ILSA 2025 Annual Gathering,
in Tkaronto at George Brown College from Jun. 2-4, 2025.
ILSA is delighted to announce the following keynote and roundtable speakers:
June 2, 2025 from 9:30-10:30: Keynote Address by Jeannette Armstrong
Indigenous Oral Literatures and Relationality: Land, Community & Identity
Co-hosted by the Canadian Association for the Study of Indigenous Education (CASIE) • Congress Open Event • Captioning provided in English and French
The keynote will offer a Syilx understanding of our captikʷɬ - our historical classical oral literatures - and how they play a vital role in reshaping ethical relationships with our land’s relatives as essential to our culture and identity. The keynote will provide current examples of the revitalization practice in our Syilx communities through collaborations between the En’owkin Centre and the Okanagan Nation Alliance, in their captikʷɬ series in the model developed to restore captikʷɬ to our children and families throughout our Syilx communities. The keynote will also comment on the role of Indigenous knowledge systems embedded in oral story traditions to inform navigating and resisting colonial structures, and its role in fostering community resilience, environmental sustainability, and cultural resurgence. The keynote will focus on relationality between Indigenous people, place, and the environment and speak on the importance of authenticity in Indigenous literatures for Indigenous audiences as well as to foster dialogue across divergent knowledge systems.
Jeannette Armstrong is a Syilx (Okanagan) author, poet, artist, and academic born and raised on the Penticton Indian Reserve. A fluent speaker of Nsyilxcn and knowledge keeper of Syilx traditions and plant medicines, she is a leading voice in Indigenous environmental ethics and literature. Armstrong began writing at fifteen and is known for her novels Slash (1986) and Whispering in Shadows (2000), as well as her poetry collection Breath Tracks (1991). She is the recipient of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature as a novelist and poet. She became Executive Director of the En’owkin Centre in 1986 and co-founded the En’owkin School of International Writing, the first Indigenous-run creative writing program in Canada. As a Canada Research Chair at UBC - Okanagan, she helped establish the UBC Okanagan Bachelor’s degree in Nsyilxcn Language Fluency to preserve and advance Syilx oral traditions. She is currently a full professor in Indigenous Studies and coordinates the Interior Salishan Studies Centre for the four Interior Salishan language groups in BC. She holds an Interdisciplinary PhD from the University of Greifswald in Syilx oral literatures and Indigenous environmental ethics, and in 2021 was named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and named an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2024.
This session is made possible with the financial support of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and is a Congress Open Event
June 2, 2025 from 3:45-5:15: ILSA-ACCUTE, Keynote Address by Deanna Reder
Indigenous Intellectual Traditions: Decolonizing Knowledge and Methods through Collaborative Thought and Action
Co-hosted with the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE)
In this plenary lecture, Dr. Deanna Reder will work through some of the key arguments of her recent award-winning book, Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis Âcimisowina, and expand upon them with examples from practical, collaborative research, organizational, and community-oriented projects. She will map out key concepts and strategic practices of decolonizing literary and cultural modes of study, curriculum, and cultural production. The lecture will critique ways of approaching Indigenous texts that are informed by the Western academic tradition and offer instead a new way of theorizing Indigenous literature based on the Indigenous practice of life writing. Since the 1970s, non-Indigenous scholars have perpetrated the notion that Indigenous people were disinclined to talk about their lives and have underscored the assumption that autobiography is a European invention. Dr. Reder’s lecture will first challenge such long-held assumptions by highlighting longstanding autobiographical practices that are ingrained in Cree and Métis—nêhiyawak—culture. She will examine a series of examples of Indigenous life writing based on extensive archival and community-based research. Specific examples will include the censored and suppressed work of nêhiyawak intellectuals such as Maria Campbell, Edward Ahenakew, and James Brady. Her approach in this lecture will be grounded in nêhiyawak ontologies and epistemologies that view life stories as an intergenerational conduit for passing on knowledge about a shared world. This rich area of research will be used to encourage a widespread re-evaluation of past and present engagement with Indigenous storytelling forms across scholarly disciplines. Dr. Reder will also present illustrative examples of decolonizing actions and initiatives from large-scale collaborative projects she has helped lead, including The People and the Text, the Indigenous Editors Association, the Indigenous Literary Studies Association, and the Indigenous Voices Awards.
Dr. Deanna Reder is an internationally recognized interdisciplinary scholar and expert in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures. The international reach and impact of her work is evident from the awards it has garnered both within and beyond the Canadian context. She was appointed a Member of the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada in 2018. Her monograph, Autobiography as Indigenous Intellectual Tradition: Cree and Métis âcimisowin (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2022), has won several major awards: the Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian Literary Criticism in 2023, the FHSS Canada Prize in 2024, and the Modern Language Association Prize for Studies in Native American Literatures, Cultures, and Languages in January 2025. She has co-edited numerous collections and special journal issues, including Honouring the Strength of Indian Women: Plays, Stories, Poems by Vera Manuel (U Manitoba Press, 2019), Read, Listen, Tell: Indigenous Stories from Turtle Island (WLUP, 2017), Learn, Teach, Challenge: Approaching Indigenous Literatures (WLUP, 2016), and Troubling Tricksters: Revisioning Critical Conversations (WLUP, 2010). Dr. Reder’s work crosses national and disciplinary boundaries with the aim of decolonizing conceptions of canons and curriculum, and transforming our understanding of the disciplinary boundaries that shape how knowledge is produced.
