Social Science and Humanities Seminar Series: Dr. Max Liboiron
Join us for our first seminar series where our guest will be Dr. Max Liboiron and she will be giving a lecture title "Research is Land Relations".
All research method scan align with or against colonialism, as all research methods have land relations. Even when researchers are working toward benevolent goals such as environmentalism, conducting environmental science and activism is often premised on a colonial worldview and access to land. Dr. Max Liboiron will draw on their new book, Pollution is Colonialism, to discuss how anticolonial science and research are not only possible, it is currently being practiced in ways that enact more ethical modes of being in the world.
Dr. Max Liboirondevelops and promotes anticolonial research methods in a wide array ofdisciplines and spaces and is the author of Pollution is Colonialism(Duke University Press, 2021). Their lab, CLEAR, is an interdisciplinary plastic pollution laboratory whose methods foregroundhumility and good land relations. Dr. Liboiron is an Associate Professor inGeography at Memorial University.
Jamie Snookhas mixed Inuit ancestry and is from Mary’s Harbour, Labrador, within theNunatuKavut Community Council territory. Jamie is extensively involved inwildlife research and public policy with the Torngat Wildlife Plants andFisheries Secretariat. Jamie completed his Ph.D at the University of Guelph inPublic Health and researched the ways wildlife co-management intersects withInuit well-being.
Elder Calvin White is Mi’kmaw. He was born and raised in FlatBay, NL and is one of the founders of the Aboriginal revival in Newfoundlandand Labrador. Elder White is one of the original petitioners in the 1989legal action brought by the FNI against the federal government, whicheventually resulted in the agreement to form the Qalipu Mi’kmaq FirstNation. For his pivotal role in achieving recognition forNewfoundland Mi’kmaq and his longstanding commitment to the rights of hispeople, Elder Calvin White received the Order of NL in 2015, anhonorary doctor of laws degree in 2017, and the Order of Canada in 2019.
Dalhousie University operates in the unceded territories of the Mi’kmaw, Wolastoqey, and Peskotomuhkati Peoples. These sovereign nations hold inherent rights as the original peoples of these lands, and we each carry collective obligations under the Peace and Friendship Treaties. Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 recognizes and affirms Aboriginal and Treaty rights in Canada.
We acknowledge that the lands on which Memorial University’s campuses are situated are in the traditional territories of diverse Indigenous groups, and we acknowledge with respect the diverse histories and cultures of the Beothuk, Mi’kmaq, Innu, and Inuit of this province.
