Events

The KAIROS Blanket Exercise (KBE) is an interactive learning experience that examines the historic and contemporary relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in the land we now know as Canada. As a participant, you’ll step on blankets representing the land and into the role of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples. You’ll be guided by trained facilitators, including Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers through our shared history, including pre-contact, treaty-making, colonization, resistance and much more. We’ll close with a talking circle to debrief and a shared meal.

You can sign up for the event with the link provided or reach out to Sean Hayes, the director of Campus Ministry (sean.hayes@uwaterloo.ca) for more information.

Please participate in Bridge: Honouring the Lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit People, an annual installation for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence at the University of Waterloo.

• Opening Ceremony on Friday, October 27 at 10:00 AM
• Closing Ceremony on Friday, November 10 at 10:00 AM

Both ceremonies will take place at the Ceremonial Fire Grounds and the bridge between Environment 3 and United College and will be followed by a catered Soup Lunch and Creative Reflection.

Please join us November 6, 1pm - 3pm in EC5 1111.

Clayton Samuel King, Potawatomi from Beausoleil, is an artist, educator, and orator. One of his areas of expertise and passion is the Williams treaties, which effect his home community. In this presentation, Clayton will discuss life before the treaties, 100 years of the Williams Treaties and their implications such as denied rights to hunting and fishing

In this presentation, Indigenous Knowledge Keeper Myeengun Henry guides attendees on an interactive journey back in time. He discusses how treaties and agreements were spiritually significant, emphasizing the intent and meaning Indigenous folks carried into these agreements. 

Please participate in Bridge: Honouring the Lives of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two Spirit People, an annual installation for 16 Days of Activism Against Gender-Based Violence at the University of Waterloo.

• Opening Ceremony on Friday, October 27 at 10:00 AM
• Closing Ceremony on Friday, November 10 at 10:00 AM

Both ceremonies will take place at the Ceremonial Fire Grounds and the bridge between Environment 3 and United College and will be followed by a catered Soup Lunch and Creative Reflection.

We've likely all heard at least a bit about the "pipeline" problem in academia. While the need to address the "pipeline" problem and create more diverse institutions is real, it is not the only area of concern when attending to gender inequalities across the University. In this faculty specific lecture, Dr. Jamie Sewell will go beyond the "pipeline" problem to address some ways that we can work toward greater gender equity once more demographically and value-diverse folks have made it onto our campus and into our departments, offices, and support teams.

Topics include the narrative of "value", what it means to be an ally, creating open feedback channels, and more.

Conversations about gender equity can be challenging. Not only are there lots of ways that gender inequities can manifest, often making the discussion fractured and complicated, but the personal responsibilities each of us have for collective injustice, and the important real-life impacts of gender inequity can make productive dialogue fraught with dispositional barriers to success.

In this faculty specific lecture, Dr. Jamie Sewell aim's to create some common conceptual ground upon which more productive conversations and work toward gender equity can be built. This lecture will make clear some candidate theories of gender and why investing in the idea of a gender binary is both ethically and empirically problematic. We will also explain the importance of taking an intersectional approach to solutions to gender inequity, and identify some of the most important dispositional barriers to successfully addressing gender inequities.

Elder-in-Residence William Woodworth

The most central ceremony of the Haudenosaunee comes five days after the first new moon in January – or January 16th this year.

This talk will guide you through the eight days which consolidate the entire culture in words and activities of thanksgiving as a prelude to the coming year.

Presentation on Métis culture and history, including with the ethnogenesis of the Métis, "Who Are the Métis?", their unique and rich culture and language. Why did they disappear in history? Where are they today?