On March 19, as part of Indigenous Awareness Month at the University of Manitoba, UMFM and UMSU partnered with Fernwood Press to bring you At the Edge of Canada LIVE // Making Space for Indigenous Feminism from IQ's Café and Billiards on the 3rd Floor of UMSU Centre on Fort Garry Campus in South Winnipeg. Our guests are all contributors to the 2nd Edition of Making Space for Indigenous Feminism edited by Dr. Joyce Green (Ktunaxa-Cree/Métis) and published by Fernwood:

Dr. Emma LaRocque (Métis),
Professor in the Department of Native Studies in the Faculty of Arts at University of Manitoba
Dr. Diedre Desmarais (Cree-Métis),
Area Director Department of Access and Aboriginal Focus Programs in the Faculty of Extended Education at University of Manitoba
Dr. Gina Starblanket (Cree-Saulteaux),
Assistant Professor in the Department of Native Studies and Women's and Gender Studies in the Faculty of Arts at University of Manitoba

This a condensed version of the Live event.

Today our guest is Dakelh Indigenous sport historian Dr. Allan Downey, Assistant Professor in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University. We discuss his new book published by UBCPress: The Creator's Game: Lacrosse, Identity, and Indigenous Nationhood. Allan's book gives us the lifecycle of lacrosse in indigenous communities from one end of Turtle Island to the other. An ambitious project to say the least, as much for how sacred the game is for the Haudenausonee people, but also because of how difficult it is to track the projects of settler-colonialism that have disrupted, fragmented, and coportized this game from its spiritual roots. Yet, Allan not only finds amazing stories about Iroquian assertions of nationhood and resurgence, he executes a deep-dive into Andy Paul's work in Squamish communities while holding the mechanisms of biopolitical power accountable for their use of the sport in residential school and its corresponding effect on Indigenous ill-health. Allan insists the voices of Elders and spiritual characters into the narrative thus making this book an act of Indigenous sport history that is a clear "inside job" so-to-speak. We talk about the convergence of oral history and Indigenous sport history, W.G. Beers and his white settler arrogance, and we dish about the sacredness of the lacrosse stick.

Today our guest is Tsimshian-Gitksan/Cree-Métis artist Skeena Reece. Her show "Sweetgrass and Honey" has been running at the Plug-In Institute of Contemporary Art in downtown Winnipeg since January 20 and is set to wrap on March 18. Skeena gives us a virual tour of the exhibit, one that has been billed as a "survey of sorts" of some of her most recognizable work with the addition of some new work, too. The focal point of the exhibit is a mock living room set-up slightly off-centre, pointing intentionally away from an awe-inspiring wall mural commissioned from Wuikinuxv-Klahoose multimedia artist Bracken Hanuse Corlett. It is not until you sit in that chair does one feel the full weight of the stories and ideas and feelings that are compiled in the show. There are a number of other powerful pieces in "Sweetgrass and Honey" that Skeena commissioned like a series of pictures of Skeena with photoshopped scenes of colonial resistance on her body illustrated by Kwakwaka'wakw artist Gord Hill and a mischievous and satirical portrait of Skeena done by settler artist Collin Elder. Skeena and I chat about the artistic process, how commissioning art works as a form, the affective energy of "Sweetgrass and Honey", and she shares the profound influence James Luna had on her as an Indigenous artist.

We dedicate the show to the memory and spirit of James Luna who passed away on March 4.

Today our guests are Haida journalist John Medicine Horse Kelly, Adjunct Research Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University, and settler scholar Dr. Miranda Brady, Associate Professor in the School of Journalism and Communication at Carleton University. We discuss their latest book published via UBC Press: We Interrupt This Program: Indigenous Media Tactics in Canadian Culture. Brady and Kelly take as their guiding notion "remediation" in a theoretical sense, or the ways Indigenous journalists, artists, filmmakers, and public commenters are taking hold of the mainstream media cycle and its inherent trappings and deficiencies when it come to Indigenous stories. A sincerely difficult project to tackle in the digital age, especially one where Indigenous folks are ever-present on social media, in the news, and creating and distributing contemporary art. We talk about social media's role in remediation, diversity in the news room, Indigenous run and supported media entities, the folks who led the way first and mentoring the next wave. It was the first attempt at a conference call and a great show to kick-off Indigenous Awareness Month at UManitoba.

