-
Canadian Political Science Association2025 Annual Conference Programme
The Politics of Belonging: Conflict,
Community, Curriculum
Hosted at George Brown College, Toronto, CANADA
June 3 to June 5, 20252025 Annual Conference Programme
The Politics of Belonging: Conflict,
Community, Curriculum
Hosted at George Brown College
June 3 to June 5, 2025
Special Events
R05 - CPSA Reconciliation Committee Event - Mobilizing Syllabi Towards Centering Transnational Indigenous Connections: A CPSA Reconciliation Committee Discussion
Date: Jun 3 | Time: 03:30pm to 05:00pm | Location: SJC-207
Chair/Président/Présidente : Emily Grafton (University of Regina)
Yasmeen Abu-Laban (University of Alberta)Mariam Georgis (Simon Fraser University)
Joyce Green (University of Regina)
Nisha Nath (University of Athabasca)
Daniel Sherwin (Carleton University)
waaseyaa’sin Christine Sy (University of Victoria)
Abstract: In 2016, and under the leadership of then-CPSA President Yasmeen Abu-Laban, the Reconciliation Committee of the CPSA was created in response to the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (2015). Since that time, the committee has digitally published two syllabi intended to enable educators to access resources for their research, teaching, and supervision and challenge the role that education plays in the genocide of Indigenous peoples. These syllabi include, “Indigenous Content Syllabus Materials: A Resource for Political Science Instructors in Canada” and a “Palestine Syllabus”, which concludes our “Call to Centre Palestinian Voices” (2024). Whereas in Canada, it is en vogue to be simultaneously engaged in “reconciliation” with Indigenous peoples within an enduring settler colonial structure, it is also risky to speak or act in support of Palestinian life as it exists, or is extinguished, under the settler coloniality of the Israeli state. The construction of walls, militarization of borders, confiscation of land, extraction of resources, and the brutalization and incarceration of Indigenous bodies have compelled political scientists to identify commonalities, difference, and paradoxes among the experiences of Indigenous and dispossessed nations across the globe (Elia, 2023; Georgis and Lugosi, 2021; Tabar and Desai, 2017; Salaita, 2016; Byrd, 2011). As such, this roundtable mobilizes these two syllabi, foregrounding experiences of Indigeneity to situate, and amplify, the dispossession of Indigenous peoples in Canada and Palestine, within a framework of global settler colonialism. Interconnected experiences of coloniality and the possibilities for transnational solidarities will be discussed. We encourage attendees to review the syllabi online in advance of this discussion.