Research guides: Indigenous Book Club & Discover Indigenous Authors: Welcoming Professor Daniel Heath Justice to UTSC

Welcoming Professor Daniel Heath Justice

The next Equity Matters Seminar will feature Professor Daniel Heath Justice (citizen, Cherokee Nation).

The Equity Matters Seminar Series provides an opportunity for the University of Toronto Scarborough community to engage with prominent speakers on issues of equity, diversity and inclusion in academia. Seminars are open to faculty, librarians, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and staff.

Questions can be directed to Eileen Egan-Lee, Faculty Development Administrator.

Reckoning before Reconciling: Collective Commitment, Indigenous Nationhood, and the Individualistic Limits of EDI Policies

Thursday, March 2, 2023 - Register to join on campus or via Zoom
10:00 - 11:30 am Seminar & Discussion (EV151/152, Zoom available)
11:30 - 1:00 pm Lunch (IC Atrium, registration required)

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) underpin much of the laudable work of social justice in the academy. Yet once institutionalized, EDI can be co-opted and become piecemeal and tokenistic, focusing on individualized representation and obligation rather than systemic and sustainable transformation. For Indigenous students, staff, and faculty, EDI policies grounded in individualistic claims and concerns fall far short of equity, let alone justice, especially at a time of growing anti-Indigenous backlash, school denialism, and identity appropriation. When the responsibility for countering widespread anti-Indigenous educational violence is framed as individualized obligation and delegated to a few Indigenous faculty and staff rather than being a collective duty of the university community, the result is often isolation, demoralization, exhaustion, and trauma. This talk considers Indigenous nationhood and collective rights and responsibilities as fundamental to decolonial justice in and beyond the academy, as much in formal policy as in interpersonal, pedagogical, and professional relationships.

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Daniel Justice is a Colorado-born citizen of the Cherokee Nation, appointed as Professor in the Department of English and First Nations and Indigenous Studies in the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies at UBC. Professor Justice's work in Indigenous literary studies takes up questions and issues of kinship, belonging, sexuality, personhood, and nationhood, with increasing attention to the intersections between Indigenous literatures, speculative fiction, and other-than-human peoples.

His published work includes the literary studies Why Indigenous Literatures Matter and Our Fire Survives the Storm: A Cherokee Literary History, the animal cultural histories Raccoon and Badger, the Indigenous epic fantasy The Way of Thorn and Thunder, and he has edited and co-edited numerous works, including The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature (with James H. Cox), and Allotment Stories: Indigenous Land Relations Under Settler Siege (with Jean M. O’Brien).

More information about Professor Justice's work and commitments can be found on his website, www.danielheathjustice.com.

Other library resources relevant to Professor Justice's seminar

In addition to Becoming Kin, you may be interested in Profesor Justice's own writing and scholarship, much of which is available through the U of T Libraries collections.

Direct links to select titles are also provided below.

