A member of the Notre Dame faculty since 1997, Carolyn Nordstrom is an anthropologist at home in lecture hall and war zone alike. She studies wars, the illegal drug trade, gender relationships, and war profiteering. Her research has made her an eyewitness and scholar of worldwide urban and rural battlefields as well as of the shadowy worlds of diamond, drug, and arms smuggling. In addition to her teaching and lecturing, she has written dozens of articles, and several books including Global Outlaws: Crime, Money, and Power in the Contemporary World; Shadows of War: Violence, Power, and International Profiteering in the 21st Century; A Different Kind of War Story; Fieldwork Under Fire: Contemporary Stories of Violence and Survival, and The Paths to Domination, Resistance, and Terror. “I have studied the ways in which people gain the necessities to wage war and create peace, and how people pay for these services,” she once said. “Drugs, precious gems, human labor and sex are routinely used in international black markets to purchase everything from guns and computer-based weapons systems to antibiotics and food. The integrity of my ethnographic research and the safety of those among whom I work have rested on having to delete basic data, which erases the extra-legal from public discourse. I want to develop a form of creative non-fiction that explores the lives of real people working in this complex, extra-legal network without revealing their locations.”
Chief Ovide Mercredi is a Cree, a lawyer, a negotiator, an author, a lecturer in Native Studies, and an activist on behalf of First Nations in Canada. He was born into a traditional trapping hunting and fishing lifestyle in Grand Rapids, Manitoba in 1946. He is currently serving as Chief of the Misipawistik First Nation, Grand Chief of the Swampy Cree Tribal Council, and is also National Spokesperson for Treaties 1 through 11. Chief Mercredi is perhaps best known for his deep involvement in constitutional law reform issues, and Aboriginal and Treaty rights negotiations. He acted as a key adviser in First Nations’ opposition to the Meech Lake Accord, and in 1989 was elected Manitoba Vice-Chief of the Assembly of First Nations. He was first elected National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations in 1991, and served two terms until 1997. He also led the First Nations negotiations in the Charlottetown Accord. He is the recipient of numerous awards and honours. In 2006 he was invested with the Order of Manitoba; the province’s highest honour. He was nominated for the Gandhi Peace Prize and has received honourary degrees from Bishop’s University, St. Mary’s University, and Lethbridge University. He has published a collection of his speeches in a book entitled In The Rapids – Navigating the Future of First Nations, and has contributed articles to two other recent books. He is also the subject of two Canadian documentary films. Chief Mercredi has spoken at hundreds of venues, from small community gatherings to universities and colleges throughout North America and internationally about his experiences.
Betty A. Reardon is the Founding Director Emeritus of the International Institute on Peace Education, an annual intensive residential experience in peace education. Since 1982 the IIPE has been held at universities and peace education centers in Asia, Europe, Latin America and Central America. For this work she received a special Honorable Mention Award from UNESCO in 2001. Among her other initiatives in the international peace education movement, she initiated and served as the first Academic Coordinator of the Hague Appeal for Peace Global Campaign for Peace Education. Having taught as a visiting professor at a number of universities in the U.S. and abroad, she has 46 years of experience in international peace education and 33 years in the international movement for the human rights of women. She has served as a consultant to several UN agencies and national and international education organizations. Her widely published work in the theory and development of peace and human rights education, and in gender and peace issues, recognized in the awarding of the 2008 Award for Outstanding Contribution to Peace Studies from the Peace and Justice Studies Association, is archived in the Ward M. Canaday Center for Special Collections at the University of Toledo Libraries. She is the recipient of the 2009 Sean McBride Peace Prize awarded by the International Peace Bureau, the oldest of the many nongovernmental peace organizations, founded in 1891, awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 2010.
George Lakey is the director of Training for Change. He began his career as a trainer at the Martin Luther King School for Social Change, and has since gone on to lead over 1000 workshops on five continents. He has run trainings for coal miners, therapists, homeless people, prisoners, Russian lesbians and gays, Sri Lankan monks, Burmese guerrilla soldiers, striking steel workers, South African activists, and others. Trained as a sociologist, he has taught at the college and graduate level and is the author of six books. He consults regularly with a wide range of nonprofit groups.
Karen Ridd is an instructor in Conflict Resolution Studies at Menno Simons College, where her courses include "Introduction to Conflict Resolution Studies" and "Nonviolent Social Change". She is the former training coordinator for the Resolution Skills Centre of Mediation Services, a conflict resolution program in Winnipeg. Karen has designed and led workshops for young people, teachers, labor leaders, Cambodian Buddhist monks, Thai farmers, Mohawk activists, and Bangkok human rights workers. She is a professional clown and has years of experience working in healthcare. She's also worked in El Salvador and Guatemala, where she provided protective accompaniment for human rights leaders threatened with assassination. In addition to her mediation work, she is a freelance consultant on nonviolent activism, non-competitive games, communication skills, and conflict resolution.
I am a teaching artist with over thirty five years experience, working in various arts-in-education programs, as well as performing and giving workshops. I am also part of a tradition that stretches back along song lines and story vines to the first voices that filled the air under an equatorial sun. I am a storyteller. It is my profession, my art form, the ‘gift’ I’ve been given in this life. My mentors teach me this, and I have been blessed with some very wise and powerful guides along this journey. They also teach me that I have definite responsibilities, the most important one being to do the most that I can with the power I’ve been given. Stories do indeed have power; the power to deepen understanding, the power to heal, the power to inspire compassion, and the power to maintain a sense of wonder in the world. The further I travel on this path it seems, the greater the need becomes to find opportunities, to create opportunities, where I can explore this power more fully, and use it for the greater good. There is a Tanzanian proverb that says, “We start as fools, and grow wise through experience”. I feel that I have come to a place in my life where every day is another chance to grow stronger, gain wisdom, and do what I can to pass on that ‘gift’.
Adam Mazo (Filmmaker - Presenter)
Coexist: A Documentary
The documentary film, Coexist tells the stories of trauma survivors searching for ways to coexist with their loved ones’ murderers. As killing continues in Rwanda today and the government forces citizens to consider reconciliation, we examine the varied paths survivors choose when forced to face enemies and former enemies every day. In a world where innocent people are regularly attacked or killed because of who they are, we challenge you: how can Rwandans experiences inform efforts to build peaceful coexistence, eliminate hate crimes, and prevent all types of violence?
This guided bus tour will visit the historic sites of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike. Visit the heart of working class Winnipeg in the North End as well as the neighbourhood of Winnipeg's elite in Crescentwood. Experience the geography of a city divided by class as you re-live the most famous workers' uprising in Canadian history. Garth Hardy, a local labour activist and artist, will act as your tour guide and highlight the power of collective social action.
Lindey Courchene (Ka Ni Kanichihk)
Sharing Circle.
