 The program relies on collaboration
with the Interfaith Community
Consultative Committee, which has
members from Indigenous, Muslim,
Christian, Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, and Buddhist traditions. Members of the committee have contributed at different levels.
Here is more information about each of us, our work, and the perspectives we bring to this project.
WORKING COMMITTEE
DENISE NADEAU
Interim Director of the Interfaith Summer Institute Denise Nadeau BA (University of British Colombia); MLitt (St. Antony's College, Oxford); MDiv (Vancouver School of Theology); DMin (San Francisco Theological Seminary) is the Interim Director of the Interfaith Summer Institute for Justice, Peace, and Social Movements. She is a scholar–activist who works as a practical theologian, movement therapist, and popular educator. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Religion and a Research Associate at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University and is a member of CETECQ, the Centre de theologie et d'ethique contextuelles, at the University of Montreal . She has taught courses in Community Organizing and Women, Religion and Colonialism in North America at Concordia University, and has taught as an adjunct at Toronto School of Theology, UBC School of Social Work and Vancouver School of Theology. A Christian of Catholic heritage, she has worked in both ecumenical and interfaith contexts for many years, and, in particular, in the area of Native—Non-Native relationships.
Much of Denise's recent work has been in the development of programs which combine expressive art therapies and spiritual practices in the repair of social suffering caused by sexist, racist, heterosexist, colonial and war violence. She has worked extensively in the area of violence against women, co-developing programs for Aboriginal women and refugee and immigrant women of colour, as well as in the area of human rights education, developing anti-racism and human rights programs for Canada 's largest public sector union. She is a co-founder of the Vancouver Non-Violence Direct Action Collective and has developed and taught Embodied Non-Violence in Vancouver, Montreal, and Toronto. Her publications include Counting Our Victories: Popular Education and Organizing and numerous articles on non-violence, decolonization and deconstructing whiteness in Christian practice. Her current research interests include the role of community performance and ritual in repairing social suffering, and a theology of gift as a basis for reparations to Native peoples in Canada.
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ELEANOR J. (ELLIE) STEBNER
J.S. Woodsworth Chair in the Humanities and Associate Professor in the Humanities
Ellie Stebner (BA, University of Alberta; Master of Divinity, Moravian Theological Seminary; MA, Marquette University; and PhD, Northwestern University) provides the institutional link for the Interfaith Summer Institute. Ordained in 1984 as a minister in the Moravian Church (a Christian Protestant denomination with roots to Nicholas von Zinzendorf in the 18th century and Jan Hus in the 15th century), she is an educator-scholar who has been active in various anti-racism, anti-sexism, and anti-poverty movements through the past 20 plus years. She writes and researches on women's history and religious movements for social change. Prior to coming to SFU in 2005, she was a professor of history and theology at the University of Winnipeg and the Chicago Theological Seminary, and served as a congregational minister in Moravian and Presbyterian denominations. Her concern is linking the academia with movements for social change. For further information refer to: http://www.sfu.ca/humanities/home.htm
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NELSON AGUSTIN
Nelson Agustin is a Filipino photographer, graphic designer, writer and publisher who graduated with honours from the University of the Philippines College of Fine Arts, and enjoyed an extensive and prolific career in advertising, publishing, and web development. His poetry, short stories personal essays and photographs appeared in various Philippine publications and online conferences. He publishes his photographic work through his own Vancouver-based publishing company called Helios Media.
He is the webmaster of the Interfaith Institute for Justice, Peace and Social Movements website.
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DAVID AMOR
David is co-chair of the Journalism Program at Knox College, in Galesburg, Illinois, where he is also Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations. He has degrees in history from the University of British Columbia (BA) and Stanford University (MA) and in journalism (MA) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A resident of Galesburg for the past thirty years, he has been an active participant and/or board member in local social justice organizations (Knox County Peace & Justice Coalition, Galesburg Coalition for Equal Rights) and the Galesburg Jewish community (Temple Sholom). In recent years, he and his colleagues have been focused on building an undergraduate journalism program that exemplifies the progressive spirit of the founder of "muckraking" journalism, S. S. McClure, Knox College Class of 1882.