Sponsored by Wilfrid Laurier University Press
June 3, 2025 from 8:30-10:00: CAPS-ILSA Indigenous Roundtable
25 Years of the Indigenous Roundtable
Co-hosted by the Canadian Association for Postcolonial Studies
In alignment with the themes of ILSA, CAPS, and Congress 2025—Reframing Togetherness / Redessinons le vivre-ensemble—this year’s roundtable invites speakers to reflect on the impact of the original roundtable held at Congress 2000. Drawing on decades of dialogue between ILSA and CAPS/CACLALS, and inspired by the influential Creating Community: A Roundtable on Canadian Aboriginal Literature collection, participants will explore how that inaugural gathering has shaped their teaching, scholarship, and broader contributions to Indigenous literary studies. This session celebrates the enduring influence of that formative conversation and invites continued reflection on the evolving relationships and commitments within the field.
Featured Speakers:
Kristina Bidwell
Warren Cariou
Daniel Heath Justice
Aruna Srivastava
This session is made possible with the financial support of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences.
June 3, 2025 from 4:30-5:30: ILSA Community Roundtable
Revisiting Method, Purpose, and Community Engagement in Indigenous Literary Studies
This roundtable brings together key scholars to revisit how and why we “do” Indigenous literary studies, beyond or in addition to traditional close reading and exposition of literary texts. How do we, as a heterogeneous scholarly community, engage with the academic turn to community-based and community-driven research and the call from communities for “nothing about us without us?”
Chair:
Nancy Van Styvendale (chair) is a white settler scholar and director of the Light Fires: Indigenous Prison Arts and Education Project in the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta.
Featured Speakers:
Jennifer Brant belongs to the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk Nation) with family ties to Six Nations of the Grand River Territory and Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory. She is an Associate Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching at OISE, University of Toronto and the founding director of the Indigenous Literatures Lab.
Sam McKegney is a white settler scholar of Indigenous literatures. He is co-Director of the Indigenous Hockey Research Network and Head of the Department of English Literature and Creative Writing at Queen’s University, which occupies lands of the Haudenosaunee and Anishinaabe Peoples.
Rick Monture is a member of the Mohawk nation, Turtle Clan, from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory. He is also a Professor in the Department of English & Cultural Studies and Indigenous Studies at McMaster University where he teaches classes on Haudenosaunee history and oral traditions, Indigenous literature, and American literature.
Matthew Tétreault (Red River Métis and French-Canadian) is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba. He is the author of Hold Your Tongue.
June 4, 2025 from 4:00-5:00: Keynote Address by Alice Te Punga Somerville
Indigenous is as Indigenous Does: Archives of Connection and Abundance
Co-hosted by the Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English (ACCUTE) • Congress Open Event • Captioning provided in English and French
In a small one-off Indigenous activist-produced 1973 newspaper in New Zealand, Rongo, there is a snippet from another Indigenous periodical: Akwesasne Notes. Indigenous doesn’t mean anything unless it prioritises Indigenous - Indigenous connection. What questions can we ask that will push us beyond state-bordered approaches to Indigenous literary studies, and what are the risks of asking them? How can work that prioritises Indigenous global connections manage the risk of distracting, undermining or removing resources from work focused on the Indigenous texts (or contexts) of any one site? What of Indigenous diasporas and migration—what happens when Indigenous people from ‘out there’ move ‘here’? With a view to centering forms, evidence and articulations of Indigenous - Indigenous connection, is it possible for Indigenous literary studies to simultaneously engage and refuse the borders of colonial states? My research interests into Indigenous periodicals and anthologies have led me to revisit these questions that have been ever-present in the field of Indigenous literary studies and in Indigenous Studies more broadly. In this talk, with a commitment to foregrounding abundance over scarcity, I will ask these questions by turning my attention to specific archives and texts: literary anthologies, poems, a t-shirt, a boarding pass, a range of Indigenous critical writing, and a photograph.
Dr. Alice Te Punga Somerville (Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) is a scholar, poet, and irredentist whose work sits at the intersections of literary studies, Indigenous studies, and Pacific studies. Since 2022, she has been a full professor at the University of British Columbia, jointly appointed in the Department of English Language & Literatures and the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Before joining UBC on Musqueam territory, she held academic positions in Aotearoa New Zealand, Australia, and Hawai‘i. Dr. Te Punga Somerville holds BA and MA degrees from the University of Auckland and earned her PhD from Cornell University. Her publications include Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania (2012), 250 Ways To Start an Essay about Captain Cook (2020), and the forthcoming poetry collection Always Italicise: how to write while colonised(2022). Her current research project, Writing the New World: Indigenous Texts 1900–1975, explores Indigenous writing in English and Indigenous languages from New Zealand, Australia, Hawai‘i, and Fiji.
This session is made possible with the financial support of the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences and is a Congress Open Event.