Today we go "over the edge" of Canada to chat with our guest, scholar Dr. K. Wayne Yang, Associate Professor in the Department of Ethnic Studies at University California--San Diego. We discuss his latest book he published as the avatar "la paperson" via UMinnesota Press: A Third University is Possible. Following the form of grey literature, "la paperson" taps into the insterstitial space somehwere between a manuscript and an article, to speculate widely about decolonizing the University from within the intersectional lens of Black film critique and indigenous feminisms. Due to the nature of "grey literature" or perhaps in spite of it, A Third University is Possible gestures sophisticatedly towards a theory of subverting settler-colonial legacies and processes that pervade the institution. "la paperson" imagines how a university manifests decolonizing riders rather than coerces a decolonized ethic, s/he entertains the notion of the truly rematriated space, and they asks us to consider how/where/what the third university space could be or look like without casting judgement of its viability or morality. We discuss writing contingently, grey literature as a genre, Ta-nehisi Coates' version of The Mecca (Howard University), and, borrowing from Tiffany Lethabo King, unpack a decolonizing land biopolitics. Yang/"la paperson" is an incredible thinker, compassionate organizer, and booming voice in intersectional cultural studies.

Today our guest is Cree PhD candidate in Indigenous Literature at the University of British Columbia and Instructor in the Department of Native Studies at the University of Manitoba: Dallas Hunt. We host a special hour-long LIVE! broadcast of At the Edge of Canada in the UMFM studios to discuss the fallout and response to the acquittal of Gerald Stanley in his second degree murder trail in the death of Colton Boushie from Red Pheasant FN in west-central Saskatchewan. Dallas is an established voice on Indigenous issues in the Indigenous intellectual community, in the institution and on social media. We work backwards form the present day, addressing critiques and alayses of the acquittal that are focused on the juicdical proceedings to the protests of the verdict to the defense counsel's strategy to the state of Indigenous/Non-Indigenous relations pre and post trial. We dig into the social actions that took place in Canadian urban centres and First Nation communities in response to the astounding not-guilty verdict on Feb. 10, including the march on the law courts that transpired in Winnipeg. We dish about the case: the preposterity of Stanley's defense, the hang-fire theory, settler-colonial biopolitics since Treaty 6 was made, and we intellectualize the spectral boundaries of the Canadian settler imaginary and the sites accorded to Indigenous youth that constitue real violence for imagined threats.

Dallas and his colleague in the Department of Native Studies, Dr. Gina Starblanket, also penned an opinion piece in the Globe and Mail on Feb. 13 that discusses similar ideas.

Today our guest is doctoral student in Applied Health Sciences at University of Manitoba, Nick Kosmenko. We discuss his doctoral research on the journeys of rural Indigenous elite athletes that utilizes an oral storytelling methodology to unlock and unpack the lived experiences of these athletes. Nick's research is unique and grounded in a two-eyed seeing approach which has yielded prestigious scholarships like the Vanier Canadian Graduate Scholarship and the C.D. Howe Memorial Fellowship from the Centre for Creative Wrting and Oral Cultures at University of Manitoba. We talk the discrepancies between rural and ubran training infrastructure, being an athlete from the north, the research and ethical implications of oral methodologies, and consider what rol ceremony as research has on the subject and the academy more broadly.

