Posts tagged:#Indigenous

Why We Must Decolonise the Environment

Written by Jonas Jungwoo Lim

Edited by Jess Hannah

Illustration by C.L. Gamble

Ecology in the DMZ

Growing up in the borderlands of South Korea, I was trained by ecologists before I came to be trained by historians at university. In my town of Paju—which is closer to the border than to the capital—I had the privilege of being able to spend time acquainting myself with the ecology of the streams, the vegetation, and the rice fields nearby. This was the case even, at times, in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that separates North Korea and South Korea.

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By the Book: The Importance of Reading Library Classification Systems

Written by Dr. Bridget Moynihan

Edited by Temi Lasade-Anderson

Illustration by Heather Savage

On a university or college campus, the library is used by every department and school. The library encompasses inter- and transdisciplinary resources, functioning as a place where collections of knowledge are stored and made available to use. While the above is true, these facts create an image of the library as neutral territory — a place where meaning passively resides —  rather than as a site of active meaning-making. To accept this image without critique, however, would be to overlook both the importance and the problems of libraries. 

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INTERVIEW with LUCAS LAROCHELLE, founder of QUEERING THE MAP

Interview by Toby Sharpe

Editing by Abigail Eardley and Toby Sharpe

Could you start by explaining what Queering the Map does – and why you think it’s important?

Queering the Map is a community-generated mapping project, which geo-locates queer memories, histories, and experiences in relation to physical space using an online platform. Part of the idea is to open up the question of what constitutes queer space, or even more basically, what constitutes queerness. So, it’s a very open call in terms of submissions: whatever counts for the person submitting counts to the project and the process of queering space.

In the context of queer theory, there’s value in trying to unsettle what queer identity means. Queering the Map offers the opportunity for people to define what queerness means for them on their own terms, adding nuance to this term which can be endlessly changed and expanded – moving beyond a singular understanding of queerness, towards a collective understanding.

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Carpentaria by Alexis Wright

Curricular Dissonance:
Teaching English Literature as a Postcolonialist, or, the Power of Voice

Dr. Justine Seran

Edited by Maria Elena Torres-Quevedo

Art by Iara Silva https://www.instagram.com/iiaraz_/

I taught pre-honours literature at the University of Edinburgh for three years, and it never ceased to frustrate me, as a researcher specialised in contemporary literature, postcolonial criticism, and women’s studies, to expose future generations to the very curriculum centred on dead white men that I strove to escape by focusing my research on exploring (and celebrating) the work of living women of colour. Critiquing an antiquated curriculum and suggesting a wider breadth of reading to students during tutorials is one thing, but embedding diversity on the level of course design and organisation is another.

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Dennis Saddleman’s “Monster” and Erasure of Voices

Leslie Anne St. Amour
Editing by Rianna Walcott

Art: ‘Winter’ by Ernest Lawson

The first time I heard Dennis Saddleman’s poem Monster, I cried. The recording of Saddleman’s voice describes the trauma of his childhood as a ‘monster’, something all children fear, but his man-made by a government that should have protected him. It was an unexpected feature at volunteer training, which was designed to teach about current realities of oppression in Indigenous communities and the historical legacies that are to blame. It’s important to note that for many of these volunteers, including those who had attended Canadian educational institutions for their entire lives, this was the first time they were exposed to these realities.

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Confronting Uncomfortable Pasts: Towards An Intersectional Approach to Women and Film

Katie Mackinnon
Editing by Daisy Silver

Screenshot from film: ‘Elle-Maija Tailfeathers’

In my third year studying at McGill University, I took a course on French feminist filmmakers that changed the way I thought about the role of women in art. Once a week, in a darkened room of an old house on Peel Street, we would sit together and watch the films of Agnès Varda, Claire Denis, and Catherine Breillat in awe. These were films I had never heard of before, like Agnès Varda’s Cléo de 5 à 7 (1962), or Claire Denis’ Beau Travail (1999), and it was during these moments of stunned silence, when all my senses were attuned to the projected screen, that I developed a deeper understanding of the history of female writers and directors. We talk a lot about “gaze” in film and media studies, and it was through studying these films that I was first naïvely introduced to the fight to achieve the female gaze in cinema. Cléo de 5 à 7 is a masterpiece for many reasons, but what struck me most was watching a female protagonist engage with her own reflection, and to have the film acknowledge her own gaze as a important means of autonomy and communication.

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