Susan Haslip (Ottawa) and Victoria Edwards (Department of National Defence), Theory, Policy and Power: Towards Meaningful Recognition and Protection of Aboriginal Cultural Expression

Discussant/Commentatrice: Nadine Changfoot (Trent)

May 27, 3:45PM:

N4: Workshop: Roundtable: Anti-racism and Transformation: Accommodation, Apology and Reparation in Policy and Practice
Room/Local Southam 520
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Abigail Bakan (Queen's)

Participants:

  • Kathy Brock (Queen's)
  • Daniel Salée (Concordia)
  • Mohamed Elmasry (Waterloo)
  • Audrey Kobayashi (Queen's)
  • Paul Kershaw (UBC)

May 28, 9AM:

N6(a): Development and Aboriginal Policy: Diverse Views
Room/Local Southam 406
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Président: Peter Russell (Toronto)

Papers/Communications:

  • Frances Widdowson (Mount Royal) and Albert Howard (Independent Researcher), Development, Postmodernism and Aboriginal Policy: What Are We Afraid Of?
  • Sandra Tomsons (Winnipeg), Aboriginal Rights and Eurocentric Epistemic Hierarchies

Discussants/Commentateurs: Alan Cairns (Waterloo) and Daniel Salée (Concordia)

N6(b): Multilevel Governance and Policy: Impacts on Immigration
Room/Local Southam 502
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Donna Patrick (Carleton)

Papers/Communications:

  • Alexandra Dobrowolsky (Saint Mary's), The Intended and Unintended Effects of a New Immigration Strategy: Insights from Nova Scotia's Provincial Nominee Programme
  • Livianna Tossutti (Brock), Canadian Cities and International Migration: Comparing Local Responses to Diversity
  • Davina Bhandar (Trent) and Michael Ma (McMaster), Municipal Responses to Immigration, Integration and Inclusion: Peterborough, Ontario
  • Karen Bird (McMaster) and Jessica Merolli (McMaster), Municipal Responses to Immigration, Integration and Inclusion: Hamilton, Ontario

Discussant/Commentatrice: Shauna Wilton (Alberta)

N6(c): Nations and Nationalism: Ethnic, Civic and Spatial Identities
Room/Local Southam 415
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Chair/Président: Tim Nieguth (Laurentian)

Papers/Communications:

  • Marie-Eve Desrosiers (Ottawa), Ethno-Nationalism as Good Civic Citizenship: Rwanda, 1959-1990s
  • John Cappucci (Carleton), The Pernicious Path: The Reactionary Nature of Nationalism and the Birth of the Sikh Movement in India
  • Liam Stockdale (McMaster), Discourses of Conflict: Identity, Victimhood and Sovereignty in Kosovo
  • Magdalena Dembinska (McGill), Citizenship and Cultural Diversity: Building Trust, Developing Solidarity and Sharing Power

Discussant/Commentatrice: Allison McCulloch (Queen's)

May 28, 11AM:

N7(a): Land Claims and Law
Room/Local Southam 406
A/v: overhead projector/rétroprojecteur / powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Alexandra Dobrowolsky (Saint Mary's)

Papers/Communications:

  • Christa Scholtz (McGill), Indigenous Claimant Cohesion in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand
  • Michael McCrossan (Carleton), Legal Knowledge, Aboriginal Rights and the Demarcation of Territorial and Social Space
  • Mai Nguyen (York), Land Claims The Path Towards Reconciliation: A Look at the Inuvialuit Final Agreement in Canada and the Ngai Tahu Settlement in New Zealand

Discussant/Commentatrice: Caroline Dick (UWO)

N7(b): Ethnicity and Political Behaviour
Room/Local Southam 502
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Président: Keith Banting (Queen's)

Papers/Communications:

  • Chris Adams (Winnipeg), Loleen Berdahl (Saskatchewan) and Greg Poelzer (Saskatchewan), On-Reserve Provincial Voting in Manitoba
  • Allison Harell (Queen's), Minority-Majority Relations in Canada: Positive and Negative Contact and Its Consequences for Canadian Democracy
  • Sherry Yu (SFU) and Daniel Ahadi (SFU), Tracing Politics: Canadian 2008 Federal Election in Ethnic Media

Discussant/Commentatrice: Elizabeth Goodyear-Grant (Queen's)

N7(c): Results and Prospects in an Age of Obama: Reflections on Class, Race and Gender (Joint session with the Political Economy Sections)
Room/Local Southam 415
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Chair/Président: Serge Denis (Ottawa)

Participants:

  • Leo Panitch (York)
  • Eunice Sahle (North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
  • Abigail Bakan (Queen's)
  • William Nelson Jr. (Ohio State)
  • Malinda Smith (Alberta)

May 29, 9AM:

N10(a): Gender, Race and Class: Intersections and Critiques
Room/Local Southam 406
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Président: Michael Ma (Independent Researcher)

Papers/Communications:

