Presenters
Dr. Sherene Razack, author of Dying From Improvement: Inquests and Inquiries into
Indigenous Deaths in Custody (2015) and essays on violence against Indigenous
women including “Gendered Racial Violence and Spatial Justice: The Murder of Pamela
George” and ” Gendering Disposability.”
Dr. Jennifer Nez Denetdale (Diné/ Navajo), Chair of the Navajo Human Rights Commission, co-author, Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation (2021) and author of Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita (2007).
She is the director
of UNM’s Institute for American Indian Research (IfAIR).
Dr. Gina Starblanket (Cree and Saulteaux, member of the Star Blanket Cree Nation), co-author of Storying Violence: Unravelling Colonial Narratives in the Stanley Trial (2020). She is the principal investigator of the SSHRC-funded Prairie
Relationality Network and co-editor of Visions of the Heart: Issues Involving Indigenous
Peoples in Canada (2019).
Dr. Jaskiran Dhillon, author of Prairie Rising: Indigenous Youth, Decolonization and the
Politics of Intervention (2017) and co-editor of Standing With Standing Rock: Voices from the #NoDAPL Movement (2019).
Dr. Shannon Speed (Chickasaw) author of Incarcerated Stories: Indigenous Women
Migrants and Violence in the Settler-Capitalist State (2019). She is Director of the
American Indian Studies Center (AISC) at UCLA and recently co-edited Indigenous Women and Violence: Feminist Activist Research in Heightened States of Injustice (2021).
Virtual Commentators
Dr. Melanie Yazzie (Diné/Navajo), co-author of Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown
Violence to Native Liberation (2021). An Assistant Professor of Native American Studies and American Studies at the University of New Mexico, she organizes with The Red Nation, a grassroots Native-run organization committed to Indigenous liberation.
Dr. Sarah Deer (Muscogee Nation), author of The Beginning and End of Rape: Confronting Sexual Violence in Native America (2015). She is a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas and Chief Justice for the Prairie Island Indian Community Court
of Appeals.
Dr. Joyce Green, Professor Emerita of Political Science at the University of Regina, editor of the Making Space for Indigenous Feminism (2007; 2nd ed. 2017) and Indivisible:
Indigenous Human Rights (2014).
Distinguished Guest
Marion Buller is a judge and human rights advocate who helped form the First Nations Courts in British Columbia and is the first woman Indigenous judge in Canada. She was the Chief
Commissioner for the Canadian National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. She is currently Chancellor of the University of Victoria, BC.
