Cultivating critical relationships and building solidarity among Black, Indigenous, and racialized scholars, activists, and artists through decolonial and anti-racist praxis


Jennifer Ma, McMaster University; Maimuna Khan, McMaster University

Migration has been identified as a priority area for policy responses by both the federal and provincial/territorial governments. Yet, Canadian discourse about immigration and settlement often does not consider the realities of Indigenous peoples even though there is overlap and connection through the experiences of colonization and settlement. Generally, Indigenous peoples and racialized people, particularly racialized migrants who are subject to projects of dispossession, have been displaced, forced from their lands, or have been perceived as an impediment to economic and/or political development. What intersects these experiences of displacement is exclusion resulting from colonialism. While the settlement of racialized migrants on Indigenous lands complexify the ‘overlap’ of their experiences of displacement, we point to the separation of such discourses of dispossession in the public sphere and academia. Particularly, that in doing so, nation-states seek to hide current racist and xenophobic discourse regarding national identity and citizenship (Bauder, 2011; Lawrence and Dua, 2005). In June 2023, a collective of artists, activists, doctoral students, postdoctoral researchers, and new and established faculty members gathered for a two-day residency entitled, ‘Building solidarity among BIPOC academics, practitioners, and activists’, at Artscape Gibraltar Point on Toronto Island. Approximately 16 people attended from across Canada. The purpose of the event was to foster relationship building and meaningful dialogue among Black, Indigenous, and racialized people whose work is related to migration in one way or another. The residency was designed not only to facilitate knowledge sharing amongst the participants, but also to advance research and practice development broadly speaking, and to provide tools and resources to communities for engaging in decolonial and anti-racist practices. In this context, the residency had four main objectives: Create an atmosphere conducive to critical and engaged dialogue to discuss decolonial and antiracist approaches to our respective areas of work; Reimagine healing practices through collective resistance; Produce strategies of engagement for academics, practitioners, and activists; Build on current connections with and between participants as well as forge new relationships and networks through the collaborative knowledge production process. This presentation focuses on a critical reflection of our experiences engaging in land-based programming and creating art to build solidarity. We address the question of how participation in decolonial and anti-racist activities contribute to cultivating critical relationships across and between our communities while resisting hierarchical relationships between different ways of knowing and how these ways are framed. While there is a growing body of literature on decolonizing higher education, little is known about how participants articulate those processes in the context of their research and practice. To respond to this dearth, we have each undertaken an autoethnographic reflection where we describe our experiences engaging in a residency that centered decolonial and anti-racist praxis and discourse and examine how it contributed to challenging our ideas about implementing these practices in our work. We will conclude by identifying strategies that students, educators and researchers can utilize to challenge colonialism and racism in academia and the community, shifting to transformative and liberatory experiences.

Non-presenting authors: Soma Chatterjee, York University; Mary Ma, OCAD University; Yahya El-Lahib, University of Calgary; Nellie Alcaraz, McGill University; Carolyn Tran, University of Regina

This paper will be presented at the following session: