McGill University: https://birksforum.ca/
For the full schedule (which is still developing), see: https://birksforum.ca/schedule-2/
The Birks Forum 2022 is pleased to announce a webinar series interrogating the history, current challenges, and opportunities at the intersection of Indigenous communities and Christianity. This series will explore specific issues in diverse global contexts: Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, and Australasia.
Over the course of the modern era, global Christian missionary outreach has often been complicit in imperial and settler-colonial projects pursuing violence towards, and assimilation of, Indigenous cultures. In Canada, the ‘Calls for Action’ (58-61) of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission proposed paths to address the role played by the Christian churches in their collaboration with the federal government’s colonial projects.
In other contexts, these encounters have also challenged established forms of Christianity to expand beyond their theological and cultural limitations through a deeper engagement with Indigenous traditions and spiritualities. Both Indigenous communities and the Christianities they have encountered face a range of deeply unsettled issues in addressing past histories and charting paths forward.
The Birks Forum 2022 webinar series will explore these histories and challenges in varied global contexts. While there is significant range of issues that affect diverse Indigenous communities in their engagement with Christianity – education, environment, gender, reconciliation, peace-building – each webinar will highlight issues that have emerged as pivotal for the community under discussion. Keynote speakers are Indigenous leaders, scholars, and actors from diverse disciplinary perspectives, both within and beyond the academy.
