September 22-23, 2015

UBC | Unceded Coast Salish Territory

People of the Land: Dialogue series with the Mapuche Territorial Alliance will bring together two Indigenous leaders from the Mapuche Nation –Alberto Curamil and Miguel Melin– with Indigenous activists and scholars from North America to exchange ideas and share experiences about land recuperation, opposition to extractive industries on their traditional territories, customary law, and Indigenous childhood, language, and education.

The Mapuche Territorial Alliance (ATM) is one of the grassroots organizations based on the ancestral territory of the Mapuche Nation in the South of Chile – the Gulu Mapu, or west side of the Andes. The ATM’s core mission is the full defense of Mapuche inherent rights, especially with regard to the protection of the territory and the natural environment.

Everyone is welcome, but RSVP is required for the lunch on September 23rd.

 

TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 22

2-4pm Panel on land recuperation: Yes, the discussion has always been about land

With Kanahus Manuel (Secwepemc Nation) and Chief Ian Campbell (Squamish Nation)

Liu Institute for Global Issues – Multipurpose Room

6476 North West Marine Drive

5-7pm Planting Poverty: Film screening and discussion about the impacts of the forestry industry on Indigenous lands

With Andrea Lyall (Kwakwa̱ka̱ʼwakw Nation, UBC)

Simon K. Y. Lee Global Lounge – Media Centre

Building 1  2205 Lower Mall

Light refreshments provided

 

WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 23*

10am-12pm Panel on Indigenous customary law: Strengthening Indigenous legal orders from within

With Sheryl Lightfoot (Anishinaabe Nation, UBC) and Angeline Nyce (Nisg̱a’a nation)

1-3pm Panel on Indigenous childhood: Language and cultural revitalization through Indigenous knowledge 

With Jo-ann Archibald (Sto:lo and St’at’imc Nations, UBC)

* Venue for both panels: First Nations Longhouse – Sty-wet-tan Hall, 1985 West Mall

Lunch provided 12-1pm. RSVP to: mugarte@interchange.ubc.ca

 

Alberto Curamil is the spokesperson for the ATM. Community leader and traditional authority of the Curacautin area, Mapuche territory, he currently leads the opposition to the installation of hydroelectric power stations on several rivers across his traditional territory.

Miguel Melin is a Mapuche intercultural bilingual educator, activist, and former spokesperson for the ATM. He has extensive experience as a Mapuchezungun-Spanish teacher and has led several participatory projects with youth to revitalize the Mapuche language.

Presented with support from the Liu Institute for Global Issues, the Faculty of Forestry, the First Nations House of Learning, the Global Lounge, the Walter H. Gage Memorial Fund, the Faculty of Education, the Interdisciplinary Graduate Students Network, the Faculty of Land and Food Systems, and the School of Community and Regional Planning.

Dr. Trevor Birkenholtz is visiting UBC this week (March 10-13, 2015). His visit is co-hosted by the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice (GRSJ) and Environment & Development: Gender, Equity, Sustainability (EDGES).

On Wednesday March 11 Dr. Birkenholtz is giving a talk titled ‘Water, Women and Rights: Rural Water Supplies, Drip Irrigation, and the (re)Feminization of agrarian labor in India’. All are welcome!

• Date/time: 12.00-1.00pm 11 March
• Location: GRSJ Jack Bell building
• More information is available HERE

Dr. Birkenholtz is a cultural and political ecologist, and development geographer. His work attempts to link the political economy of access to and control over environmental resources, and ecological change (political ecology), to issues of technology, knowledge, and social power, more typical of research in science and technology studies (STS). To date, he has advanced these concerns by investigating the transformation of groundwater-based irrigation, and urban and rural water supplies in South Asia. He also serves as Environment and Society Section Editor for the journal Geography Compass.

This year the Canadian Association of Geographers Annual General Meeting is being held in Vancouver at Simon Fraser University on June 1-5.

Members of the Program on Water Governance are organizing two special sessions, titled ‘Resilience and Water Governance’ and ‘Water Science and Policy in Canada’.

Lucy Rodina and Sameer Shah are organizing a special session on Resilience and Water Governance, which seeks to foster conversation around resilient water governance institutions. Papers highlighting theoretical and empirical evidence that critique and provide insight into potential pathways for enhanced resilience in the water governance realm are welcome and encouraged. Please send paper abstracts of no more than 200 words to both Lucy Rodina (lucy.rodina@gmail.com) and Sameer Shah (sshah089@gmail.com) by February 15, 2015.

Kiely McFarlane and Leila Harris are organizing a special session on Water Science and Policy in Canada, which seeks to interrogate current shifts in water policy in British Columbia and Canada more generally, with a focus on implications at the science-policy-politics interface. Papers addressing the changing role of science in policy and decision making, or implications of policy changes for knowledge production are welcomed. Please send  abstracts of no more than 200 words to Kiely McFarlane (kiely.mcfarlane@ubc.ca) by February 30th 2015.

The 2014 Okanagan Water & Biodiversity Forum is being held on September 16th-17th in Kelowna.

The forum will feature presentations and panel discussions by more than 40 leading-edge experts from UBC’s Okanagan and Vancouver campuses, international and national organizations, and three levels of government. Researchers will share world-class research, build valuable partnerships, and create actionable solutions for the Okanagan.

Keynote presentations will be held in the evenings – attendance at these talks is free and open to the general public.

Registration is now open!

For more information visit http://braes.ok.ubc.ca/forum/

The Peter Wall Institute is running a student competition for still images/works or performance/video pieces of four to ten minutes on the topic of water.

In September 2013, the Institute will host a conference of University-Based Institutes for Advanced Study, bringing together more than 90 international scholars from around the world to the University of British Columbia. One of the conference panel’s will be discussing the need for cross-disciplinary strategies to deal with the global, financial, ecological and societal issues relating to water. As an accompaniment to this panel, the Institute is awarding up to four student prizes for an arts-based piece on some aspect of water to help showcase these issues. The awarded pieces will be exhibited separately after the panel discussion is complete.

Deadline for proposal submissions is 4:00 pm, April 1, 2013. For more information, please see the application form.

March 7, 2013.  Canadian Water Resources Association, BC Branch. Vancouver, BC

The BC Branch of the Canadian Water Resources Association held a special session at their annual conference that highlighted the forthcoming book, Water without Borders? Canada, the U.S. and Shared Waters (University of Toronto Press). Presenting at the conference included, Dr. Emma S. Norman  who provided an overview of the book project and discussed key themes, Merrell-Ann Phare, who discussed water quality and governance in a First Nations context, and Richard Paisley who discussed the upcoming Columbia River Treaty renegotiation.  The presentations were followed by a well-attended and lively panel discussion.