The RIGS (Race, Indigeneity, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) Initiative at the University of Minnesota, along with key partners, will host a two-day symposium on November 1-2, 2018 on “Reparations, Repatriation, and Redress.” This set of events will bring together multiple disciplines and colleges across the University of Minnesota and local communities to think through the challenges of and the possibilities for repair, atonement, return, and/or apology as potential ways to address some of the foundational wrongs of the US that have shaped longstanding institutional structures and inequalities. We will bring front and center a difficult and historically “nonstarter” topic to invite wide-ranging conversation around the politics, policies, and roadblocks around seeking atonement for historical and ongoing injustices. We will question the impoverishment of our imaginations when it comes to reparations for African Americans and land claims for native peoples in particular, as well as across multiple marginalized social groups.
This event will build on critical momentum at universities nation-wide and from local communities, and we truly hope that you will be a central part of it. While a number of universities have recently begun to examine their imbrication with the brutal institution of slavery, few universities have concretely addressed the effects of foundational inequalities on the wider communities within which the universities exist. In this light, this event will work closely with advocates from grassroots organizations in Rondo (a historically black neighborhood in St. Paul, displaced by urban planning and highways) seeking place-based remedies, as well as with activists in the contemporary reclaiming of Native lands, such as the the restoration of the name Bde Maka Ska to the lake formerly known as Lake
Calhoun.
Calhoun.
This event is free and open to the public. For more information please visit our website. Please follow this link to register for the symposium.
