Can We Decolonize Open? An Open Access Week Event

Join Langara, Kwantlen, BCIT, SFU, and UBC for an exciting half-day celebration of Open Access Week (Oct 21-27, 2019). This year’s theme from SPARC is Open for Whom? Equity in Open Knowledge. Our keynote speaker, Jessie Loyer, will explore this question alongside participants through the lens of decolonization. The conversation will continue with local panelists engaged in open knowledge work.

Light refreshments will be served courtesy of our partner BCcampus. All are welcome.

Date: Tuesday, October 22 2019
Time: 12:30pm-1pm (check-in), 1pm-4pm (program). Detailed agenda provided below.
Place: Kwantlen Polytechnic University, 8771 Lansdowne Road, Richmond BC; Wilson School of Design, room 4900
Cost: Free! Registration requested

This event will also be live streamed on Kwantlen’s Open Access Week event page (no registration required).

Summary of Jessie’s talk

Sometimes when folks are in the midst of a monumental, feel-good shift, they fail to realize who has been excluded from that space. Librarians and scholars have been advocating the ideals of open access for many years and have seen the exciting changes the movement creates for public knowledge. Yet we rarely think about whose voices are absent and the structures of power that limit this project. Together, we’ll query our positionality in these spaces, and consider how the politics of refusal and an ethic of care might intersect to complicate the open access movement, potentially creating futurities of reciprocity. If rethought as a tool of resurgence, open access can support justice.

About Jessie
Jessie is Cree-Métis and a member of Michel First Nation. She is a liaison librarian at Mount Royal University in Calgary, a guest on Treaty 7 and Blackfoot territory. Her research looks at Indigenous perspectives on information literacy, supporting language revitalization, and creating ongoing research relationships using a nêhiyaw minâ otipêmisiw concept of kinship.

Agenda

12:30-1 Check-in
1-1:15 Welcome
Lekeyten – KPU’s Elder in Residence
Todd Mundle – University Librarian, KPU
1:15-2:20 Keynote by Jessie Loyer
2:20-2:40 Refreshment break, courtesy of our partner BCcampus
2:40-3:55 Panel discussion

  • Natalie Knight (Diné and Yurok) – moderator; Indigenous Curriculum Consultant, Langara College
  • Jessie Loyer (see bio provided above)
  • Lara Maestro (formerly of UBC’s Indigitization initiative)
  • Maddie Knickerbocker (Lecturer in the First Nations Studies Department at SFU)
  • Michael Wynne (Digital Applications Librarian, Washington State University Libraries’ Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation)
  • Emily Larson (Digital Specialist, Indian Residential School History & Dialogue Centre)
3:55-4 Closing remarks; giving thanks

We respectfully acknowledge that our host, KPU, takes its name from the Kwantlen First Nation and is located on the unceded traditional and ancestral lands of the Kwantlen, Musqueam, Katzie, Semiahmoo, Tsawwassen, Qayqayt and Kwikwetlem peoples.

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