Syilx-Led Climate Justice in a Global Context: A Conversation Between Dr. Jeannette Armstrong and Prof. Naomi Klein

Climate justice seeks to address how climate crises disproportionately impact communities and people already experiencing injustices rooted in colonialism, capitalism and intersecting structures of power. Although communities on the frontlines of climate injustices have intimate experiences and understandings of climate crises, their expertise and knowledge are often not reflected in climate-related research, policy, and resource allocations.

Join us for a conversation between Syilx Elder, scholar, and author Dr. Jeannette Armstrong and author, activist, journalist and filmmaker Naomi Klein. Speaking from local to global perspectives, the speakers will discuss questions such as, how can solutions to climate injustices be radically altered by Syilx and community-led climate action to reduce the harm and share the burden of its effects? A discussion with the audience will follow.

This will be an on-campus, in-person event, with a meet-and-greet for Community, Culture and Global Studies students and faculty before the talk.

Registration

Members and affiliates of the UBC campus community may attend in-person, or online via a Zoom webinar.

• Attend in person: email ccgs.okanagan@ubc.ca (space is limited; not all requests may be accommodated)
• Attend online: register online (the Zoom webinar link will be sent to registrants prior to the event)

About the Speakers

Dr. Jeannette Armstrong is an Associate Professor of Indigenous Studies at UBC Okanagan. Her research is centered on Indigenous philosophies, specifically Okanagan Syilx thought and environmental ethics coded into Syilx literatures. She was recently appointed to the Order of Canada in June 2023 for her “contributions to Canadian literature and poetry, and for her leadership in revitalizing the Syilx Okanagan Indigenous language” (Order of Canada). Dr. Armstrong has been instrumental in establishing the three Interior Salish Language Fluency Degree Programs at UBC Okanagan (Nsyilxcn, NłeɁkepmx, and St’at’imc), the first programs of their kind in Canada.

 

Prof. Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, columnist, and international bestselling author of eight books, such as The Shock Doctrine, This Changes Everything, On Fire, and How to Change Everything: The Young Human’s Guide to Protecting the Planet and Each Other. She is currently touring to promote her most recent book, Doppelganger. She is Senior Correspondent for The Intercept and an inaugural Marielle Franco fellow of the Social Justice Initiative Portal Project at the University of Chicago. In 2018, she was named the inaugural Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair in Media, Culture and Feminist Studies at Rutgers University, and is now Honorary Professor of Media and Climate at Rutgers. In September 2021, she joined the University of British Columbia in the Department of Geography as UBC Professor of Climate Justice (tenured) and is the founding co-director of the UBC Centre for Climate Justice.

 

Dr. Onyx Sloan Morgan (moderator) is an Assistant Professor of Geography at UBC Okanagan. Their research is most often conducted in partnership with and at the direction of communities. Dr Sloan Morgan’s research focuses on three overlapping interests: 1) socio-legal and colonial geographies; 2) queering and critical political ecologies; and 3) healthy environments and communities in rural, remote, northern, and Indigenous locales. Longstanding research partnerships animate their current research.