Today our guest is settler scholar Dr. Coll Thrush, Professor in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia. We discuss his latest book published via Yale University Press, Indigenous London: Native Travellers at the Heart of Empire. Following from his first book, Native Seattle, work that looks at histories of interactions and intersection in the upper northwest of the United States, Coll's newest book digs into important visits by Indigenous folks from across the world to the metropole of London, England. An ambitious project to say the least, as much for how many important visits there have been throughout the ages but also in how little positive and strength-based, skill-centered archival material there is to work from when writing about Indigenous travellers. Yet, Coll not only finds amazing stories about Maori rugby players or Joseph Tyendinaga attending a courtier masquerade ball, he also insists Indigenous presence, characterization, and international brilliance into the colonial history making appartus. We talk Indigenous history as a discipline, our favourite stories, we narrow down how Charles Dickens' racism seems to be genetic, and we dish about how amazing these first trans-Atlantic Indigenous travellers reallly were.

Today our guest is Métis Art History scholar Dr. Julie Nagam, the Chair of Indigenous Art in North America with the University of Winnipeg and Winnipeg Art Gallery (WAG). Julie and Curator of Indigenous Art at the WAG, Jaimie Isaac, co-curated the exhibit Insurgence/Resurgence which brings together the work of multiple contemporary Indigenous artistis who make impressive interventions into comporary art in a variety of mediums and impressions that are nation-specific and community centred. I was invited by the WAG to bring our Elder-in-Residence, Marlene Kayseas, along for the tour. Julie discusses the intersection of Indigenous style and art design with the masters of the form, the imposition Non-Indigenous space makes on the indigenous curatorial process, how to build interactive displays for Indigenous youth, and how empowering making space for contemporary Indigenous art in the WAG can be.

Insurgence/Resurgence will be on display until Apr. 22.

Today our guest is Cree poet and doctoral student in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, Bily-Ray Belcourt. In addition to his cutting-edge doctoral research on Indigenous queer affect theory that is housed in the liminal space of the spiritual and the real, Billy-Ray recently published a book of poetry via Frontenac Press: This Wound Is A World. Billy-Ray's poetry seeks to constitute an "effective commons" that offers a figurative, metaphorical, and literal space for the emotional loneliness that we all individually feel but often collectively express. Billy-Ray's work is erotic in an intellectually gratifying way, nearly as risqué and explicit as one can be while luxuriating in the theroretical gaps and spaces of the post-colonial, queer Indigenous body that looks out on to the world and feels, hurts, loves, aches, and surrenders to the beauty and pain of reality. We discuss Billy-Ray's version of decolonial love, strategies for inviiting metaphor into poems, the erotics of the armpit, and perhaps most importantly who his Indigneous intellectual crushes are right now. He opens the show with a reading of his poem: "If I Have a Body, Let it be a Book of Sad Poems".

For the first show of 2018 and Season 2.2 (Winter Semester), our guest is Métis masters student in the Peace and Conflict Studies joint program hosted by the University of Manitoba and Univeristy of Winnipeg, Kathleen Wilson. In addition to her graduate research on Indigenous theories of peace building and conflict resolution, Kathleen was the Co-Chair for organizing the 3rd Annual Peace and Conflict Studies' Students' Association Graduate Student Conference: Peace Without Borders. Every Fall, the PCSSA brings together leading contributors to global research on international peace and conflict resolution at spaces co-hosted by UM and UW. At the 2017 edition, Kathleen presented her paper "The Merits of the Speherical Cow: Weaving Together Peacebuilding Theories in the Context of Violence Against Indigenous Peoples in Canada". Kathleen's work puts intellectual pressure on the theoretical abstractions of very real sites of contestation in neo-colonial Canada and what effect philosophizing has on the pursuit of peace and reconciliation. Peace and Conflict Studies as a discipline is new in the larger spectrum of academe and goes by different iterations across the country, Kathleen gives us her take on the discipline's strengths and weaknesses, the larger role of Peace and Conflict Studies in the global community, and her personal experience as a Métis woman delivering gradaute research in a joint program administered by the Faculty of Graduate Studies.

