Multi-year research project examines several aspects of ‘ethnic hospitality’
What: Presentation — Opening up colonial space: Aboriginality, Perth and the Nyoongar Tent Embassy Abstract
Who: Thor Kerr, Australian professor specializing in citizenship and aboriginality
When: Wednesday, January 14, 2 to 3:30 p.m.
Where: Arts Building, Room Art 114, 1147 Research Road, UBC’s Okanagan campus, Kelowna
Visiting Australian professor Thor Kerr will host a dialogue in Kelowna on Jan. 14 about how media sometimes frame aboriginal and citizenship issues.
While Kerr’s study is based in Australia, it has resonance with ongoing land claim issues in British Columbia, says Daniel Keyes, associate professor with UBC Okanagan’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies (FCCS).
Visiting from the Department of Communication and Cultural Studies at Australia’s Curtin University, Kerr will be in Kelowna to discuss with Keyes and other faculty with FCCS and the Irving K. Barber School of Arts and Sciences, a multi-year research project that explores how media in settler nations frame aboriginal and citizenship issues.
Working within the context of Perth, Australia, Kerr and his colleagues have created five tactics for making space with an ethic of hospitality that reflects on a wider project for decolonization.
His talk will offer some new tools for Okanagan urban planners and developers interested in diversifying design principles to create more inclusive space.
“This talk on issues in Perth, Australia, relating to the memorialization of aboriginal activism in public spaces has a particular resonance with the recent revitalization of downtown Kelowna that relied on both material from the Kelowna Heritage Museum and new arts work by two artists from Westbank First Nation,” says Keyes.
The Nyoongar Tent Embassy abstract reflects on problems encountered in Western Australia by making spaces of hospitality for and with Aboriginal people within institutional buildings in Perth. The exhibition project was directed at disrupting criminalization of Aboriginals in the city, particularly members of the Nyoongar Tent Embassy.
During his visit, Kerr will also be working with Keyes on a comparative analysis of the Canadian and Australian versions of the reality TV program Border Security.
Kerr’s presentation takes place, Wednesday, January 14, in room 114 in the Arts Building, 1147 Research Road at UBC’s Okanagan campus. This event is free and open to the public and students. Pay parking is available on campus.
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