The event titled 'Contested Land: Conflicts Over Renewable Energy Projects on Indigenous Lands' took place on the 22nd of May 2024. The event took place on Zoom. The event hosted four distinguished speakers who presented and engaged in conversation - we are grateful for their participation: *Eirik Larsen - Lásse Ivvár Erke (Head, Human Rights Unit, Saami Council; Member, Saami Parliament, Norway) *Andrea G. Manzo Matus (Binnizá, Isthmus of Tehuantepec; Member, community assembly of Unión Hidalgo, Oaxaca) *Antonio Muscas (Member, Sardinian Committees against renewable energy speculation; Mechanical engineer) *Matteo Mandis (Vice-mayor, Municipality of Villanovaforru, Sardinia; PhD candidate, Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona) The event was moderated by Sara Corona (University of Cambridge). For more information about our events or to subscribe visit: https://tinyurl.com/CAMBRIDGEISDG25 Our group is grateful for the support of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre (CHRC).

Special Ethics Panel 2025 | University of Cambridge Indigenous Studies Discussion Group (ISDG) Date and time: Fri, 16 May 2025 16:00 - 18:00 BST Location: Main Seminar Room (First Floor), David Attenborough Building Pembroke Street Cambridge CB2 3QZ United Kingdom About this event This panel discussion explores the ethics and politics of 'refusal' -- a deliberate and ethical stance that disrupts extractive research practices, contests liberal frameworks of inclusion, and reasserts community autonomy -- as a critical intervention for scholars, students, and practitioners engaged in research with Indigenous communities. Drawing from Critical Indigenous Studies, Indigenous political and legal scholarship, and critical theory, this discussion reflects on how refusal operates within and against dominant academic and institutional logics and settings. With contributions from Dr Damien Lee, a leading Anishinaabe scholar who holds the Canada Research Chair in Biskaabiiyang and Indigenous Political Resurgence at Toronto Metropolitan University, and Professor David Chandler, co-author of Becoming Indigenous: Governing Imaginaries in the Anthropocene, the discussion brings together perspectives rooted in Indigenous legal traditions and critiques of the settler-colonial instrumentalisation of 'indigeneity'. This interdisciplinary dialogue invites participants to explore the multiple dimensions of the politics of 'refusal', and consider its transformative potential in rethinking ethical collaboration and accountable knowledge production. Speakers Dr Damien Lee is a leading Anishinaabe scholar who joined the Treatied Spaces Research Group at the University of Birmingham as a Leverhulme Visiting Professor (VP2-2023-022) in August 2024. Dr Lee is a member of the Fort William First Nation, a citizen of the Anishinaabe Nation, and holds a Canada Research Chair in Biskaabiiyang and Indigenous Political Resurgence at Toronto Metropolitan University. He holds globally unique expertise in Indigenous political and legal orders, First Nations' constructions of citizenship, community-driven political mobilisation, Indigenist theory, First Nation band membership issues, and Indigenous research methodologies -- notably the post-colonisation resurgence strategy known as Biskaabiiyang (an Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) word meaning "returning to ourselves"). Dr Lee has published a number of papers in leading academic journals, including AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples and the Alberta Law Review, focusing on Indigenous governance and philanthropic wealth in Canada, as well as the resurgence of inherent Indigenous citizenship laws. Professor David Chandler is Professor of International Relations, University of Westminster, London, UK. He edits the journal Anthropocenes - Human, Inhuman, Posthuman and convenes the Materialisms Reading Group and the Black Anthropocene Working Group. He has around 30 books (authored and edited) ranging from work on governing imaginaries of the Anthropocene, digital sensing and mapping, to critiques of liberal and neoliberal paradigms of international intervention - humanitarianism, democracy and rights promotion, human security, peacebuilding, statebuilding and resilience. His recent monographs include: Race in the Anthropocene: Coloniality, Disavowal and the Black Horizon (Routledge, 2024); World as Abyss: The Caribbean and Critical Thought in the Anthropocene (Westminster, 2023); Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds (Westminster, 2021); Becoming Indigenous: Governing Imaginaries in the Anthropocene (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019); Ontopolitics in the Anthropocene: An Introduction to Mapping, Sensing and Hacking (Routledge, 2018); Peacebuilding: The Twenty Years' Crisis, 1997-2017 (Palgrave, 2017); The Neoliberal Subject: Resilience, Adaptation and Vulnerability (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016) and Resilience: The Governance of Complexity (Routledge, 2014). Moderator: Zi Jiao (ISDG/Department of Geography, University of Cambridge)

