The SOGI UBC Transformative Education Speaker Series Presents:
Dr. Megan Scribe
A Poetic Inquiry into Indigenous Girlhood in Canada
January 25, 2022 | 4:00 – 5:00 pm PST
Dr. Megan Scribe (Ininiw iskwew, Norway House Cree Nation) is an interdisciplinary Indigenous feminist researcher, writer, and educator. Her award-winning dissertation, Indigenous Girlhood: Narratives of Colonial Care in Law and Literature, examines how legal and literary narratives shape knowledge on violence in the lives of Indigenous girls living under settler colonialism. Her most recent co-authored (with Sefanit Habtom) publication To Breathe Together: Co-Conspirators for Decolonial Futures contemplates how Indigenous, Black, and Black-Indigenous peoples can conspire against settler colonialism and anti-Blackness as part of shared worlding projects. Dr. Scribe is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Ryerson X University, an Associate Research Fellow with Yellowhead Institute, and a Council Member for Aboriginal Legal Services Community Council Diversion Program.
Abstract: This lecture meets Indigenous girls situated at the intersection of gender-based violence and targeted attacks on Indigenous children, two eliminatory strategies that subtend Canadian settler colonialism. Indigenous girlhood is foregrounded with the recognition that the Canadian state has access to Indigenous girls in a way it does not once these girls become adults. Participants are called to bear witness to harmful social policies and practices targeting Indigenous girls and how this violence is subsequently narrated in legal and literary accounts. This lecture draws together a unique assemblage of legal and literary texts, including inquests and inquiries, official studies and reports, legislation, and Indigenous prose and poetry. These seemingly disparate texts are more than mere vehicles for knowledge transmission. These texts invariably shape knowledges. This lecture insists that in order to address settler colonialism, we must foreground Indigenous girlhood and critically examine how we talk about Indigenous girlhood and state violence.
Please note, this is a virtual event and there will be live ASL interpretation.