Event Details

Dr. Mark Turin will deliver the 2023 McCurdy Distinguished Anthropology Lecture on Thursday, September 21, 2023, in Ruth Stricker Dayton Campus Center, John B. Davis Lecture Hall, at 4:45pm. A reception will follow in the Weyerhaeuser Board Room.

Dr. Turin will present "Indigeneity and the University: Decolonizing research and teaching in Western Canada." He will offer a visual examination of several sites of colonial contestation and resurgent Indigeneity on a university campus in Vancouver, Canada. Through example and illustration, Turin will explore the wider relevance of decolonial interventions in educational spaces. With a particular focus on language oppression and revitalization, and the enduring relevance of Indigenous languages in negotiating the relationship between First Nations and various levels of settler colonial government, Dr. Turin asks what it means and what it takes to unsettle the university and to create more equitable, inclusive and welcoming space for Indigenous voices, languages and cultures to thrive again.

Dr. Turin is an anthropologist, linguist and occasional radio presenter, and an Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia. He is cross-appointed between the Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies and the Department of Anthropology. From 2014-2018, Dr. Turin served as Chair of the First Nations and Endangered Languages Program and from 2016-2018, as Acting Co-Director of the University’s new Institute for Critical Indigenous Studies. Turin writes and teaches on language reclamation, revitalization, documentation and conservation; language mapping, policies, politics and language rights; orality, archives, digital tools and technology. Indigenous methodologies and decolonial practice inform and shape his teaching and research.