About the Films Okpik: Little Village in the Artctic (International premiere) Director Tiffany Ayalik, Kylik Kisoun Taylor, 2022, Canada, 45min (Language: English, Western Canadian Inuktitut) Using local materials and traditional knowledge Inuit/Gwich’in Hunter, Kylik Kisoun will re-establish and re-imagine the lost practice of building an Inuvialuit sod-house with the intention of creating housing security in his traditional territory of the Beaufort Delta. Kylik builds his future at his off-grid camp and creates an opportunity for language and cultural revitalization. Qipisa Director Myna Ishulutak, 2016, Canada, 36min (Language: English, Eastern Canadian Inuktitut) Myna lives in Iqaluit, capital of Nunavut, Inuit territory of Canadian Great North. Wishing to know more about her roots, she leaves everything behind to settle in Pangnirtung with her family. But Myna is gradually faced with another quest: the one to remember her own origins. Because Myna grew up on the other side of the Cumberland Sound, before the depart without return. Directors’ panel and Q&A Tiffany Ayalik is from Yellowknife, NT and is Inuit from the Kugluktuk region. It was in the North, listening to stories from her elders, that she discovered her love of storytelling, and the powerful change that hearing a story can bring about. After receiving her Diploma in Acting from Red Deer College, she continued her studies at the University of Alberta, and received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting. Tiffany travels across Canada and has performed in Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Finland and Europe, sharing her blend of story, song, movement, and improv. Tiffany hosts a TV show called ‘Wild Kitchen’ where she meets interesting people who are closely connected to the land and the food they harvest. ‘Wild Kitchen’ is enjoyed across the North and in 74 million homes in the US on First Nations Experience (FNX). As a host, she shares her Inuit perspective and land use teachings with her guests as they collaborate in harvesting and cooking a meal. As a film actor, Tiffany’s work can be seen at many international film festivals. In Canada, you can see her as Daphne in CBC’s ‘A Christmas Fury’ the spin-off of cult classic ‘Hatching Matching and Dispatching’ and on CBC’s ‘Little Dog’. She produces film and media with long-time collaborator Caroline Cox and their company Copper Quartz Media based out of Yellowknife, NT. Tiffany is a Juno Award winner and often collaborates with her sister, Inuksuk Mackay in their katajjaq (Inuit throat singing) band, PIQSIQ. Myna Ishulutak grew up in Qipisa, south of Baffin Island. When in Iqaluit, the Nunavut’s capital, she enrolled on the Inuit Studies program course. Through her interest in audiovisual production, Myna co-directs ‘Tajarniit’, a documentary series focusing on how important seal is to Nunavut Inuit. In 2016, Myna produces ‘Qipisa’, a documentary about her life story. Currently an Inuktitut Instructor at Pirurvik Centre (Iqaluit), Myna hosts a number of television shows for the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation. Stephanie Land was born and adopted in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is an Indigiqueer of mixed Inupiaq and White heritage with family originally from Nome and Wales, Alaska. Stephanie is a Musculoskeletal Specialist Physiotherapist for the NHS, and an active member of Native in the UK (a small group of Native Americans/First Nations/Inuit based in the UK with the aim of amplifying Indigenous voices and creativity). Recently, the group worked in collaboration with the Exeter Chiefs for Change campaign against the cultural appropriation of Native American Imagery and Culture. Additionally, in 2021 she attended COP26 in Glasgow as part of the delegation for the Inuit Circumpolar Council. A keen sportswoman who has previously represented Scotland in fencing, Stephanie has recently turned her drive to taking part in virtual runs to raise awareness and funds for MMIW and Residential School Survivors. About the Native Spirit Indigenous Film Festival Native Spirit was established in 2005 and is the UK’s first Independent organisation promoting contemporary Indigenous Cinema, Media & Artists with Year-round events, an annual Film Festival starting 12 October in London, and a sister festival in Taiwan. The founder of Native Spirit Foundation, Freddy Treuquil, Mapuche leader states: “All the [activists] have come to the conclusion that one objective of making video, radio and television is for the other culture to know us. It is necessary to create a bridge to share our culture in an educational form, without losing our identity.”

