RED on RED: Indigeneity\, Labour\, Value is a two-day gathering\, which invites community and public participation \, of artists\, writers\, researchers\, and activists seeking to together p robe and imagine ways of overcoming impasses in decolonial horizons through creative alternatives to traditional academic events. We meet on unceded a ncestral Musqueam territory on May 11 to share art and research that explor e the by-turns antagonistic and yet mutually embracing questions of raciali zation and of labour – both grounds of capital’s vociferous extractive tech niques. We take both racialized oppression and value-productive exploitatio n to share a conjuncture that necessitates surmounting common external cons traints imposed by capital’s colonization of everyday life\, a second order of colonization compounding that of settler-state colonization. While the Indian Act dispossessed First Nations peoples of their resources and forms of life\, the seemingly “free” sale of remaining lands and resources\, incl uding that of the labour power of Indigenous peoples\, might be understood as anything but free\, and instead as another order of coercive compulsion by capital and another round of dispossession possibly posing as self-deter mination.
Some shared questions to ponder together: To what extent ha ve struggles against colonial oppression and the capitalist exploitation of labour-power – above all indigenous labour – lived in the shadow of each o ther’s blind spots? Does the sale (rather than seizure) of land and resourc es embedded within it liberate or doubly dispossess Indigenous peoples who continue to be stewards of the land\, even as that sale might enrich the di spossessed in the short-term? Is the sale of labour-power one such resource or does it afford Indigenous peoples a path to self-determination within c ommunity? Is the value-productive sale of the commodity labour-power in the transactional and abstract space of the labour market just another form of colonial capture? Is decolonization authentically possible within a capita list social rubric in which impersonal and transactional social relations d issolve community? (What would life outside a market-mediated relation look like for most of us now and especially for those who seek sovereignty with in and against the colonial state? What does overcoming the settler state a nd the forms of possession it has sewn in us [identity\, property] mean for Turtle Island now in practical terms\, in everyday life?) And what of unse en Indigenous cultural and spiritual labour\, unknown labour that is only s hared within communities and for Indigenous witnesses? What is the value of Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural labour that facilitates ideas of so cial justice within institutional structures such as UBC? What are artists and historians doing to acknowledge the labour value of culture and how is this knowledge disseminated to students?
We hope to take these questi ons on through forms of embodied engagement\, of art\, performance practice s\, and through sharing research and conversation. We also hope to open the se questions up to our communities across what is known as UBC and as Vanco uver on these unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musq ueam)\, sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh)\, and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish Coast S alish) peoples.
Participants: Sonny Assu\, Dana Claxton\, Glen Coulth ard\, Gord Hill\, Peter Kulchyski\, Jaleh Mansoor\, Marianne Nicolson\, Ske ena Reece\, Devin Z. Shaw\, Marika Swan\, Tania Willard
May 1
1\, 2022
Gathering Schedule: Open to the Public
Room 1002 Audain
Art Centre
6398 University Boulevard
10:00-10:30
Opening remarks by Dana Claxton and Jaleh Mansoor
moderated by D
ana Claxton
Marianne Nicolson\, The Myth of the Neo-Lib
eral Indigenous Saviour*
Tania Willard\, Labour Pains: Indige
nous Story and Work within a Colonial Context of Capitalist Labour*
11:45-Noon
Break
Noon-1:15
moderated by Jaleh Mansoor
Glen Coulthard\, Once Were
Maoists: Third World Currents in Fourth World Anti-Colonialism*
Devin Zane Shaw\, The Far Right\, Settler Colonialism\, and the Three-W
ay Fight
1:15-2:30
Lunch
BFA stu
dios\, Room 3000
2:30-3:45
moderated by Dana Claxton
Sonny Assu\, T
he Speculator Boom: Issue #0*
Marika Swan\, flesh of the tree
of life
3:45-4:00
Break
4:
00-5:15
moderated by Jaleh Mans
oor
Gord Hill\, Civilization\,
Colonialism\, Capitalism\, and Comics
Peter
Kulchyski\, Bush Marxism: Theses on Di
alectical Materialism and Indigenous Struggles
Break
5:30-6:00
Skeena Re
ece Performance\, Good Trade
BFA studios\, Room 3000
6:00-6:45
Reception
BFA studios\, Room 3000
*Presentations will be delivered via Zoom to gathered participants
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gram-Brochure-2022.pdf"][/buttons]
For more information: < a href="mailto:ahva.dept@ubc.ca">ahva.dept@ubc.ca
Masks are requi red to be worn in public indoor spaces at UBC. Please bring a mask if you a ttend. https ://srs.ubc.ca/covid-19/masks-or-face-coverings/
RED on RED is pre sented by the Department of Art History\, Visual Art and Theory at the Univ ersity of British Columbia\, supported in part by funding from the Social S ciences and Humanities Research Council.
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