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August 5-8
Decolonizing the Body and Indigenous Principles: Connecting through Creativity and Ceremony
Alannah Young and Denise Nadeau
This course will combine theory and practice to present an approach to healing from racist, colonial and sexual violence. This method, initially developed with Aboriginal women living in inner city Vancouver, combines expressive arts therapies with ceremony and ritual and draws on Indigenous Knowledge principles as a framework for healing. The course will use a training format and will be useful for service providers and Aboriginal Front line workers as well as non-Native service providers who work with women who have experienced multiple forms of violence, including intergenerational violence, sexual violence, residential schooling, and/or the violence of displacement and forced migration.
Topics covered include:
- How violence and trauma affect the body and the benefits of non-verbal approaches in countering the effects of violence.
- Nature and impact of colonial violence against Indigenous women
- Principles of Indigenous Knowledge
- What is a culturally appropriate intervention?
- Embodied non-violence as a resource in conflict resolution and violence prevention
- Concrete experiences of creative tools and expressive art therapy resources
- Theory and practice of decolonizing the body
August 7
Interfaith and Labour Alliances Organizing Around Economic Justice
Israel Alvaran
Location: Maritime Labour Centre, Vancouver
Time: 9:00 am – 4:pm.
In the context of global displacement of migrants and refugees who are fleeing poverty, persecution, war and corporate exploitation of their lands, countries like Canada and the United States are exploiting immigrant labour in the rush for profits.. Through privatization, contracting out, restrictive immigration policies and the increasing use of temporary workers, workers’ basic human rights are being eroded. At this historical moment it is important that we do not work in isolation to challenge these injustices and that we seek alliances that are built on mutual respect. It is only when we align together with communities that have traditionally been working on their own that we will see change.
This workshop is for labour organizers -both union and non-union- who want to work with and have a relationship with faith communities, and for activist people of faith who care about economic justice issues. It will address the following questions: What is a relationship that can benefit both communities? How can you create a partnership in advocacy where faith groups have ownership of a campaign and can develop it using their own resources and language? How do we build deep relationships that honor the rich justice traditions of the faith community as well as that of labour?
In this workshop:
- Participants will learn where religious groups draw their inspiration for justice
- How to map structures of faith groups
- Strategies and tactics to develop the relationship
- Creative ways of doing campaigns and developing partnerships
- Sharing resources from Interfaith Worker Justice and Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (California)
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August 11-15
Religion's Role in Peacebuilding: Sikhs and Muslims in Malerkotla, Punjab and Beyond
Karenjot Bhangoo Randhawa
This course is organized around the topic of Punjabi and Sikh history with an emphasis on diverse perspectives in interreligious understanding that can be used in peacemaking. It will examine a case study of how Sikhism interacted with other religions, primarily Islam, in the Punjab, as an example of how religion manifested in conflict and peace in the twentieth-century. Thematically, the course is organized around identifying major topics and trends linked to religious peacemaking in the Punjab as well as in Diaspora communities. It will look at examples of religious-based peace, and how the manifestation of religion can help produce peaceful coexistence even when conflict is present in historical narratives. This course will build skills in intercultural understanding, cross-cultural awareness, and conflict transformation and will discuss how intercultural (interfaith) communities can work together to bridge understanding in order to eliminate discrimination and racism.
This course will be of interest to students of Indo-Canadian Studies, Sikh Studies, Religious Studies, History and Conflict Resolution. It will also benefit conflict resolution practitioners, religious leaders and members of faith communities as well as those working in various Diaspora communities.
August 11-15
The Girl Child, African Women, Religion and HIV&AIDS
Esther Mombo
In the fall of 2007 The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians met in Cameroon on the subject of women, religion and HIV/AIDS. The Circle sets out to recreate and retrieve women's stories so that they become an integral part of the story of Africa as a whole. The Circle and its methodology is set within the ecumenical and multi-faith context of its membership, which consists of members of African Traditional Religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. This course will consider how the methodology of the circle has been applied to the subject of women and HIV/AIDS.
Gender inequality is a key variable in the incident of HIV/AIDS amongst women. As greater disparities increase, the epidemic is affecting more and more women who bear the negative consequences of the gender imbalance. And as the epidemic is maturing, it is drawing in women who have only one sex partner. A decade ago women seemed to be on the periphery of the epidemic; today they are at the centre. Some of the reasons for this include the poverty, migration and displacement due to conflict and wars in some regions.
The course will explore ways in which women of faith seek ways of protecting themselves from the virus, and how they are restoring both their dignity and that of their families. It will touch briefly on some of the following areas of most concern to African women: child marriages; overcoming violence against women and the girl child; sexuality; HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment interventions and care; HIV and people with disabilities; faith based organizations and HIV prevention and care; trauma: rape, care-giving and coping mechanisms; cross generational relationships and the spread of HIV; living with HIV&AIDS among women and religious leaders; disclosure, stigma and discrimination; and theological institutions and HIV&AIDS.
