Speaker Series

Dr. Robyn Maynard is an author and scholar based in Toronto, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies. She is the author of Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present (Fernwood 2017). The book is a national bestseller, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, listed in The Walrus‘s “best books of 2018,” shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Errol Sharpe Book Prize. In 2018 the book was published in French with Mémoire d’encrier, titled NoirEs sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada. Translated by Catherine Ego, it won the 2019 Prix de libraires in the category of “essais.”

Her most recent published monograph is Rehearsals for Living, co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, published with Knopf (Canada), Haymarket: Abolitionist Paper Series (US/UK), and forthcoming with Memoire D’encrier (French translation). The book is a Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and CBC National Bestseller.

Maynard is the winner of the “2018 author of the year” award by Montreal’s Black History Month and was nominated for Writer’s Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. She has published writing in the Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, and Scholar & Feminist Journal. Her writing on borders, policing, abolition and Black feminism are taught widely in universities across Canada and the United States.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a renowned Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg scholar, writer and artist who has been widely recognized as one of the most compelling Indigenous voices of her generation. Her work breaks open the intersections between politics, story and song—bringing audiences into a rich and layered world of sound, light, and sovereign creativity.

Working for two decades as an independent scholar using Nishnaabeg intellectual practices, Leanne has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada and the United States and has twenty years of experience with Indigenous land-based education. She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba and teaches at the Dechinta Centre for Research & Learning in Denendeh.

Leanne is the author of eight books, including A Short History of the Blockade and the novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize. This Accident of Being Lost was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Trillium Book Award. Her new project, a collaboration with Robyn Maynard, Rehearsals for Living, is a National Best Seller and was short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Leanne is also a musician. Her latest release, Theory of Ice, was named to the Polaris Prize shortlist, and she is the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award.

Elder Colleen Sitting Eagle

Oki nistowaok Sipiyanatohkomia”ki.

Elder Colleen Sitting Eagle is the Siksika Language Instructor at Siksika Outreach School located in Siksika Nation since 2009. 

Previously, Colleen worked as a researcher with Blackfoot Crossing Historical Park. She has worked with Siksika culture and heritage since 1992. Colleen learned her Siksika history from her late parents and the honour of working with knowledgeable elders. 

She was one of the first groups from Siksika to be integrated to start her schooling in Strathmore, AB. She previously attended and continues to take courses from the University of Calgary. She is the proud mother of three children and eight grandchildren.