Talk: Cultures of Belonging | Dr. Wenona Hall In Conversation with Dr. Amyn Sajoo
Thu Feb 20, 2025 | 5:30–7 PM
(left to right) Dr. Wenona Hall and Dr. Amyn Sajoo
Join Dr. Wenona Hall, the Chair of Indigenous Studies at Simon Fraser University (SFU), and Dr. Amyn Sajoo, SFU scholar-in-residence, for a discussion on how Indigenous “belonging to the land” fits in settler-colonial settings, where land is an economic and legal commodity. What would it mean to decolonize Canadian ways of understanding the past and the present?
This talk is free and open to the public. Space is limited. Registration is required.
The event will take place in Courtroom 302 at the Vancouver Art Gallery. Please enter the Gallery through the Hornby Street entrance.
Doors will open at 5 PM, and the talk will begin at 5:30 PM.
The Cultures of Belonging series is presented in partnership between The Centre for Comparative Muslim Studies, the Vancouver Art Gallery and the Ismaili Centre Vancouver.
ABOUT THE SPEAKERS
Dr. Wenona Hall is Stó:lō and a member of the Sq’ewqéyl First Nation and the Ts’elxwéyeqw Tribe. She is the Chair of Simon Fraser University’s Indigenous Studies Department and was previously the Inaugural Chair of Indigenous Studies at the University of the Fraser Valley. Dr. Hall’s research focuses on Processes of Decolonization, Indigenous Justice and Governance (especially child welfare), Indigenous Resurgence. She carries the ancestral name Ts’qwelemót and the gifted name Qwi:qwelstom and is the mother of three young adults: Jade, Justice and Alexis Victor.
Amyn Sajoo is a scholar-in-residence and lecturer in the SFU Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences. His work is at the interface of citizenship, human rights and identity. Dr. Sajoo was earlier affiliated with Cambridge and McGill universities, the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore and the Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), London. His many books include Pluralism in Old Societies and New States and the edited collection Muslim Modernities: Expressions of the Civil Imagination. He has contributed extensively to the newsmedia, including The Guardian, New York Times, the BBC, Open Democracy and the Globe & Mail. He also testified last year at the Canadian Senate’s Standing Committee on Human Rights. Since 2018, Dr. Sajoo has hosted the public conversations series Cultures of Belonging at SFU and at partner venues, the Ismaili Centres Vancouver and Toronto. His onstage guests have included Canada’s former Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin, John Ralston Saul, the University of British Columbia’s Canada Chair on colonial legal histories, Renisa Mawani, the writers David Chariandy and Janika Oza, and the Vancouver Art Gallery’s then Interim Chief Curator Diana Freundl.