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USAMAH ANSARI
Usamah Ansari is a graduate student in Sociology at York University in
Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was the Administrative Coordinator for the
Interfaith Summer Institute for Justice, Peace and Social
Movements 2007 program. He has organized with different South Asian
and youth-focused groups in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia and
was on the Steering Committee for the National Action Committee
Against Racism. His central research interest revolves around how
Muslim subjectivity is performed and enacted in the context of South
Asia. Other research interests include Urdu speech acts and how Urdu
poetry produces particular orientations to the body. He has published
articles in "South Asia: A Journal of South Asian Studies" and "Critical
Studies in Media and Communication."
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TASHA BASSINGTHWAIGHTE
Tasha has been a student of Buddhism for about fifteen years, practicing with the Unified Buddhist Church in the tradition of Vietnamese Zen teacher Thich Nhat Hanh. She has actively worked with refugees both in Canada and in the UK for seven years, and has recently coordinated a housing project for refugee claimants that successfully started its first settlement house in the Lower Mainland. She has experience, studied and been involved in non-violent activism, intentional communities and voluntary simplicity movements. She is currently in the "Path of Engagement," a two-year Buddhist Peace Fellowship program connecting Buddhism and social activism and based out of San Francisco. Tasha is also now coordinating a program with refugee and immigrant youth doing Popular Theatre, and lives in East Vancouver in a community house with her husband and young daughter.
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SHARILYN CALLIOU
Sharilyn Calliou, PhD is a self-employed writer, artist, instructor, and researcher living in Vancouver , BC . Her interest in peace is lifelong and includes related publications, such as "Peacekeeping actions at home: A medicine wheel model for a peacekeeping pedagogy," pp. 47-72 in J. Barman & M. Battiste, eds. First Nations education in Canada : The circle unfolds (Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada: UBC Press, 1995) and "Us/Them, Me/You: Who? (Re)Thinking the Binary of First Nations and Non-First Nations," Canadian Journal of Native Education , Vol22, No 1 (1998) 28-52. Her work in education began in 1974 as a teachers' aide with Edmonton Public School Board and she continues to be a lifelong teacher and learner.
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DOROTHY CHRISTIAN
Dorothy is a writer, a video artist, and a producer/director of documentaries. She is of the Okanagan-Secwepemc Nations of the interior of British Columbia. Dorothy is a member of the Splats'in Indian Band, one of 17 Secwepemc communities. Ms. Christian has written over 75 mini-documentaries for the only multi-faith broadcaster in the world. Dorothy produced for VISION TV's SKYLIGHT newsmagazine program for 8 seasons. And with her freelance work, Dorothy added over 25 productions to her experience by directing series television (Art Zone Children's program, the Creative Native) and produced for APTN National News (Feb 14th Memorial Walk for Missing & Murdered women) & CTV's First Story (with Rebecca Belmore, Anishnawbe performance artist). In 2005, Dorothy produced a corporate video for the Minerva Foundation for BC Women on Native Women & Leadership. Her works have screened at film festivals, traveled with major exhibitions regionally, nationally and internationally.
Many of Dorothy's works have a social activist bent; she has tackled some hard issues which include “Native, non-Native” relations in Canada . One of her pieces was included in the hour which brought a Gemini to the SKYLIGHT Team at VISION TV in 2000 which covered precisely that topic. She filmed a dinner party of Native and non-Native women activists where hard questions were asked; e.g. “What do you think of this enormous guilt that white Canadians feel about us?” Her interest in peaceful coexistence comes out of her experiences at the so-called OKA Crisis (1990) and the Gustafsen Lake standoff (1995). For 16 years Dorothy has been consciously examining what it would take to have “peaceful coexistence” within herself, in her community and in the country. That exploration has led her to international screenings of her work in Switzerland in 2003 and in Kenya and Uganda, Africa in 2005. Dorothy has just completed her first independent film, ‘a spiritual land claim' (one woman's healing journey) which is on the film festival circuit.
Ms. Christian's undergraduate work was at the University of Toronto where she worked on a double major in Political Science and Religious Studies. Dorothy is currently attending full time graduate studies in the Communications Department at Simon Fraser University.
