So You Care About Indigenous Scholars?: Presenting an Indigenous-led Comic Poster Series

Type: Virtual Panel
Theme: Expanding the Community of Geography
Sponsor Groups: Indigenous Peoples Specialty Group
Organizers: Sibyl Diver
Chairs: Corrinne Sullivan

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Description

Academic institutions are Indigenous places. Universities are located on Indigenous lands, teach Indigenous geographies, and serve Indigenous faculty, staff, and students. Yet at the same time that Indigenous scholars are persisting as leaders in the academy, they experience a particular set of violences, which are not shared by their non-Indigenous counterparts. To celebrate Indigenous peoples’ ongoing survival, resistance and resurgence, and to advocate for a more just academy, this group came together through an Indigenous-led collective for an arts-based intervention: creating a set of comic art posters that promote anti-racist alternatives to an extractive academy. In October 2020, we published four posters in the “So You Care About Indigenous Scholars” series with Ad Astra Comix. The posters are free to download, print, and use through a creative commons license here: https://adastracomix.com/2020/10/22/comic-art-poster-series-so-you-care-about-indigenous-scholars/.

Together, collective collaborators will discuss how we formed, worked together, and the posters we have produced: Extraction Zombies, Pass the Ball, Indigenous Land, and S.S. Academy. From the outset, our collective chose to work across the differences in our situated positions as Indigenous and allied scholars from North America and Australia, and establish mutually supportive roles, while centering Indigenous voices and leadership in the collaboration. Using humor and irony to create teachable moments, our posters critique extractivism, the lack of recognition of Indigenous leadership, and the cumulative effects of daily microaggressions for Indigenous scholars. The posters also reflect our shared understanding around the need to build critical consciousness, learn how to appropriately center Indigenous voices, and thereby secure a more respectful academy.

“So you care about Indigenous scholars?” Collective collaborators are:
Corrinne Sullivan (Western Sydney University)
Carolyn Smith (University of California Berkeley)
Beth Piatote (University of California Berkeley)
Sibyl Diver (Stanford University)
Jessica Weir (Western Sydney University)
Nicole Burton and Hugh Goldring (Ad Astra Comix)

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Agenda

Type	Details	Minutes
Panelist	Corrinne Sullivan Western Sydney University	15
Panelist	Carolyn Smith NCIDC	15
Panelist	Sibyl Diver Stanford University	15
Panelist	Jessica Weir Western Sydney University	15