W&M Featured Events

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[PAST EVENT] Beyond Diversity, Inclusion, and Conservation to Decolonization in Science, Technology, and Policy 

February 3, 2022
6:30pm - 7:30pm
Location
Zoom
Access & Features
  • Open to the public
Picture of Kim Tallbear

Indigenous peoples – like nonhuman relatives, lands, and waters – are usually at the receiving end of the settler-colonial gaze, including the gaze of scientists. Science, technology, and related policy interventions have long been structured according to a de facto hierarchy of life in which historically straight white men sit at the top and survey and categorize the world according to deeply anti-relational and thus anti-Indigenous philosophies. “Decolonization,” which requires a substantive return of wealth to the colonized, is antithetical to such a worldview. Diversity, inclusion, and conservation discourses have become instead the framework that is tolerable to settler-colonial institutions. This talk provides a quick primer on the difference between such terms and decolonization, and the implications for land and life, not only for Indigenous peoples but for all of us. It also offers real-world responses to colonial research and details both researchers’ and Indigenous peoples’ efforts to transform scientific research, technology development, and training in order to aid decolonization. 

Kim TallBear (Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate) (she/her) is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Peoples, Technoscience and Society, Faculty of Native Studies, University of Alberta. She is the author of Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science. In addition to studying the genome sciences disruptions to Indigenous self-definitions, Dr. TallBear studies colonial disruptions to Indigenous sexual relations. She is a regular panelist on the weekly podcast, Media Indigena. You can follow her research group at https://indigenoussts.com/ . She tweets @KimTallBear.

February 3, 2022

6:30-7:30 pm ET

Register for a Zoom link

This event is part of the  2021-2022 Conservation Speaker Series focused on Indigenous Voices in Conservation supported by the Institute for Integrative Conservation, the Anthropology Department, the History Department,  the Center for Racial & Social Justice, and the American Indian Resource Center and Native Studies Minor.

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