Weweni: Priscilla Settee

Wed. Feb. 12 12:30 PM - Wed. Feb. 12 01:30 PM
Location: Convocation Hall, University of Winnipeg

The fifth lecture in the University of Winnipeg’s Weweni Indigenous Scholars Speaker Series is Dr. Priscilla Settee on "The Impact of Climate Change and Environmental Degradation on Indigenous Knowledge Systems: What You Should Know."

Land based Indigenous people’s worldview is based on timeless and respectful interdependence with the natural world and the Cree concept of pimatisiwin or the good life. Based on her new appointment as a David Suzuki Fellow (2019-2020) and recent research visits, Dr. Settee’s talk will focus on trapper’s messages to humanity in their observations of climate changes. These changes to traplines and communities, which reflect pillaging systems of capitalist development, will result in irreversible damage to the world’s biodiversity, including our collective global food systems. Dr. Settee will include ways that her people, the Cree, and others are posing alternatives, as well as ways that university research and development can assist.

Dr. Settee is an award-winning Professor in the Department of Indigenous Studies at the University of Saskatchewan and a member of Cumberland House Cree First Nations from northern Saskatchewan. She works in Saskatchewan and around the globe in a number of capacities, including serving as a board member of the Cultural Conservancy (California). In 2008 Settee was awarded a Global Citizen’s award by the Saskatchewan Council for International Co-operation and was twice nominated for a teaching excellence award by her students. Settee received the University of Saskatchewan’s Provost award for Teaching Excellence in Aboriginal Education in 2012, and the Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee award for contributions to Canada in 2013. Her latest book is the co-edited volume Indigenous Food Systems: Concepts, Cases, and Conversations (2020). In 2013, Dr. Settee directed and co-produced a video on Indigenous food sovereignty with local film maker Marcel Petit.

MEDIA INDIGENA will be recording a live podcast immediately following the lecture, hosted by Rick Harp.