Register in advance to attend.
This two-day (April 21 and 22) social justice conference features speakers and roundtable panels investigating the intersection of Native, BIPOC and environmental justice issues, especially in the Pacific Northwest. It is co-sponsored by more than 15 organizations and units across the multicampus WSU system, including Fossil Free WSU, which is spearheading a systemwide student-run fossil fuel divestment campaign.
The conference opens up space for public dialogue about the enduring impacts of the 19th century Morrill Act, which “redistributed nearly 11 million acres” of Indigenous land, “turning land expropriated from tribal nations into seed money for higher education,” according to High Country News.
Program panels include:
- Salmon Scam: Criminalization and Exoneration of Native Fisher People
- Indigenous Traditional Ecological and Cultural Knowledge: Decolonizing Academia and Nurturing Healthy Futures Through First Foods and Plant Relatives
- Missing and Murdered Indigenous People: Fossil Fuels, Man Camps and a Case for Divestment, Reinvestment and Reparations
- Indigenous/Black Solidarity: From AIM and the Black Panthers to Standing Rock and the George Floyd Uprising
- Speaking to the Gap: Health Disparities and Death in Indian Country
- With a screening and discussion of “Atomic Bamboozle,” a documentary that follows activists as they expose the true costs of new small nuclear reactor designs
The conference is hosted by WSU Vancouver’s Native Programs and the Collective for Social and Environmental Justice.
For more information, contact:
- Desiree Hellegers, director, Collective for Social and Environmental Justice, WSU Vancouver, 503-927-1709 (cell), desiree.hellegers@wsu.edu
- Julian Ankeny, coordinator, Native American Programs, WSU Vancouver, 971-803-9898 (cell), julian.ankney@wsu.edu