Shunpiking Online Vo.4 No.1 Hoping Against Hope? The Struggle Against Colonialism in Canada

HALIFAX (17 january 2007) - A NEW CD entitled "Hoping Against Hope? The Struggle Against Colonialism in Canada" is being launched with a free public event in Halifax on 27 January in conjunction with a national campus-community radio broadcast. The public launch will consist of presentations by Roland Chrisjohn and Ward Churchill, who both appear in the documentary.

"Hoping Against Hope?" is a three-part audio documentary on colonization in Canada featuring the voices of Roland Chrisjohn, Andrea Bear Nicholas, Ward Churchill, Michael Parenti, Patricia Monture-Angus, Jeanette Armstrong, Arnie Jack, and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas.

CD copies will be distributed to radio stations from coast-to-coast for a national radio broadcast in January 2007, and will be available for sale to the public. The audio will also be available for free on-line, including access to the complete transcript. The CD is jointly produced by the Nova Scotia Public Interest Group and Praxis Media Productions of Halifax.

The speakers at the launch

Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, a "misplaced Oneida living in the Maritimes", has lectured and published widely on topics such as racism, residential schools, First Nations education, suicide, and psychology of which he practiced for over 20 years. His book The Circle Game: Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada was re-published last year. Prof Chrisjohn is the Director of the Department of Native Studies at St. Thomas University. Hi talk is entitled "Churchill Thing" and Red-Skinned Herrings.

Ward Churchill, who will be speaking on Affirmation as Denial: The Case of the "Postcolonial" Colonial, has been active as both an academic and an activist in Indigenous struggles for several decades. A member of the leadership Council of the American Indian Movement of Colorado, he is past National Spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee, and delegate to the United Nations Working Group on Indigenous Populations. An acclaimed public speaker, he is a prolific author and editor of over twenty books on the subjects of colonization, Indigenism, and resistance. He is currently Professor, American Indian Studies, University of Colorado, Boulder.

Ward Churchill will also be speaking in Fredericton at St. Thomas University on Monday, January 29.

The public event in Halifax - to be held at the Ondaatje Auditorium, FASS Building (Marion McCain Bldg), University Ave and Seymour, at Dalhousie University - begins at 6:30 pm.

For additional information, please contact:

Dave Ron, Executive Director
NSPIRG
dave@nspirg.org (902) 494-6662

or

Pierre Loiselle, Producer
Praxis Media Productions
pierre_loiselle@hotmail.com (902) 454-5921
5274 Rector St.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
B3K 2N4 Canada
(902) 454-5921
Please call (902) 494-6662 if you require childcare or translation.

This event is wheelchair accessible.