Raising Olamina: Emergent Parenting in the Time of the Parables (by Dr. Ayana Jamieson)

This week’s guest blogger is Ayana Jamieson, PhD. Dr. Jamieson is an assistant professor of Ethnic Studies at Cal Poly Pomona, a mythologist, and depth psychologist. She is the founder of the Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network, a global community founded in 2011, committed to highlighting Octavia Butler’s life and work while creating new works inspired by Butler’s legacy. Dr. Jamieson’s, “Far Beyond the Stars” appears in the Black Futures anthology. She has also published in The Feminist Wire, 51 Feminist Thinkers, Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction, Public Books, elsewhere and was a featured speaker at the New York Times “A New Climate” on climate change. Follow her @ayanajamieson @oeblegacy on FB and IG or @oeblegacy on Twitter & Tumblr.

A book can start an entire journey. In my case, the books of the late pioneering Black woman speculative fiction writer, Octavia E. Butler changed the trajectory of my entire life. My origin story related to her work has been shared many times, but I want to talk about what it means to be “raising Olamina” after a character in a book the same age as my non-fictional children. In fact, I used my child’s remote schooling desk to record this interview with NPR’s Throughline Podcast, “Octavia Butler: Visionary Fiction” in 2021. Her work explores different ways of being human with diverse and expertly rendered characters. 

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Seeing in colour (by Kahawíhson Horne)

This week’s guest blogger is Kahawíhson Horne. She is Kanien’kehá:ka from Kahnawà:ke who is currently enrolled in the Ratihwennahní:rat’s Adult Immersion Program. She is a recent graduate of Concordia University with a BA in First People’s Studies as well as a background in media, food sovereignty, and language revitalization. She is an avid gardener who enjoys sushi and a good bottle of wine.

Speaking Kanien’kéha is like watching television in colour,” is an oft repeated anecdote passed down from my grandmother by way of an unknown elder. “English,” she continued “is television in black and white.”

Iroquois cradle board
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Season’s greetings: From our BILD/LIDA family to yours!

“See” you all in 2023!

Dear BILD readers, Mela (who is now traveling in India) asked me to step in for her to write this year-end message. It has been an honour to be involved in the BILD community since 2017, where I have the privilege to read people’s thoughts and musings about issues of belonging, identity, language, and diversity. I know as a regular blogger myself, each time when we write, we take risks. We make ourselves vulnerable by inviting people into our world of inner thoughts and feelings. We don’t know who will be reading it, how it is going to be received, and whether the topic we discuss or the experience we describe will have an impact on the reader as it did on us. But when it does and when a reader tells you how their experience reverberates yours, we feel an indescribable connection, a shared human experience that makes us whole. 

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Part 2 — Plants Are Our Second Oldest Teachers (by Rhonda Chung)

This blog post includes a linked audio file. Just click on the link below if you would like to hear the post read aloud. Scroll down to read the text.

In “Land as Pedagogy” (Simpson, 2014), young Kwezens watches Ajidamoo perched above her, nibbling on a branch of Ninaatigoog. Upon returning home, Kwezens recounts the interaction with her mother, who then tells the aunties to gather round the Ninaatigoog the following day. Kwezens shows her community how to tap the tree for sap, modelling the knowledge she observed from the small tree-dwelling mammal. 

In Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg epistemologies, Simpson explains, knowledge comes directly from relationships with the environment, which flow in non-linear ways from the young to the old and from non-human beings to humans; hierarchical ways of thinking are not useful in ecological relationships.

https://www.earthisland.org/journal/index.php/magazine/entry/mirroring-nature/
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Part of the Buzz: Reflections on Co-Chairing the 2022 EGSS Conference at McGill University (by Marianne Barker)

Marianne Barker, our guest blogger this week, is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University. Her research focuses on the social integration of Canadian immigrants, investigating how sense of belonging and identity develop in the context of language programming for newcomers. She filled the role of conference co-chair during her fourth year of doctoral studies as a way to get involved in a leadership role and to gain experience in academic conference organization. The EGSS Conference is an entirely graduate student led annual conference with the goal of peer mentoring, support and collaboration. See the 20th annual conference website here  and keep up with other EGSS news and events here.

Have you ever watched a bee hive abuzz in the heat of a summer day? If so, you will likely have observed the innate synergy of the hive, with each bee whizzing along on its own path and somehow contributing to a cumulative ‘hum’ of productivity and collective energy. This spring, I had the privilege of ‘humming’ among a team of student leaders involved in organizing the 20th Annual Education Graduate Student Society (EGSS) Conference within McGill University’s faculty of education. The conference took place on March 25-26th, 2022, with both presenters and attendees joining in-person on McGill’s campus and online via Zoom.

In true conference form, those in attendance felt energized and excited at having shared ideas, networked, and plugged into the community. The purpose of this blog post is twofold: (1) To offer some reflections on chairing a student-led conference through the lens of belonging, identity; and (2) to promote the diverse and high-quality work of the presenters at this year’s conference.

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