The Henceforward

In this episode, Kayla Webber and Paige Grant interview Denise Baldwin, from Ontario, to discuss her experiences of being a Black-Indigenous woman in Canada. The conversation considers the ways that Black-Indigenous and/or Afro-Indigenous identities have, and continue to be, invisbilized in Canada. Some members of these communities have been taught to dishonour their Indigenous and/or Black ancestors who have made it possible for them to be here. Denise draws attention to how she understands and expresses her Black-Indigenous identity. This episode was originally recorded in March 2019.

This episode was originally recorded in February 2019. However, it is especially relevant during the COVID-19 virus, given the increasing use of online platforms, and amidst conversations about life following the pandemic. In this episode, Sefanit interviews Nasma Ahmed, the founder of Digital Justice Lab (DJL). Nasma is a Black woman whose work considers surveillance, digitization, and tech justice amidst an everchanging Toronto. She discusses her work with DJL and its necessarily broad scope, as well as the Sidewalk Project and critical questions important to future city building. Who do these proposed “smart cities” account for, and at whose expense? To learn more about the Digital Justice Lab: http://digitaljusticelab.ca.

This episode was originally recorded in October 2018. It remains relevant today, amidst the COVID-19 virus, as we are imagining life following the pandemic. In this episode, Jennifer Sylvester and Jade Nixon interview Alayna Eagle Shield, creator of the Mní Wičhóni Nakíčižiŋ Owáyawa (Defenders of the Water School), which began at the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ Camp at Standing Rock. Alayna generously shares her work at the school and speaks to the importance of Indigenous languages and traditions, particularly the Lakota language, for her children and future generations.  

In November 2017, Indigenous and Black community members, scholars, and activists gathered at the University of Toronto to discuss getting elsewhere.   In the spirit of The Henceforward, the elsewhere is lived and created today, as well as a realm of unknown possibilities. Members of the gathering created guided meditations that take us on a walk-through future-day 125th Street in Harlem and invite us to visit places we yearn for.   We invite you to listen closely, perhaps close your eyes, and travel with us into the elsewhere.   Contributors, in the order their voices are heard:   Sefanit Habtom Marie Laing Karyn Recollet Eve Tuck Zoe Samudzi Mistinguette Smith Sandi Wemigwase Susan Blight Chelsea Vowel Shay McLean Andrea Derbecker Stephanie Latty Fikile Nxumalo Danielle Cantave

In this episode, Chris Ramsaroop, Greer Babazon and Nisha Toomey discuss Toronto's rapid gentrification. We visit the kitchen table to unpack what communities are most impacted by gentrification; explore how gentrification has been, and continues to be, justified by (settler colonial) logics of progress and inevitability; and we speak with a resident of Toronto's Junction area on the shifted/shifting community.

In this episode, Carey DeMichelis & Bea Jolley delve into the Canadian rhetoric of multiculturalism. The Kitchen Table discusses what multicultural discourses miss and mask. And we are joined by Tiffany King, Assistant Professor at the University of Georgia in Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Michael Dumas, Assistant Professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the Graduate School of Education and the African American Studies Department.   Dr. King, Dr. Dumas, and the Kitchen Table draw our attention to the ways that performances of multiculturalism serve as a distraction from the changes needed and desired for and by Black and Indigenous peoples.

In this episode, Sefanit Habtom and Sigrid Roman interview Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński and Naomi Rincón Gallardo, creators of the Formaldehyde Trip and Unearthing. In Conversation, respectively. Naomi and Belinda generously share their artistic decision-making processes, how they see art as resistance, and speak to future generations of Black and Indigenous peoples. Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński is a writer and artist living in Vienna/Austria. Grounded in Black feminist theory, she is interested in memory and Black radical imagination. Her artistic work combines photography, collage, video, and performance. Since October 2015 she is a candidate in the PhD-in-Practice Program at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna working on the project The Non-Human. The Believer. The Alien –  Unsettling Innocence. In the frame of this project she engages artistically and theoretically with the performativity of Blackness in relation to Austrian coloniality. Here she confronts three historic scenes that involve Blackness in Austria with new approaches from the field of Black studies.   Naomi Rincón Gallardo. (1979) Based in Mexico City, currently living in Vienna. Understanding research as a trans-disciplinary crafty fabrication, her work addresses initiatives concerning the creation of counter-worlds within neocolonial settings. Through masquerade lenses she creates a place between radical alternatives, fantasy and crises of beliefs. Rincón Gallardo integrates her interest in music, D.I.Y aesthetics, speculative fiction, theater games, humor, decolonial and anti-racist feminisms, queer theory and critical pedagogy into her work. She is a current candidate for the PhD in Practice at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.      

This episode explores the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program in Canada by considering the modes of surveillance, exploitation, denial and violence embedded in the program. Nisha Toomey and Chris Ramsaroop demystify false histories of Canadian innocence and the white settler anxieties entrenched in the state.

