Dr. Jaskiran Dhillon “Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention”

Thu. Jan. 18 04:00 PM - Thu. Jan. 18 06:00 PM
Contact: The Institute for Women’s and Gender Studies (UWinnipeg)
Location: University of Winnipeg (515 Portage Ave, Main Campus) Room 2M70

In 2016, Canada’s newly elected federal government publically committed to reconciling the social and material deprivation of Indigenous communities across the country. Does this outward shift in the Canadian state’s approach to longstanding injustices facing Indigenous peoples reflect a “transformation with teeth,” or is it merely a reconstructed attempt at colonial Indigenous-settler relations?

Please join us for two public talks with Dr. Jaskiran Dhillon, as she speaks to her new book "Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention."

Thursday, January 18, 2018:

4:00-6:00pm
University of Winnipeg
Room 2M70
515 Portage Avenue

**Afternoon talk cancelled**

These talks are presented by the Institute for Women's and Gender Studies (IWGS), with generous support from Urban and Inner City Studies (UWinnipeg), Indigenous Studies (UWinnipeg), the Centre for Research in Young People's Texts and Cultures (CRYTC), and the Critical Race Network (UWinnipeg).

Prairie Rising provides a series of critical reflections about the changing face of settler colonialism in Canada through an ethnographic investigation of Indigenous-state relations in the city of Saskatoon. Jaskiran Dhillon uncovers how various groups including state agents, youth workers, and community organizations utilize participatory politics in order to intervene in the lives of Indigenous youth living under conditions of colonial occupation and marginality. In doing so, this accessibly written book sheds light on the changing forms of settler governance and the interlocking systems of education, child welfare, and criminal justice that sustain it. Dhillon’s nuanced and fine-grained analysis exposes how the push for inclusionary governance ultimately reinstates colonial settler authority and raises startling questions about the federal government’s commitment to justice and political empowerment for Indigenous Nations, particularly within the context of the everyday realities facing Indigenous youth.

Jaskiran Dhillon is a first generation academic and advocate who grew up on Treaty Six Cree Territory in Saskatchewan, Canada. Committed to the tenets of public intellectualism, Jaskiran’s scholarship is intimately connected to, and informed by, on-the-ground advocacy and direct action. Her work spans the fields of settler colonialism, anthropology of the state, anti-racist and Indigenous feminism, youth studies, colonial violence, and Indigenous studies and has been published in The Guardian, Cultural Anthropology, Truthout, Public Seminar, Feminist Formations, and Decolonization among other venues. Her first book, Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization, and the Politics of Intervention (2017), provides a critical, ethnographic account of state interventions in the lives of urban indigenous youth. Her new research focuses on developing an anti-colonial critique of the environmental justice movement by examining Indigenous political movements working against the extractive industry, including the resistance at Standing Rock. She is also the guest editor of a special issue of Environment and Society that foregrounds Indigenous resistance to, and theorizing of, climate change. Jaskiran is an assistant professor of global studies and anthropology at The New School in New York City and a member of the New York City Stands with Standing Rock Collective.

See more at: https://www.facebook.com/events/193055067909752/