Allotment Stories by Daniel Heath Justice (Editor); Jean M. O'Brien (Editor)
ISBN: 1452962693
Publication Date: 2022-03-08
More than two dozen stories of Indigenous resistance to the privatization and allotment of Indigenous lands Land privatization has been a longstanding and ongoing settler colonial process separating Indigenous peoples from their traditional homelands, with devastating consequences. Allotment Stories delves into this conflict, creating a complex conversation out of narratives of Indigenous communities resisting allotment and other dispossessive land schemes. From the use of homesteading by nineteenth-century Anishinaabe women to maintain their independence to the role that roads have played in expropriating Guam's Indigenous heritage to the links between land loss and genocide in California, Allotment Stories collects more than two dozen chronicles of white imperialism and Indigenous resistance. Ranging from the historical to the contemporary and grappling with Indigenous land struggles around the globe, these narratives showcase both scholarly and creative forms of expression, constructing a multifaceted book of diverse disciplinary perspectives. Allotment Stories highlights how Indigenous peoples have consistently used creativity to sustain collective ties, kinship relations, and cultural commitments in the face of privatization. At once informing readers while provoking them toward further research into Indigenous resilience, this collection pieces back together some of what the forces of allotment have tried to tear apart. Contributors: Jennifer Adese, U of Toronto Mississauga; Megan Baker, U of California, Los Angeles; William Bauer Jr., U of Nevada, Las Vegas; Christine Taitano DeLisle, U of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Vicente M. Diaz, U of Minnesota-Twin Cities; Sarah Biscarra Dilley, U of California, Davis; Marilyn Dumont, U of Alberta; Munir Fakher Eldin, Birzeit U, Palestine; Nick Estes, U of New Mexico; Pauliina Feodoroff; Susan E. Gray, Arizona State U; J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Wesleyan U; Rauna Kuokkanen, U of Lapland and U of Toronto; Sheryl R. Lightfoot, U of British Columbia; Kelly McDonough, U of Texas at Austin; Ruby Hansen Murray; Tero Mustonen, U of Eastern Finland; Darren O'Toole, U of Ottawa; Shiri Pasternak, Ryerson U; Dione Payne, Te Whare Wānaka o Aoraki-Lincoln U; Joseph M. Pierce, Stony Brook U; Khal Schneider, California State U, Sacramento; Argelia Segovia Liga, Colegio de Michoacán; Leanne Betasamosake Simpson; Jameson R. Sweet, Rutgers U; Michael P. Taylor, Brigham Young U; Candessa Tehee, Northeastern State U; Benjamin Hugh Velaise, Google American Indian Network.
Raccoon by Daniel Heath Justice
ISBN: 9781789144246
Publication Date: 2021-07-29
Masked bandits of the night, raiders of farm crops and rubbish bins, raccoons are notorious for their indifference to human property and propriety. Yet they are also admired for their intelligence, dexterity, and determination. Raccoons have thoroughly adapted to human-dominated environments--they are thriving in numbers greater than at any point of their evolutionary history, including in new habitats. Raccoon surveys the natural and cultural history of this opportunistic omnivore, tracing its biological evolution, social significance, and image in a range of media and political contexts. From intergalactic misanthropes and despoilers of ancient temples to coveted hunting quarry, unpredictable pet, and symbols of wilderness and racist stereotype alike, Raccoon offers a lively consideration of this misunderstood outlaw species.
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter by Daniel Heath Justice
ISBN: 9781771121767
Publication Date: 2018-03-10
Winner, PROSE Awards 2019 Short-listed, ACQL Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism 2018 Winner, NAISA Award Best Subsequent Book 2018 Part survey of the field of Indigenous literary studies, part cultural history, and part literary polemic, Why Indigenous Literatures Matter asserts the vital significance of literary expression to the political, creative, and intellectual efforts of Indigenous peoples today. In considering the connections between literature and lived experience, this book contemplates four key questions at the heart of Indigenous kinship traditions: How do we learn to be human? How do we become good relatives? How do we become good ancestors? How do we learn to live together? Blending personal narrative and broader historical and cultural analysis with close readings of key creative and critical texts, Justice argues that Indigenous writers engage with these questions in part to challenge settler-colonial policies and practices that have targeted Indigenous connections to land, history, family, and self. More importantly, Indigenous writers imaginatively engage the many ways that communities and individuals have sought to nurture these relationships and project them into the future. This provocative volume challenges readers to critically consider and rethink their assumptions about Indigenous literature, history, and politics while never forgetting the emotional connections of our shared humanity and the power of story to effect personal and social change. Written with a generalist reader firmly in mind but addressing issues of interest to specialists in the field, this book welcomes new audiences to Indigenous literary studies while offering more seasoned readers a renewed appreciation for these transformative literary traditions. Selected as an Equity, Justice, and Inclusion Community Read by the Association of University Presses.
Badger by Daniel Heath Justice
ISBN: 9781780233369
Publication Date: 2015-02-15
Fierce, menacing, and mysterious, badgers have fascinated humans as living animals, abstract symbols, or commercial resources for thousands of years--often to their detriment. With their reputation for determined self-defense, they have been brutalized by hunters and sportsmen, while their association with the mythic underworld has made them idealized symbols of earth-based wisdom and their burrowing habits have resulted in their widespread persecution as pests. In this highly illustrated book, Daniel Heath Justice provides the first global cultural history of the badger in over thirty years. From the iconic European badger and its North American kin to the African honey badger and Southeast Asian hog badger, Justice considers the badger's evolution and widespread distribution alongside its current, often-imperiled status throughout the world. He travels from natural history and life in the wild to the folklore, legends, and spiritual beliefs that badgers continue to inspire, while also exploring their representation and exploitation in industry, religion, and the arts. Tracing the complex and contradictory ways in which this fascinating animal endures, Badger will appeal to anyone interested in a deeper understanding of these much-maligned creatures.
The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature by James H. Cox (Editor); Daniel Heath Justice (Editor)
ISBN: 9780199914036
Publication Date: 2014-08-28
Over the course of the last twenty years, Native American and Indigenous American literary studies has experienced a dramatic shift from a critical focus on identity and authenticity to the intellectual, cultural, political, historical, and tribal nation contexts from which these Indigenousliteratures emerge. The Oxford Handbook of Indigenous American Literature reflects on these changes and provides a complete overview of the current state of the field.The Handbook's forty-three essays, organized into four sections, cover oral traditions, poetry, drama, non-fiction, fiction, and other forms of Indigenous American writing from the seventeenth through the twenty-first century. Part I attends to literary histories across a range of communities,providing, for example, analyses of Inuit, Chicana/o, Anishinaabe, and Metis literary practices. Part II draws on earlier disciplinary and historical contexts to focus on specific genres, as authors discuss Indigenous non-fiction, emergent trans-Indigenous autobiography, Mexicanoh and Spanishpoetry, Native drama in the U.S. and Canada, and even a new Indigenous children's literature canon. The third section delves into contemporary modes of critical inquiry to expound on politics of place, comparative Indigenism, trans-Indigenism, Native rhetoric, and the power of Indigenous writing tocommunities of readers. A final section thoroughly explores the geographical breadth and expanded definition of Indigenous American through detailed accounts of literature from Indian Territory, the Red Atlantic, the far North, Yucatan, Amerika Samoa, and Francophone Quebec.Together, the volume is the most comprehensive and expansive critical handbook of Indigenous American literatures published to date. It is the first to fully take into account the last twenty years of recovery and scholarship, and the first to most significantly address the diverse range of texts,secondary archives, writing traditions, literary histories, geographic and political contexts, and critical discourses in the field.