Canadian-American Studies People and Cultures of Canada speaker series begins Jan. 14
Western's Center for Canadian-American Studies, in partnership with the Foundation for WWU & Alumni, is pleased to launch its 2026 winter quarter speaker series, "People and Cultures of Canada."
Inuit Rising: Self-Determination in Canada & Beyond
Wednesday, Jan. 14 at 4:00 p.m.
Location: Online via Zoom
Speaker: Nadine Fabbi, University of Washington
Description: Inuit in Canada and internationally are having a marked impact on domestic and global affairs. This presentation will provide a brief history of the development of Inuit political mobilization, discuss how Inuit changed the map of North America based on Inuit concepts of territory, and review Inuit influence in Canada. This will include a look at the current initiative by the national Inuit organization, Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, to found the world’s first Inuit university – Inuit Nunangat University.
More info and registration for "Inuit Rising: Self-Determination in Canada & Beyond"
Belief and Doubt in Roch Carrier's "The Hockey Sweater"
Wednesday, Jan. 28 at 4:00 p.m.
Speaker: Jamie Dopp, University of Victoria
Description: Roch Carrier’s story “The Hockey Sweater” is perhaps the most well-known text about hockey in Canada. This story has had an enormous success in Canada since it was first published in 1979. Canadians love the story because it reinforces a nostalgic and traditional view of hockey’s place in Canada and a view of Canadian identity rooted in the hockey myth. If “The Hockey Sweater” is read in context, however, and with attention to the subtle clues within it about what has been left out to create its nostalgic picture, a quite different version of the story — and of Canadian identity — emerges.
More info and registration for "Belief and Doubt in Roch Carrier's 'The Hockey Sweater.'"
The Diversity of Rap in Québec and of its Local Recognition
Wednesday, Feb. 11 at 4:00 p.m.
Speaker: Claire Fouchereaux
Description: Little-known outside of the province, the hip-hop subculture of Québec, Canada, has been a place of expression for rap artists of a variety of backgrounds and aesthetic inspirations since the genre’s emergence in the early 1980s. This talk will present a survey of different stages of hip-hop within Québec and will outline the diversity of identity orientations, languages of expression, and media formats influential upon hip-hop in Québec over this decades-long existence. This talk will highlight key barriers and factors that impacted rap’s position as popular culture in Québec.
More info and registration for "The Diversity of Rap in Québec and of its Local Recognition"
Aboriginal Identity and Nation-Building in the Mi’kmaw First Nations of Nova Scotia
Wednesday, Feb. 25 at 4:00 p.m.
Speaker: Simone Poliandri
Description: This talk focuses on contemporary identity and nation-building dynamics among the Mi’kmaw First Nation people of Eastern Canada. After providing geographic and historical context, the talk will illustrate some of the elements that have characterized Mi’kmaw identity and its construction in recent times, including recent aspects of Indigenous nationhood, or First nationhood, and nation-building in the Mi’kmaw communities of Nova Scotia. The eclectic nature – cultural, political, economic, and territorial – of First national discourse among the Mi’kmaq makes nation building a promising path toward providing better services to Mi’kmaw families and communities and, at the same time, elevates it to the status of strategic asset for reclaiming treaty and aboriginal rights to self-determination.
On the Outside, Looking Out - Canada’s Rural Communities as Stewards of Landscape and the Land
Wednesday, March 11 at 4:00 p.m.
Speaker: Jeff Reichheld
Description: The uniqueness of Canada’s rural communities is often overlooked, subsuming it under the perceived cultural hegemonies of their local urban centers.
This presentation explores Canadian rural cultures to discuss ways that the identities they produce shape Canada’s cultural mosaic and in turn reshape our ongoing relationship with the land. Because the vast majority of Canada’s landscape is rural or remote, we will examine connections between place and culture to understand how this placeness is shaped by Canada’s geography. While most Canadians have at best an arm’s length relationship with the land, we will then address how rural and remote Canadians and their communities, especially those involved in primary industries such as agriculture and forestry, are instead deeply shaped by and in turn shape the land’s future.