British history is rife with change; ethnic, social and linguistic shifts have indelibly marked its present day. While discourses of ‘native’ or ‘original’ Britons in popular media are nothing new, with the surge in topics of Indigeneity across disciplines, some scholars have begun to apply Indigenous Studies theoretical frameworks to understanding different contexts, including British history. Such frameworks are a rather recent development, and have drawn both interest and critique. Our panel aims to unpack some of these approaches through discussions on pre-Imperial Britain, from the Cheddar Man to the Mediaeval Age. Our speakers will cover various topics from periods of pre-modern Britain and participate in a fruitful discussion on the utility and validity of these frameworks to the pre-Empire British context. Professor Alex Woolf is Senior Lecturer in the School of History in the University of St Andrews. His main interests lie in the history of Britain and Ireland before the coming of the Normans with a bias towards the earlier part of the period, c.400-900. Particular interests include ethnic interaction and language shift, the development of political structures, and social and economic history. Furth of these islands, he has less well developed interests in Late Roman and early post Roman Gaul and in Scandinavia in the first millennium AD. Dr Thomas Booth is a Senior Laboratory Research Scientist at Francis Crick Institute. He is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate on the Wellcome-funded project "Human Adaptation to Diet and Infectious Disease Loads, from the origins of agriculture to the present". His own research is concerned with the microstructural analysis of diagenesis in ancient human bone, particularly the relationship between bioerosion and early post mortem taphonomic processes. This research also has applications to the survival of DNA in ancient bone. Dr Ben Guy is a Research Associate in the School of Welsh at Cardiff University. He specialises in the language, literature and history of mediaeval Wales. His interests range across early Welsh poetry, historical writing, and manuscripts, as well as early Insular history. He also has a special interest in mediaeval Welsh texts that convey contemporary political views through representations of the Welsh past. He has conducted extensive research on the tradition of Welsh genealogical writing, from the early mediaeval to early modern period, and this is the subject of my monograph. He is currently a Research Associate working on the earliest poems in the Welsh Merlin tradition.

The event titled 'Engaging with Myths of Extinction Through Museum Collections ' took place on the 19th of May 2022. The event took place on Zoom. The event hosted two distinguished speakers who presented and engaged in conversation - we are grateful for their participation: *Laura Van Broekhoven (Director, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford) *Nicholas Thomas (Director, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge) The event was moderated by Leanne Daly (University of Cambridge) For more information about our events or to subscribe visit: https://tinyurl.com/CAMBRIDGEISDG Our group is grateful for the support of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre (CHRC).

The event titled 'Wellbeing and the Environment: Traditional Knowledge and the Conservation of Nature ' took place on the 4th of May 2022. The event took place on Zoom. The event hosted two distinguished speakers who presented and engaged in conversation - we are grateful for their participation: Indigenous-Led Conservation as Exaptation: Engagements and Strategies in Cherokee Country • Clint Caroll (Cherokee Nation, University of Colorado, Boulder) Centering Wabanaki Peoples and Nations in Land Protection and Conservation • Darren Ranco (Penobscot Nation, University of Maine) The event was moderated by Tami Okamoto, University of Cambridge For more information about our events or to subscribe visit: https://tinyurl.com/CAMBRIDGEISDG Our group is grateful for the support of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre (CHRC).

The screening of the 'The Beothuk Story' (2020) took place on the 23rd February 2022 17:00 (UK). THe ISDG was delighted to host a Q&A with: Christopher Aylward, Film director, Ryerson University Chief Mi’sel Joe, Miawpukek First Nation The event was moderated by: Leanne Daly, University of Cambridge The event was hybrid.

The event titled 'Film Screening: Birth 1871 (2004) Followed by Q&A with Director Dakxinkumar Bajrang' took place on the 24th of November 2021. The event was Hybrid and took place on Zoom and in person at the Alison Richards Building in Cambridge. The event hosted: - Dakxinkumar Bajrange, award winning filmmaker, playwright, director and an activist from the Chhara De-notified Tribes of Ahmedabad in the western part of India Moderator: Nishant Gokhale, University of Cambridge For more information about our events or to subscribe visit: https://tinyurl.com/CAMBRIDGEISDG Our group is grateful for the support of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) and the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre (CHRC).