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DA CHOONG
Da Choong was born and brought up in Malaysia. She received a colonial Christian education but was raised more or less agnostic at home. Her political and personal development was mostly shaped by her involvement in various political movements in England (feminism, anti-racism, anti-war, lesbian and gay rights) where she lived for several decades. Buddhism has been her spiritual practice for 16 years. She is also a certified meditation instructor within the Shambala lineage.
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ANGELA CONTRERAS-CHÁVEZ
Angela Contreras-Chávez has done extensive work in academic, non-governmental, governmental, and religious contexts in projects committed to peace, religious freedom, the elimination of poverty, and the promotion of justice and human rights. Between 1987 and 1993 in Guatemala she worked at numerous applied anthropology projects linked to promoting respect to the dignity of the Maya and understanding their cosmovision and history. She was a research assistant to Dr. Myrna Mack, with Guatemala’s Association for the Advancement of Social Sciences, during her research on forced migration and political violence. In 1992 Angela and a small group of colleagues co-founded the Forensic Anthropology Team of Guatemala, which provided independently collected evidence on human rights abuses perpetrated against civilians during the country’s counterinsurgency war. Upon earning her B.A. in cultural anthropology from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, Angela went to work at the Apostolic Vicariate of El Petén-Guatemala monitoring human rights of the Maya-Kekchi internally displaced by the war.
In Canada, Angela earned her Maîtrise en Sciences de la Mission from Université Saint-paul and Université d’Ottawa. Her thesis documented and analyzed the contributions of the Catholic Church to the truth, justice and reconciliation processes in Guatemala especially among the Maya. She moved to Vancouver, in 1997 to pursue her Ph.D. in Criminology at Simon Fraser University. Angela’s doctoral dissertation analyzed the influence of the Mayan cosmovision on the victims’ rights movement and the fight against impunity in Guatemala’s criminal justice system. Angela has also studied human rights, peacekeeping, victims’ rights and international justice at the Pearson Peace Centre in Halifax, at the Institute of Human Rights at University of Galway, and at the International Institute of International Crime Investigators in The Hague.In 2006 Angela founded VeraPax, a collective of women located in the Americas, Asia and Africa that provides investigation and analysis, program evaluation, and project management services to socially conscious organizations and individuals working locally or globally.
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LAUREL DYKSTRA BSc Biology, Minor in Women's Studies, University of Victoria, 1992; MA Feminist Liberation Theology, Specialization Bible, Episcopal Divinity School, 1997. Publications: Set Them Free: The Other Side of Exodus (Orbis 2002), a reading of Exodus which draws parallels between first world North America and the empire of Pharaoh; and Uncle Aiden (Baby Bloc, 2005), an anti-racist, Queer-positive picture book. Laurel is co-founder of Mad River Puppets, a puppet and mask theatre group which performs and teaches political street theatre and public spectacle and of Baby Bloc, a network for activist families including website, zine, workshops and micro-publishing house. She has been a Catholic Worker doing hospitality, street outreach and activism in issues of Latin American solidarity, anti-war, and urban poverty, 1992-2002. She is an educator. She teaches and writes on subjects including Scripture Study, Faith and Activism, Art and Social Change, Non-Violent Direct Action, Queer Inclusion, Gender and Children, Women in the Abrahamic Scriptures.
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ANITA FAST Anita is part of the Mennonite tradition and is employed as Registrar at the Vancouver School of Theology. After completing a Master of Theological Studies degree in 1999, she volunteered for three years with Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), engaging in human rights documentation, non-violent intervention, and social justice work in North America and Palestine/Israel. She is active on the Board of the Brethren/Mennonite Council for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Interests, and is working on a Master of Theology focusing on the dynamics of, and problems with, current attempts at "loving" dialogue on lgbt issues in the Mennonite Church.
