AlterKnowledge provides a venue for so-called “alternative” knowledge to be shared and valued, and for dominant systems of “knowledge” to be altered. It focuses on critical engagement with the way colonialism continues to shape relationships and identities, and it aims to foster community-based knowledge-making, bringing people together to discuss, share, and (un)learn, as a practice of decolonization.
The discussions, organized by Allison Hargreaves and David Jefferess, is a series of free, expert-led talks designed as lively and participatory conversations where people learn, share, and produce meaningful dialogue. The goal is to bring faculty and students affiliated with UBC’s Okanagan campus together with members of the wider community and tackle topics of debate that concern all of us in the Okanagan and beyond.
Stay tuned for information on upcoming events
This year attendees participated in workshops, discussion and film screenings. Participants learned about Stickgames, used by sylix/Okanagan people; viewed a new documentary followed by a panel of youth who discussed their experienced with the child welfare system, and shared their strategies of resistance to assimilation and state control; and discussed the Father Pandosy Mission, where participants were invited to critically reflect upon the representation of early settlement at the Pandosy Mission site and throughout the community, comparing the official heritage with narratives published by members of the syilx/Okanagan nations.
The 2016-17series welcomed visiting scholar Min Sook Lee for a film screening and community forum on her documentary, Migrant Dreams: Migrant Workers Resist, which tells the story of migrant agricultural workers struggling against Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP). Other events included discussions about humanitarianism and international development, racial and cultural barriers to integration into the community, as well as Truth and Reconciliation and the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples, and the knowledge and lifeways of Indigenous communities.
For UBC’s Centennial year, AlterKnowledge offered a special calendar of events to explore themes of “Relation, Identity, and Place” in the Okanagan. Focusing on historical and present-day relations between Indigenous peoples and newcomers or settlers, the series asked: How do students and citizens participate in place-making activities, contributing to public memory on campus and in the community? And what does it mean to be a guest in traditional Syilx territory?
