Straddling Boundaries cfp deadline extended

The deadline for the submission of abstracts for “Straddling Boundaries”, the 2013 conference at Algoma University, has been extended until January 15th 2013, so there is still time to send a proposal. It is also still possible to apply for a postgraduate travel bursary – see conference page for details. This is an international, interdisciplinary conference and promises to be very exciting.

Toronto gets new U.S. special agent, targeting gun smuggling – thestar.com

In the news: Toronto gets new U.S. special agent, targeting gun smuggling – thestar.com.

When a bullet kills or harms someone in Toronto, one of the first questions asked is where the gun came from.

If the weapon is thought to be American, a Toronto-based U.S. special agent pairs Canadian police with U.S. authorities to discern how it got here.

For the past seven years, that agent was Regina Lombardo, who opened Toronto’s office in 2005. This month, a new agent took her place with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), which has the authority to get U.S. firearm makers to provide sales records.

Lombardo arrived here shortly after the Summer of the Gun. Her replacement, Special Agent Peter Forcelli, also arrived months after high-profile gunfire on the Toronto streets.

“There’s been a lot of rival gang activity happening this past summer,” Lombardo said in an interview at the U.S. Consulate, where she was based. “If they are U.S.-sourced weapons, that’s where our involvement comes in.”

Toronto police have said 70 per cent of guns seized after crimes were smuggled from the U.S.

Roma take complex route via Europe, Mexico to seek asylum in Canada

In the news: Roma take complex route via Europe, Mexico to seek asylum in Canada

http://www.windsorstar.com/Roma+take+complex+route+Europe+Mexico+seek+asylum+Canada/7670455/story.html

A Dodge Caravan with California licence plates and a dozen passengers zipped across the border between Vermont and Quebec in October, heading north in a southbound lane unblocked by traffic.

Border agents could only watch as the van disappeared into Quebec. But the vehicle and its occupants didn’t try to disappear.

About 30 kilometres later, they stopped in a Walmart parking lot in Magog, Que., and asked someone to call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. When the Mounties arrived, the Roma occupants of the vehicle applied for political asylum.

“It’s as though they had it programmed into their GPS,” said Magog police spokesman Paul Tear.

cfp | In the Balance: Indigeneity, Performance, Globalization

Non-CCUSB call for papers: “In The Balance”

Indigeneity.net

If indigeneity and globalization are seen to articulate (with) each other in cultural as well as political spheres, what hangs in the balance? Working through the analytical window of performance in a range of sites and modalities, this interdisciplinary conference examines the power and the precariousness of indigeneity as a politicized cultural force in our unevenly connected world. The growing visibility of artistic networks and ideological coalitions among indigenous peoples on a transnational scale urges a fresh look at the mechanisms of cultural entanglement and the particular rights and insights afforded by indigeneity in that process. Cast as an ethical touchstone in some arenas and a thorny complication in others, indigeneity now matters in global debates about natural resources, heritage, governance, representation and social justice, to name just some of the contentious issues that continue to stall the unfinished business of decolonization. Indigenous arts, simultaneously attuned to local voices and global cultural flows, have
often been the vanguard in communicating what is at stake in such debates, to international as well as grass-­‐roots audiences. At the same time, the global circulation of indigenous arts as cultural capital has affected the ways in which indigeneity is activated and understood across different social and aesthetic platforms. Our explicit focus on performance is designed to probe the specificities of these related movements at the level of embodied praxis. It should also prompt questions about the interactions, contradictions,
disjunctions, opportunities, exclusions, injustices and aspirations that globalization entails.

Send 250-­‐word abstracts for 20-­‐minute presentations and a short biography to Helen Gilbert and Dani Phillipson at dani.phillipson@rhul.ac.uk by 30 April 2013. The main language of the conference is English though we welcome proposals in other
languages and will facilitate translation for those wanting to speak in Spanish, French or Portuguese.

Another blog post

In case you missed it, here is a link to network member Kelly Hewson’s recent blog post concerning non-Indigenous scholars researching Indigenous issues – a topic of discussion at the September workshop.

New Blog Post

We’ve just added a new blog post from David Stirrup (University of Kent), reporting on the inaugural CCUSB Workshop. Visit the blog to read about the papers given at the workshop, the theme of which was ‘Indigeneity, Hemispherism, and the Arts.’

‘Straddling Boundaries’ Keynotes Announced

We are excited to announce that the keynote speakers for our inaugural conference at Algoma University will be Claudia Sadowski-Smith of Arizona State University; Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair of the University of Manitoba, and Canadian theatre artist Guillermo Verdecchia. Don’t forget to check out the Call for Papers in our ‘Events’ section.

Thank you to everybody who came along to our first workshop in London on Tuesday. It was a great start to our series of events, and we’re looking forward to continuing the conversation via our blog and the website. Hope to see you in Algoma!