When
Please join the Center for Latin American Studies for the 20th Annual Tinker Symposium Keynote Lecture with Dr. Daniel Ruiz-Serna on Thursday, Nov. 6th from 4:00pm to 5:00pm at the Student Union, Kiva Theatre.
“Wounded Lands, Resentful Mountains, and Mourning Maize. The Politics of More-than-Human Harm in Colombia (and beyond)”
This talk discusses the current planetary ecological crisis described as the Anthropocene has its roots, at least in Latin America, in the erasure of Indigenous peoples and the erosion of their local relationalities. Armed conflict and political violence have served as powerful instruments in this endeavour. In dialogue with recent approaches that highlight how war reverberates through large communities of life wherein humans and their orders are not the only ones, this presentation explores the ethical and epistemological challenges that arise when Indigenous protocols of witnessing locate harm in entities such as rivers, mountains, or spirits. These beings often fall outside the scope of dominant frameworks like human rights or environmental assessments. What does it mean to take these forms of more-than-human memory seriously, and what forms of justice might they require?
Daniel Ruiz-Serna teaches at the Department of Anthropology at Dawson College. His book When Forests Run Amok. War and its Afterlives in Indigenous and Afro-Colombian Territories received the 2023 Julian Steward Award from the Anthropology and Environment Section of the American Anthropological Association, as well as the 2024 SLACA Book Prize from the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology.
Followed by a reception at Cork & Craft from 5pm to 6pm.