For the final show of 2017, we close out our showcase of work done by and about Inuit folks from the North. Today our guest is author Aviaq Johnston, the critically-accalimed Inuk author who also works in Inuit student support for the Ottawa-based Nunavut Sivuniksavut college program. We talk about her latest book nominated for a BURT Award for Indigneous Literature and a Governor-General's award: Those Who Run in the Sky. It is the story of a skilled young hunter -- Pitu -- who is destined to become a powerful and respected shaman, healer, and member of his community but gets lost while out hunting in the Arctic. The story is epic, magical, and authentically Inuit as it gives us a genuine look at Inuit storytelling, society, and Inuit legend. We talk about different characterizations in the book like representations of strong Inuk women and then we also dip into Inuit politics like the naming of the Edmonton Football club and the importance of reading engagement in the north in conversation with her student support work.

At the end of the show, Tim Fontaine from WalkingEalgeNews.com makes a special guest appearance to deliver us all the headlines in Indian Country Today from the worldwide leader in Indigenous News! Be sure to check out Tim's work and support his Patreon.

For the next two weeks we showcase work done by and about Inuit folks in the Arctic. Today our guest is author Kenn Harper, a settler researcher and educator who lived in the North for 50 years. We talk about his newest book Thou Shalt Do No Murder: Inuit, Injustice and the Canadian Arctic. Harper tells the story of Nuqallaq, an Inuk hunter, who out of anxiety and self-defence staged the ensnarment and murder of fur trader Robert Janes who was threatening the safety and well-being of an Inuk family hunting encampment up in Pond Inlet in the early part of the 20th century. When the Canadian Mounted Police were informed, they investigated and staged a trial in an area with no Canadian influence by way of asserting sovereignty over the North. Nuqallaq was convicted of homicide and sent to prison in Edmonton. Harper's book deals with a series of cultural and sub-cultural collisions from Euro-Canadian notions of promises and negotiation to Inuk epistemologies of social order and economic credit. The show trial itself, like it was cut out of an episode of North of 60, is a touchstone of Canadian authority in the North. Harper and I discuss the political outcomes of the trial, Nuqallaq's legacy, and the Inuk cultural values. Next week, Inuk graphic artist Aviaq Johnson, whom coincidentally enoguh is named after Harper's daughter.

On Wednesday and Thursday, Nov. 8-9, the Office of Indigenous Engagement in partnership with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation hosted the 3rd Annual Building Reconciliation Forum in the Multi-Purpose Room of the UMSU University Centre Building to discuss the state of reconciliation in higher education across the country. The organizing committee of the conference invited leading researchers and executives of Indigenous initiatives in Post-Secondary Universities to deliver panels and speeches. Dr. Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux (Lakehead), Indigenous Chair of Truth and Reconciliation, delivered the keynote addresss on Day 1. The Forum was Moderated by CBC Radio Personality Rosanna Deerchild, who invited Dr. Lynn Lavallee, Vice-Provost Indigenous Engagement (UManitoba) to open the proceedings and then Dr. Wesley-Esquimaux (Anishinaabe - Chippeawa of Georgina Island) to deliver her address entitled: "Reconciliation Is Not Just A Word". This is an abridged version of the keynote.

Today our guests are the Leadership of the Student Pipeline Action Committee (S-PAC) from UManitoba's Robson Hall Law School, President and Anishinaabe Law Student Danielle Morrison, and Vice-President of Media and Marketing and Anishinaabe Law Student Alyssa Bird. S-PAC is a group of Indigenous Law Students who are committed to furthering the dialogue and taking action concerning the critical battle against pipelines in North America. On Nov. 2, in The Moot Court Room of Robson Hall, S-PAC hosted a panel titled "Beyond Borders: Pipeline Resistance from Standing Rock to Manitowapow" that invited Prof. Aimee Craft, Activist Clayton Thomas-Muller, Red Rising Co-Founder Sadie Phoenix-Lavoie, and comedian Dallas Goldtooth (via Skype) to discuss recent and on-going actions happening across North America. Lately, S-PAC has been running a "Water Is Life" merchandise funding campaign to help support legal battles for First Nation communities against resource extraction companies, specifically the actions around the Line 3 Replacement from Alberta to North Dakota. I caught up with the President and the VP-Media and Marketing while they were in Migizii Agamik: Indigenous Student Centre hosting a vendor table. We discuss mobilizing student activism, water law, what it's like to be an Indigenous Law Student, and the recent Keystone Pipeline breech in South Dakota. Check out S-PAC on Facebook to support their campaigns.