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LORENA JARA
Lorena belongs to the Chilean diaspora that spread throughout the world after September 11, 1973 –the 9/11 of the Other. Having been brought up in Chile during the 1960s and early 70s and having lived in Central America in the late 80s, Lorena is spiritually connected to Liberation Theology and the syncretic religious tradition inherited from the marginalized community she grew up in (street and market vendors from the beehive known as barrio Estacion Central in Santiago). She completed a double major in Communication and Latin American Studies at Simon Fraser University as a mature student and is at present finishing her M.A. in Communication at SFU.
As 12-year old she was already a student organizer following the steps of her mother, grand-mother and great-grand mother, all of whom were community leaders from an early age. Lorena became a grass-roots leader of the BC's solidarity movement for peace and the defense of human rights in Chile and El Salvador during the 1980s. In the1990s she became a student organizer at SFU representing the interests first of undergraduate and later of graduate students. During 13 years she was a producer for America Latina al Dia radio broadcast at CFRO-102.7 FM, Vancouver Cooperative Radio.
While working for a living in BC, Lorena acquired extensive experience in program and personnel management with a concentration in policy development and analysis for the public and non-profit sectors. She was the translator for Nettie Wilde's documentary A Place Called Chiapas and for Mark Achbar's et al.'s The Corporation . At present, Lorena is the Provincial Team Manager for Adoptive Families Association of B.C. and works as a consultant in trans-language/cultural communication in the public sphere. Besides being a member of the Interfaith Summer Institute Working Committee Lorena has recently joined the Board of Directors of Headlines Theatre.
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MAXINE KAUFMAN-LACUSTA
Maxine Kaufman-Lacusta, BSc (Brock University), MSc (University of Toronto) is a Quaker-Jewish activist, Hebrew-English translator, editor, writer, and occasional nonviolence trainer. She lived in Jerusalem for seven years (1988-95), during which time she participated in a number of anti-occupation organizations, with a particular interest in the practice and promotion of active nonviolence and joint Israeli-Palestinian endeavours. She has written a number of articles on nonviolence in the Israeli-Palestinian context, as well as a compilation of anecdotes of active nonviolence by Israeli and mixed Israeli-Palestinian groups (Creative Resistance). She is a member of the Vancouver Non-Violent Direct Action Collective, and is currently completing an interview-based book on Palestinian nonviolent resistance to the Israeli occupation and Israeli support for and participation in this form of activism.
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MADELEINE MACIVOR
Madeleine is Associate Director of First Nations House of Learning, University of British Columbia. She has worked for the University of British Columbia since 1989 as Coordinator of Student Services for First Nations House of Learning, First Nations Coordinator for the Faculty of Forestry, and now as Associate Director for First Nations House of Learning. Madeleine is a graduate of the Native Indian Teacher Education Program (BEd, Elementary) and Ts'`kel Graduate Studies (MA, Science Education). She has a strong background in student services and a deep commitment to ensuring that Aboriginal people have access to quality post-secondary education opportunities that meet their needs and aspirations. Madeleine is currently working on her doctoral research which looks at the development of Aboriginal post-secondary education policy in British Columbia.
Madeleine is a Métis woman whose family comes from the historic Métis community of Lac Ste Anne in northern Alberta. She is the mother of three adult children and 11 grandchildren. Ceremonial practices are an important part of her life.
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KATHRYN POETHIG Ph.D. Religion and Society, Graduate Theological Union; M.Div. Union Theological Seminary; B.A. Anthropology, University of Chicago
Dr. Poethig has lived and worked in Southeast Asia for over twenty years. She is currently Associate Professor of Global Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay. Her area expertise includes global gender issues, particularly feminism and militarism, religious social ethics, and religion, violence, and peacemaking. Dr. Poethig supervised education for Southeast Asian refugees in the US and Asia for 15 years. Her work focuses on progressive religious citizenship in Southeast Asia, particularly in areas of complex conflict and peacemaking. She has written on the Dhammayietra, the annual peace walk in Cambodia as transnational example of engaged Buddhism. More recently, she has focused on Filipino feminist theologians' frameworks for "just peace" for both Communist and Muslim insurgencies in light of the US war on terrorism. She is currently writing about religious frames for sanctuary as extraterritorial space against the state.
