2020-2021

Data & Sovereignty: Resisting Colonial Logics for Racial Justice

Panel & Discussion | Thursday, December 3, 2020 | View it now

This event was co-supported by the McMaster Institute for Health Equity, the McMaster Indigenous Research Institute, and the Lewis and Ruth Sherman Centre for Digital Scholarship. Video is available here.

Recent attentions to the collection, use, dissemination, ownership, and impacts of demographic data have convened several historical contradictions, resurfacing the contours of the false promise of equity from quantitative data collection. COVID-19 has positioned a number of initiatives that claim to address injustice and inequities in health or elsewhere though data collection often without the needs of those mined for data at the centre of these conversations. Regularly, these data are on or about Black, First Nations, Métis, Inuit, Latinx, Asian, South Asian, Caribbean, and other non-white groups, people living with mental health issues, disabilities, those who are houseless or underhoused, low-income, people living with substance use needs, and 2SLGBTQ+ populations while also collecting information on gender. These initiatives that collect and do not deliver have not gone uncontested.

KEYNOTE: Data, deception and dispossession: Breaking the cycle of colonization and racial capitalism in Canada’s public health & health care systems
LLana James, Ph.D.(Cand), Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, rede4blacklives.com

Gikendamaawin e-aabadak – use of information: an Indigenous perspective on data sovereignty
Bernice Downey, Ph.D. Assistant Professor, School of Nursing/Department of Psychiatry and Neuro-Behavioural Sciences, Director, McMaster Indigenous Research Institute

Addressing hate/hate Crimes/hate incidents through communal frameworks
Kojo Damptey, Hamilton Centre for Civic Inclusion (Executive Director)

Data colonialism and plantation logics in social services, and public health
Ameil Joseph, Ph.D. Associate Professor, School of Social Work McMaster University

Poster for Data & Sovereignty: Resisting Colonial Logics for Racial Justice. Features circular images of four speakers, LLana James, Bernice Downey, Kojo Damptey, and Ameil Joseph

Digital Scholars Lecture Series

A lecture series featuring emerging digital scholars from McMaster University (including the Sherman Centre’s Amanda Montague), the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo.

Lectures will take place at 4:00 pm ET on Thursdays in November and December.

Find more information and register in advance at tinyurl.com/y645meab.

Poster for Digital Scholars Lecture Series, Thursdays @ 4pm. Has a red and yellow background and icons of a text message, phone, and computer. Sponsored by the University of Guelph, Sherman Center, and the Critical Media Lab.