Today our guest is Independent Métis filmmaker from Edmonton, Conor McNally. Conor's newest film ôtênaw has been screening at film festivals and Indigenous academic gatherings all across the country. The experimental documentary follows Cree scholar, Dwayne Donald on a interactive land-based learning experience, as he delivers a walking tour of the North Saskatchewan River Valley that runs through the heart of Edmonton. It has been called a palimpset of moving images, histories, cultures, and cosmologies, as Conor infuses and layers the raw black and white footage of Dwayne teaching with sensory lighting, music, and psychdellic like transitions between scenes of modern day Edmonton and crystal clear archival footage of the region known as Amiskwaciwâskahikan. Conor will be screening at The ARTLab on Fort Garry campus on November 7 as part of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's Decolonizing Lens series, and as part of the larger activities happening around the Univeristy of Manitoba's Office of Indigenous Engagement hosting the 3rd Annual Building Reconciliation Conference from Nov. 7-9 which Dr. Donald will be delivering a keynote speech at. We caught up with Conor while he was in Toronto to screen ôtênaw at ImagiNative Film Festival back in October. We chat about independent film making and his experience travelling to Winnipeg to screen at the WINDX Experimental Film Festival in early October.

Today our guest is Anishinaabe PhD Candidate in Education at the Univeristy of British Columbia, Amber Shilling. In addition to her doctoral research, Amber has recently been appointed the Coordinator of Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement - British Columbia (SAGE-BC). SAGE, an international network of peer-mentoship between Indigenous graduate students, was started by the Maori in New Zealand to improve graduate school completion rates for Maori researchers. In Canada, SAGE operates on the West Coast as "pods" and in Southern Ontario and Quebec as "nests" between major research institutions and Indigenous intellectual communities. Amber coordinates all BC "pods" in her role as provincial coordinator. In my work as Indigenous Graduate Student Success Coordinator, I have been working to grow a SAGE "garden" on the prairies with the Hub being at UManitoba and connecting outwards to other "gardens" at UWinnipeg, BrandonU, UCN, URegina, and UMinnesota. As support workers in higher education, Amber and I dish about our philosophies of student support, programming models, the challenges of building a diverse and spread-out community of researchers, and how essential ethically collaborative networks are for surviving the harsh eco-system of graduate school as an Indigenous graduate student.

Today, a very exciting and important show, our guest is Cree graduate student at the Ontario Institue for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto, Erica Violet Lee who joins us from downtown Toronto for an exclusive interview. Erica, along with five other Indigenous women and Two-Spirit artists and intellectuals, wrote an open letter to University of Regina Press asking for poetry by Saskatchewan based Cree poet, Neal McLeod, to be removed from an anthology of Saskatchewan authors, they were initially included in, entitled--Kisiskâciwan: Indigenous Voices from Where the River Flows Swiftly--due to his convictions of domestic abuse. URPress had publicly stated they would not remove McLeod's work citing censorship rules; but, the day before we taped the interview, McLeod had posted a public apology and willingly removed his work. I check-in with Erica and get her take on the feelings of the group about the process and the movement that has garnered loads of media attention Nationally on social media and in the publishing world.

In solidarity, I asked my friend and Métis-Saulteaux-Polish visual artist from Tio'tia:ke (Montreal), Dayna Danger, who was in town to speak at the C2C: Two-Spirit & Queer People of Colour conversation happening at UWinnipeg over the weekend and who preformed at the Launch of Red Rising Issue 7 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery where some of her work is being shown at the Insurgence/Resurgence exhibit, to introduce Erica and lead off the show.

Pledge-O-Rama 2017 Live! Form Migizii Agamik: Indigenous Student Centre Foyer, including a broadcast of Nisga'a poet and UManitoba Writer-in-Residence Jordan Abel performing live at St. John's College for the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral History's Writer-In-Residence Welcoming Talk.