Dr. Poethig is on the Working Committee of the People's Forum on Peace for Life, a Global South-based interfaith initiative resisting militarized globalization and creating life-enhancing alternatives. She has also served on the Board of Center for Women and Religion and has led delegations investigating the intersection of religion and politics to Cambodia/Vietnam, to China for the NGO Forum of the 4th U.N. Conference on Women, and to the Philippines.
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ANNIE ROSS
annie ross is Assistant Professor in First Nations Studies and the School
for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University. She is a visual artist
and writer, and has exhibited her paintings, prints, fabric art, and
photography in the United States and also in the Middle East. Her research
interests include Indigenous environmental logic, social justice,
environmental justice, grass-roots movements, and the self and community in
homeland, as expressed visually, through oral narrative, and in written
form.
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ANDRÉA SCHMIDT Andréa is an independent journalist, researcher, and activist based in Toronto. She has written dispatches on occupation and conflict from Haiti and Iraq and has organized around housing rights and migration justice issues in Montreal. Her articles have been published in a range of online and print forums, from The Guardian Weekend Magazine to Counterpunch, and an anthology, Autonomous Media: Activating Resistance and Dissent (2005). She is currently working on a book about international solidarity. She administers the Religions, Justice, Peace and Social Movements website.
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PRITI SHAH Priti Shah, MBA, MBA, is a self employed, community-based activist, social justice advocate, and anti-racism trainer/facilitator. Since 1988, she has been actively lobbying and advocating on behalf of immigrant women and professionals, for equal employment status and recognition of international credentials in Canada . She has participated on both provincial and national committees and collaboratively worked with government and community agencies to design policies in support of this goal. Additionally, she has been involved in community based research and training projects, led public forums and talks, written articles and conducted workshops. She is currently a board member for Capacity BC, a registered non profit society of internationally trained professionals.
Priti also has many years of experience working with Unions, primarily with Hospital Employees Union and its members who were privatised in the health sectors. Working hand in hand with the Unions and the Federal Government, she provided training and employment support to members in marginalised situations. Currently, she is the Coordinator for a pilot project involving internationally trained Nurses. As well as working on the Living Wage campaign for HEU. Priti also co-designed the curriculum for “Our Voices” Conference - the first National Human Rights Conference for CUPE held in Vancouver in 2006.
In 2005, she co-founded Pratham BC Foundation, a non-profit charitable organization whose mission is to eradicate poverty by empowering the marginalised in society, particularly children, through the provision of basic education. As large number of these children are being used as child labour. Her work involves creating awareness around literacy issues affecting underprivileged children in India and garnering financial support to fund specially designed literacy programs for these children so that no child is left behind without an education. Raised as a Hindu, Priti finds it only natural to embrace all religions as facets of the One Truth and her spiritual, social and civic consciousness transcends all barriers. She feels deeply connected to every human being and it is this connection that spurs her on towards her life's purpose of creating a just and equitable society.
Priti is also an active member of the Sri Sathya Sai Organisation – a multi-faith service organisation dedicated to Spiritual advancement of Seekers of Truth, promotion of Universal Spirituality & Human Values. Priti's involvement with this organisation began in 2004 when she saw a clear parallel between its fundamental belief in the inherent goodness and divinity of mankind and her own core beliefs and philosophy in life. Since then, she has been actively involved in the running of Sri Sathya Sai Center of Coquitlam, B.C., where she held several key coordinator positions. Currently, Priti is a Spiritual Education teacher at the Center. She facilitates the spiritual growth of children (ages 5 through 16) through a unique model of education that promotes Character building and the practice of the 5 basic Human Values ie Love, Peace, Truth, Right Conduct and Non-Violence.
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JAGDEEP SINGH MANGAT Jagdeep Singh Mangat is a Vancouver-based community activist, social justice organizer, and writer. Drawing upon insights gained through his own experiences on the streets, over the past several years Mr. Mangat has shifted his community service work toward addressing issues of alienation and violence amongst youth today. He is currently focusing his efforts on combating youth violence within the South Asian Diaspora, bringing contextual understanding to the issues, and empowering youth through promoting critical and active social engagement. Most recently, Jagdeep has worked as a Community Support Worker with the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA) and was currently works as a Support Facilitator with the Surrey Urban Youth Project. He spends his spare time studying political-economy and engaged in anti-war and anti-racism campaigns.
