Dr. John Borrows
Dr. John Borrows, Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Law; Officer of the Order of Canada; co-founder, Joint Indigenous-Common Law Degree Program, University of Victoria; member, RAVEN Legal Advisory Panel.
Susan Smitten
Co-founder of RAVEN, Susan Smitten has been the organization's Executive Director since 2010 and has overseen the raising of millions of dollars for Indigenous legal challenges, including the Pull Together campaign that led to the cancellation of Enbridge's Northern Gateway project.
You are invited...
There are few humans that embody the term “poetic justice” like Dr. John Borrows. An Anishinaabe scholar, legal expert, and mentor to a new generation of Indigenous lawyers, Dr. Borrows is rightly celebrated as a visionary whose braiding of legal traditions tethers the wisdom of his ancestors to the challenges, and opportunities, of the present moment.
Join RAVEN for a very special year-end webinar, “Unearthing Sorrows, Planting Hope”.
Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_MHVd5APbTAS94_9X9t2GeQ
On the 16th, RAVEN is bringing community together to ponder some of the painful unearthing of 2021. From the discovery of unmarked graves at residential schools around the country to the violent upheavals in Wet’suwet’en territory and beyond, this year has been a year of reckoning not only with the sorrows of the past, but also with the denial and ongoing colonialism being carried out right here and right now.
At the same time, just as some plants can only flourish in soil that has been radically disturbed, there has been an awakening. Settlers and Indigenous people are working to heal the divides that were imposed on us by racist and genocidal governments. A flourishing of art, music, and scholarship has brought concepts like “Land Back”, “Decolonial Love” and “Indigenous Resurgence” front and centre in the public discourse. Five out of ten bestselling books in this country are works by Indigenous authors.
For RAVEN, the sorrows that have been unearthed have led to courageous conversations and a deepening of people’s commitments to take on the hard, beautiful work of setting relationships right. We are honoured to be able to host Dr. John Borrows as he muses upon what we’ve learned this year, and where we can go from here.
“They tried to bury us. They didn’t know we were seeds.” Dinos Christianopoulos
Let’s grow from here.
