Revolutionary thinking at Peace Week- make your plans

Revolution can often be associated with violent upheaval, however peaceful nonviolent action and imagination can be the necessary ingredients that precede metamorphosis. This September, the Peace Centre invites you think about how peaceful revolution, in thinking and action, is a meaningful pathway to fundamental positive social metamorphosis.

What is revolutionary?  How can revolutionary thinking support our need for system level and individual transformation? What concrete actions do we need to take in order to see a change in the world, which is so desperately needed, from climate justice to eliminating poverty?

What are your obligations, to yourself, to your local community, as well as to the global collective of human and non-human life? How can we support our students to be the facilitators of metamorphosis through peaceful revolutionary thinking? What can we learn from our students to support our own transformation?

All of our activities and speakers at Peace Week will attend to these critical questions in a world that is deeply complex, interrelated, and in desperate need of transformation.

On Sept. 15, (time TBD): Dr. Robin Wall Kimmerer  will give the keynote address at a virtual event. This award-winning author, American Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental and Forest Biology, and Director, Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, will offer perspectives on Indigenous sciences and western science.

Dr. Wall Kimmerer, in her publications and her speaking engagements, proposes a revolutionary way to rethink how we approach the land and the natural sciences. The time of the talk will be determined in August. If you would like to signal your interest ahead of time, we can follow up in August with you to see if the time works in terms of your course times. For any questions, please contact Diana Rice: drice@dawsoncollege.qc.ca

Sept. 13 -21: Take your students into the gardens!

Our annual collaboration continues with Sustainable Dawson to bring your students out onto the campus land! Students will have the opportunity to learn about the gardens on campus, get active, and connect with each other. To book your time in the gardens, you can reach out to Diana Rice, drice@dawsoncollege.qc.ca

Sept. 13-16: The Peace Centre is collaborating with Métis artist Daphne Boyer who will be exhibiting her art at the MAI  (Montreal, Arts Interculturels). Her iterative art practice combines plant material, high-resolution digital tools, and women’s traditional handwork. Boyer transforms the natural world into brilliant art pieces that enable deep conversations on our obligations to the land, her people, and our need to build relationships to revolutionize our thinking from the individual to the collective. There will be opportunities for faculty to bring their students, meet the artist, as well as participate in a hands-on art making workshop.  If you are interested in bringing your students, please contact Diana Rice to organize your class visit.

Sept. 13 – 21: Blanket Exercises as a departmental or Co-Curricular option

Interested in engaging your students or department mates with the history of Indigenous peoples’ as told by Indigenous facilitators? The Blanket exercise is an interactive activity which brings the group through the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada. It is an activity that enables an active reflection of our own history as well as our obligations as settlers within that history. When fully engaged with, it can be a truly transformative experience. This activity can work effectively within the context of the classroom with your students as well as your own department (faculty or other areas of service). If you are interested, please contact Diana Rice to book a Blanket Exercise time with your class or your department, drice@dawsoncollege.qc.ca

Keep a weather-eye out for more workshops, speakers, and related events in August!! For any questions, please do not hesitate to contact Diana Rice, drice@dawsoncollege.qc.ca