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ITRATH SYED Itrath Syed has recently completed a Masters degree in Women's Studies at the Centre for Women's and Gender Studies at the University of British Columbia. Her MA work explored the gendered and racialized construction of the Muslim community in the media discourse surrounding the Islamic Arbitration or “Shariah” debate in Ontario. In 2007, Itrath will be teaching “Contemporary Debates in Muslim Women's Feminisms” in the department of Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University .
In 1995, she completed her BA from Simon Fraser University with a major in Middle East History and minors in Political Science and Women's Studies. During the years between her undergraduate and graduate degrees, Itrath worked in the field of anti-violence work. She started out at a Rape Crisis Centre and then worked at Transition Houses for battered women and their children. Itrath is a social justice activist involved with the local antiwar movement, in anti-occupation solidarity work, and in resisting the erosion of civil rights and the racial profiling of the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian communities in Canada . In the 2004 federal election, Itrath ran as a candidate for the New Democratic Party in her home riding of Delta-Richmond East, British Columbia . Itrath has been interviewed for several documentaries and is a frequent presenter on a wide array of political and social issues.
Itrath is a Muslim and her social justice activism comes from her belief that working towards a more just and equitable society is an integral part of living a life in engagement with the Divine.
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ALANNAH EARL YOUNG Alannah is from the Opaswayak Cree Nations in Manitoba. She is an Anisnabe Ikway from Peguis Nation, a counselor and trainer with University of British Columbia 's First Nations House of Learning in Vancouver. She has a MA in Educational Studies based on her current research, and is in working with Elders to develop Indigenous Knowledge principles and values for Indigenous leadership development. Alannah's ongoing work has been developing and delivering wholistic programming that combines non-violence principles, embodied pedagogy, and social justice approaches with reaffirming Indigenous Leadership and Sovereignty. Alannah's publications include: "Longhouse student leadership program: The honour of one is the honour of all," First Nations House of Learning Newsletter. vol. 9:1 (2003), UBC; Young, Alannah, E. and Nadeau, Denise, M. "Decolonizing Bodies," in Indigenous Women: The State of Our Nations, Atlantis: A Women's Studies Journal/Revue d'etudes sur les femmes , 29.2, Spring (2005); Young, Alannah, E. and Mac Ivor Madeleine, Longhouse Leadership Learnings (Canadian Association of College & University Student Services: CACUSS Comminque. Kingston, ON , 2005); and Young, Alannah, E. and Nadeau, Denise, M.,"Educating bodies for self determination: A decolonizing strategy," Canadian Native Journal of Education , UBC, Volume 29:1, 2006.
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MARIE ZAROWNY
Marie is a Sister of Saint Ann currently serving as the SSA board member of UNANIMA INTERNATIONAL, a coalition of religious women with members on all continents, committed to work with its members and at the United Nations for peace and human dignity. Their focus at this time is on the trafficking of women and children for sexual exploitation. She spent several months in Haiti in the fall of 2006, researching and raising awareness of the current situation in Haiti, and the role of Canada in that country.
Marie has been actively involved for about 30 years in assisting Christian faith-based communities to hear and respond to the Gospel call to social transformation. Since her earliest days of social activism, she has been committed to fostering a spirituality that will sustain and deepen the commitment of people engaged in social change from a faith perspective.
Marie started the Social Justice Office of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Victoria and served as its first coordinator. At the invitation of the Bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mackenzie (NWT), she traveled North to do a study on the political, social, economic, and cultural changes of the people of that area, with social analysis, theological reflection, and recommendations to the Diocese. Returning to Victoria to assume leadership with the Sisters of Saint Ann, Marie also chaired a task group of RC Dioceses and Religious Communities that had been involved in Residential Schools, negotiating with the Federal Government to bring a just, compassionate, and timely resolution to this historic injustice.
Marie has a BEd (Sec) from the University of Victoria and an MA in Theology (Justice and Peace) from Maryknoll School of Theology.
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