  • Margaret Little (Queen's), Do-gooder White Feminism's Flaws: The Challenges of White Feminists Training Low-income Aboriginal Women
  • Jennifer Musial (York), Creating a 'Culture of Life': Reproductive Justice, White Fetal Citizenship, and the Colonial American Nation
  • Nisha Nath (Alberta), Mapping Theories and Methodologies: Rediscovering the Potential of Feminist Theories of Intersectionality
  • Joanna Sweet (Carleton), A Matter of Choice?: How the Construction of Muslim Women's Identity Shaped Ontario's Faith-based Arbitration Debates

Discussant/Commentatrice: Carla Lam (Otago)

N10(b): Indigenous Rights: Framing Self-Government
Room/Local Southam 415
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Allison Harell (Queen's)

Papers/Communications:

  • Chris Alcantara (WLU) and Greg Whitfield (Independent Researcher), Aboriginal Constitutions in Canada
  • Louis Howe (West Georgia), Positive Power, Network Governance, and Canadian Aboriginal Administrative Law
  • Janique Dubois (Toronto), The Boundaries of Self-Government: Learning from the Saskatchewan Experience
  • Gabrielle Slowey (York), Aboriginal Self-determination and Resource Development Activity: Improving Human Security in the Canadian Arctic

Discussant/Commentateur: Martin Papillon (Ottawa)

May 29, 11AM :

N11(a): Indigenous Cultures and Cultural Contexts
Room/Local Southam 406
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Eunice Sahle (North Carolina at Chapel Hill)

Papers/Communications:

  • Laura Reidel (WLU), A New Conceptualization of Cultural Rights: The Link Between Culture and Individual Autonomy
  • Joanne Heritz (McMaster), The Failure of Cultural Recognition for the Urban Transition of Aboriginal Peoples in Canada and Travelers in the Republic of Ireland
  • Burke Hendrix (Cornell), Time, Culture, and Social Change: What Future (If Any) For Indigenous Tradition?

Discussant/Commentateur: Dimitrios Panagos (RMC)

N11(b): Apartheid in Comparative Perspective
Room/Local Southam 415
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Président: Colin Mooers (Ryerson)

Papers/Communications:

  • Abigail Bakan (Queen's) and Yasmeen Abu-Laban (Alberta), 'Apartheid' Compared?: South Africa and Israel/Palestine
  • Grace-Edward Galabuzi (Ryerson), Understanding Economic Apartheid in the Canadian Context: The Colour of Early 21st Capitalism

Discussant/Commentateur: David MacDonald (Queen's)

May 29, 1:45PM:

N12(a): Theory and Strategy: Colonialism, Racism and Accomodation
Room/Local Southam 406
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Présidente: Gopika Solanki (Carleton)

Papers/Communications:

  • Daniel Salée (Concordia), Myths and Limits of Interculturalism: For a Critique of the Liberal Humanist Vision of Ethnocultural Diversity Management
  • Jason Michelakos (York), The Caribbean Plantation: Panoptic Slavery and Disciplinary Power

Discussant/Commentatrice: Christina Gabriel (Carleton)

N12(b): Indigenous Rights: Autonomy and Engagement
Room/Local Southam 415
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Papers/Communications:

  • Yale Belanger (Lethbridge), Gambling on First Nations Participation: An Overview of SEIGA and Barriers to First Nations Engagement
  • Pahi Saikia (McGill), Contesting Divested Territories: Tribal Land Alienation and the Evidence for Violent Mobilization
  • John Douglas Crookshanks (Alberta), Gender and Aboriginal Governance in Edmonton and Winnipeg's Housing Sectors

Discussant/Commentatrice: Margaret Little (Queen's)

May 29, 3:45PM:

N13(a): Critical Views on Truth and Reconciliation: the Politics of Residential Schools
Room/Local Southam 406
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Président: Scott Matthews (Queen's)

Papers/Communications:

  • Paul Baxter (York), Post-colonial Politics, Truth and Reconciliation, and the Criminal Liability of the State
  • Nadine Changfoot (Trent), Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission: Whose Truth? Whose Reconciliation?
  • Matt James (Victoria), Uncomfortable Comparisons: The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission in International Context

Discussant/Commentateur: Claude Denis (Ottawa)

N13(b): National Minorities and Nationalizing States: A Comparative Perspective
Room/Local Southam 415
A/v: powerpoint data projector/rétroprojecteur pour ordinateur

Chair/Président: Jean-Michel De Waele (Libre de Bruxelles)

Papers/Communications:

  • Sharon Weinblum (Libre de Bruxelles), Minorities' Political Mobilization in a Nationalizing State: the Case of the Arab Minority in Israel
  • Julien Danero (Libre de Bruxelles), National Minorities in Moldova: Legality and Reality
  • Magdalena Dembinska (McGill), Identity and Instrumentality: East European Minorities' Strategic Adjustments

Discussant/Commentateur: Jean-Michel De Waele (Libre de Bruxelles)

N13(c): Indigenous Women, Rights and Globalization: A Panel of Indigenous Women Scholars
Room/Local Southam 318