Also, we check in with new indigenous Achievement Communications Coordinator Mike Still about upcoming events on-campus like the 3rd Annual Building Reconciliation Forum set to run November 7-9 and the Decolonizing Lens Film Series hosted by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

Pledge-O-Rama runs Oct. 13-20. Pledges can be cast by phone at 204-474-6610.

Today our guest is settler scholar Dr. Michele Tanaka, Assistant Professor of Educational Foundations and Teacher Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Victoria. We discuss her newest book published via UBC Press: -- Learning and Teaching Together: Weaving indigenous Ways of Knowing into Education --. As was reported last month, the province of Manitoba is facing a critical shortage of certified teachers in Northern communities, specifically FNMI comunities. Facing already large fiscal and resource gaps in education, FNMI communities are now struggling to find properly trained teachers to deliver the basic level of instruction, nevermind culturally literatre teachers for Indigenous learners. Michele's work provides an essential contribution to the conversation around Indigenous pedagogies and teacher certification. -- Learning and Teaching Together -- takes as its case study a group of pre-service teachers who enroll in an immersive Indigenous methods course titled "Earth Fibres" at UVic. It becomes apparent quite quickly that indigenous models do not fit so neatly into the Euro-Canadian education tradition: classes bleed out of the rooms into the halls and on to the land, learning is reflective and relational rather than individualistic, evaluation is developmental rather than hierarchical, and time moves in its own way. We cover politics, curriculum, evaluation, and learning, but we really dig into time.

Today our guest is Haisla/Heiltsuk author Eden Robinson. We discuss the growing buzz around her new book, the first in a trilogy: -Son of A Trickster-. Eden's new novel follows the tumultuous adolescent years of a young man from Kitimat named Jared. His story, although not an entirely uncommon one for a First Nations' youth in Canada, is particularly unique because he may or may not be the product of a teenage love affair between Weeg'it the Trickster and a Haisla witch at an all-Native baskeball tournament in the 80s. Jared is a redeemable character in an irredeemable world, a universe at the whims of magic, trickery, and the everyday social problems of being First Nations in Canada today. Eden is getting a ton of praise for -Son of A Trickster- where she has already been shortlisted for Canada's top literary prize, among other accolades.

Today our guest is Mi'kmaq Philosophy Honors Student at St. Thomas University, Shaunessy McKay. We discuss the second printing of her and Oneida Professor of Psychology at STMU, Dr. Roland Chrisjohn's book: --Dying to Please You: Indigenous Suicide in Contemporary Canada--. In response to the rising need for mental health support workers and psychologists to visit FNMI communities beset by youth suicide epidemics, McKay and Chrisjohn's work provides an essential contribution to the conversation. Specifically, --Dying to Please You-- reads as an intellectual counterpounch to non-Indigenous theories of suicide, namely the theoretical gap of how oppresive suicide works. We dig into McKay's work with surveying the discipline of suicidology and how the two uncovered early Karl Marx as a foundational pivot point on the conversation of suicide and alientation. McKay also provides us with her interpretation of "informed resistance" the duo's suggestion of how Indigenous people struggling with self-harm can lean-on and lean into, as a way of overcoming the oppresive alienation of settler-colonialism. Their book is avialable through Theytus Books or online as a .pdf.

Season 2 gets under way! Today our guest is PhD candidate in the Department of History at University of Manitoba, Krista Barclay. Over the summer, Krista was the only U of M scholar to be awarded a Newberry Fellowship research award to conduct field work at the U of M archives in Dafoe Library. Krista's dissertation studies the migration patterns of 19th Century Retired HBC workers, and by extension, the movements of Metis and Indigenous families as they left the fur trade. We dig into geneaology as research and the ethics of community-based research with and for Indigneous families. Specifically, Krista explains the psyche of the retired company men and the socio-economic climate of leaving the fur trade in the mid to late 19th Century. Now that the fieldwork component of her PhD is complete, Krista plans to write her dissertation in the coming year, and dissemenate her findings on a digital platform.