Conference on "Indigenous Struggles and the Ideology of Development”

VIA ZOOM WEBINAR (REGISTRATION AVAILABLE SOON)

THE CONFERENCE IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF LATE DR. HARI SHARMA WHO TAUGHT AT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY AND SUPPORTED INDIGENOUS STRUGGLES.

“How to expand whatever is embryonically present in the present not totally hijacked by the past?”
–Boaventura de Sousa Santos, “The End of the Cognitive Empire”

The ideology of development is hegemonic. It is coeval with and forms the material interface of the ideologies of progress and modernity, which are all grounded in the dynamic of the accumulation of capital. The civilizing mission of settler colonialism and imperialism is the earliest form of these ideologies ("primitive accumulation") and persists today in overt and covert forms in the developmental ideology that is used by the modern and modernizing states for the displacement and destruction of Indigenous peoples for the extraction of resources. Development is the hegemonic modern face of settler colonialism and the internal colonialism of the formerly colonized states.

The struggles of Indigenous people against the assault of extractivism, under the banner of development, is the most important struggle in the world today, not only for the survival of what remains of them but for humanity as a whole facing the existential crisis of climate change and the devastation of life on this planet by the inexorable logic of capital.

SCHEDULE

Saturday, October 10 | 7:00–8:30pm PST | Register Now: https://sfu.zoom.us/.../register/WN_wB9e4EeJRautyLgp31ehDQ

Panel on Latin America: Gerardo Otero (“Epistemologies from the South and Real Utopias”) and Lynn Stephen ("Decolonizing Development: Insights from Indigenous and Other Women")
Moderator: Ian Angus 

Saturday, October 17 | 9:00–10:30am PST | Register Now: https://sfu.zoom.us/.../register/WN_MQCh7hySRf2HfwaTbs1s2A

Panel on South and Eastern Asia: Michael Hathaway (China), Nandini Sundar (India), and Sara Shneiderman (Nepal)
Moderator: John Harriss

Saturday, October 24 | 7:00–9:00pm PST | Register Now: https://sfu.zoom.us/.../register/WN_1hTFZlhmQJa6GBHInpLuHQ

Panel on Voicing Activism: Sakej Ward, Karla Tait, Raul Gatica, and Nadarjah Manickaam
Moderator: Harsha Walia

Note: proceedings will be video-recorded and published.

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Organized by Chinmoy Banerjee for South Asian Network for Secularism and Democracy (SANSAD); hosted/co-sponsored by SFU's Institute for the Humanities; co-sponsored by Hari Sharma Foundation, David Lam Centre for International Communication, School for International Studies, and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Simon Fraser University; and supported by Vancouver Democracy Alliance.

This event will take place on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), Skwxwú7mesh (Squamish), and Stó:lō and səlil̓wətaʔɬ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

Event is FREE and open to the public. If you would like to donate to the Institute to help fund future events like this one, please visit http://www.sfu.ca/humanities-institute/donate.html.