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August 11-15
Mass Media’s Role in Progressive Politics and Religion
Robert Jenson
In a complex industrial society, a critical and independent journalism is a basic requirement for a functioning democratic society and a healthy spiritual culture. When so much of what we understand about the world comes to us through mass media, no aspect of our lives is untouched by news media’s construction of the world. We need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of contemporary journalism to be more critical viewers, as well as to function more effectively in our organizing efforts for progressive change in the world.
In this course, former journalist and journalism professor Robert Jensen will explain how commercial news media’s organizational structures, professional practices, and ideological orientation make it increasingly difficult for working journalists to do their jobs effectively, both in the political and theological arena. As a result, the vast majority of mainstream coverage reflects and reinforces the perspective of the culture’s most powerful institutions, offering a picture of the world that is supportive of economic inequality and First-World domination, and that in subtle ways remains patriarchal and white-supremacist. In coverage of religion, journalists tend to default to centrist and conservative definitions of faith, with most stories relegating issues of faith to lifestyle sections.
Such critical analysis is crucial for groups engaged in long-term projects to enhance media literacy and create a more just and democratic media system. At the same time, progressive activists in the moment must work to increase our effectiveness in reaching ordinary people with a coherent message, which means learning to (1) be more effective in working with mainstream journalists, and (2) create better independent media.
This course will offer both the analysis and skills training to help reach these goals. Topics will include:
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Understanding How Journalists Work
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Journalism and Progressive Politics
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Journalism and Religion
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Working with Journalists
- Producing Independent Journalism
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August 11-15
Truth and Reconciliation: The Politics and Possibilities of Memory
Lorena Sekwan Fontaine and Angela Contreras-Chavez with Chief Robert Joseph
In the last 25 years Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in many countries have been used by the nation state to reestablish governability and foster neo-liberal economic development, development which has had little or no benefit for the survivors of political violence. At the same time, many individuals who participated in these commissions benefited from telling histories of violence that had been erased. The course will consider critical analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of past Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and participants will examine the Inter-Diocesan Project “Recovery of the Historic Memory” in Guatemala, which played a double role as a venue for Mayan participants to honour the memory of their loved ones and as the basis for developing healing programs for the survivors. An examination of the truth and justice process and lessons learned in Guatemala will provide course participants with elements to critically analyze and compare this process to the memory recovery process concerning residential schools in Canada.
The course will offer different perspectives on the meaning of truth-telling and reconciliation in the present context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools in Canada. With a focus on the colonial dynamics of social and economic power and the collective suffering and healing of Aboriginal people in Canada, it will provide a forum to discuss how the present TRC process can be used to create community-driven, community- based projects that can benefit grassroot Indigenous communities.
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August 11-15
Islam in the Hinterlands: A Critical Exploration of Canadian Muslim Cultural Politics
Jasmin Zine Ph.D
This seminar will allow participants to develop a critical understanding of some contemporary issues in Muslim Canadian Studies such as the debates on "Reasonable Accommodation in Quebec, Herrouxville Citizen's Code, security policies, Muslim youth and "home grown terror," shariah tribunals, religion and multiculturalism. The seminar will also involve a critical interrogation of Canadian Muslim cultural politics, the development of social movements like Progressive Islam and the neo-conservative influence of Islamist groups. Through these contemporary issues we will examine the dialectics between Islamophobia and religious extremism within the Canadian context. In order to assist educators and social justice activists in challenging Islamophobia, the seminar will also provide an introduction to curricular resources for Anti-Islamophobia education.
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August 13 Mid-Day Workshop
Building Bridges: A Hands-on Workshop about Israel and Palestine and Ourselves
Dr Robert Kull and Sima Elizabeth Shefrin
This workshop is about creating visual images to tell stories which come from our hearts. As people of different backgrounds and faiths, including many-generation Canadians, we all have special stories to tell, and pictures are a lovely and effective way to tell them.
Visual images can connect people in ways that words sometimes fail, and Vancouver artist, Sima Elizabeth Shefrin, will set the scene by talking about the Middle East Peace Quilt, which has been touring North America since 1999. Elizabeth will also talk about her new project, Messages from the Heart, work that has grown out of her most recent trip to Israel and Palestine. She will also touch on other ways art has been used to build connections between Israelis and Palestinians.
Participants will have the opportunity, in the very user friendly, hands-on, component of this workshop, to create tiny pictorial autobiographies which we will share with each other in small trust-building groups.
Everyone is welcome. No sewing is involved and no artistic or fabric experience is necessary.
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