  In a deliberate attempt to un-forget erased histories, this snack episode considers a housing co-op in Toronto's downtown core. The name of the street, the co-op, and the land where it's situated, trace a relationship between settler colonialism, slavery, and antiblackness.

In this episode, various voices consider self-care in the work of the henceforward. There is a discussion of self-care collectively vs. individually, Elder Jacqui Lavalley generously explains smudging, and dark sousveillance* is offered as a form of self-care. *Dark sousveillance counters and subverts surveillance mechanisms that target Black and Indigenous peoples. For more information about dark sousveillance and its intervention into surveillance studies, read Simone Browne's book, Dark Matters: On the Surveillance of Blackness.

In this episode, Danielle Cantave and Sefanit Habtom interview Robyn Maynard, author of the new book Policing Black Lives: State Violence in Canada from Slavery to the Present. In her book, Maynard narrates little known - or entirely unknown - stories of Blackness in Canada and the continued state-sanctioned violence enacted upon Black people. This conversation includes her reasons for writing the book and her imaginings for the future.

In this episode, Simone Weir, Kate Curtis, and Jessamyn Polson feature extended interviews with Gita Madan and Tanya Aberman about the safety of Toronto schools for Black and undocumented youth. The central question of the episode is when we talk about safety, whose safety are we talking about? Gita discusses the School Resource Officer (SRO) program, which places uniformed and armed police officers in high schools, and Tanya considers the everyday ways in which schools and school personnel put undocumented students at risk. The first part of the episode was recorded in April 2017, and the following segment offers an update regarding the SRO program, recorded in October 2017. For more information you can visit Education Not Incarceration

In this episode, Erin Soros interviews writer, Alicia Elliott. Alicia discusses writing in the “messy zone” without answers, her reasons for writing creative non-fiction, and much more.  How do Black and Indigenous people now imagine alternative futurities, and what approaches do they find most useful? Here at this threshold, an important intellectual and emotional energy is gathering – contributors to the dialogue cognizant always of past and present oppressions, while also creating visions of life that is otherwise.  

In this episode, Jessamyn Polson, Kate Curtis, and Greer Brabazon linger with water and all of its rushing meaning. Including an extended interview with Dr. Karyn Recollet, this episode considers ways to find ourselves back in love and in good relation to the water. Other contributors include Simone Weir, Erin Soros, and Sandi Wemigwase. Karyn Recollet is Assistant Professor in the Women and Gender Studies Institute, University of Toronto. Her university website is: http://www.wgsi.utoronto.ca/person/karyn-recollet

Season 2 begins with an interview by Jade Nixon and Cornel Grey with Itah Sadu, founder and owner of A Different Booklist. A Different Booklist is an independent bookstore and cultural centre in Tkaronto that specializes in books from the African and Caribbean diaspora. Itah generously outlines the history of the space, naming many prominent writers, poets, and publishers along the way. This episode also introduces our new segment Kitchen Table Talks. At the kitchen table, Indigenous and Black peoples think through different issues together. Follow A Different Booklist on Twitter @ADFRNTBooklist

In this episode, Marie Laing, Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing, Sandi Wemigwase, and Sefanit Habtom sit with Kyle Mays to discuss his work as a Black-American Saginaw Anishinaabe scholar and hip-hop enthusiast. He discusses what draws him to the work he is currently doing, how hip-hop is used to dismantle Indigenous stereotypes, and what relationships he hopes to see between Indigenous and Black peoples. He also recommends many artists and writers for listeners to check out.   --- Kyle Mays' articles mentioned in the episode:  Can we Live – And Be Modern?: Decolonization, Indigenous Modernity, and Hip Hop (2015)  The Souls of White-Indians: A Letter to My White Indian Friend (2016)

This episode features the full discussion between Eve Tuck and Rinaldo Walcott that took place at the Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education Conference at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education on September 30, 2016. Snippets from this exchange were featured in Episode 10, “Writing Into the Henceforward”. In this conversation, Eve and Rinaldo explore the complexities of indigeneity, land, and sovereignty as understood and lived by Indigenous and Black peoples.

In this snack episode, Melissa Wilson and Lynn Ly provide an overview of the work that the Henceforward podcast sets out to do.

In this snack episode, Rahma Hilowle, Christy Guthrie, and Fizza Mir deliver “podcards” (podcast/postcards) that reflect on time and place. Presented as short letters, the contributors take us to Black Creek, an Art History Museum, and on a commute along Highway 407 to consider the often untold stories of land and spaces we engage with daily. The podcards consist of sounds, memories, and interactions that mark the spaces today.  

In this episode, we have collected snippets from the discussions that took place at the Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education Conference, a one day conference for writers and aspiring writers hosted by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. The episode is split into three segments based on the themes that emerged from a few of the conversations. Throughout the event, we checked in with conference attendees to find out what it means to them to write into the henceforward. We share these conversations to inspire our listeners to continue them further. Speakers include Rinaldo Walcott, Eve Tuck, Karyn Recollet, Vero Velez, Nirmala Erevelles, and Tanya Titchkosky

In this snack episode, Jen Brailsford, Alicia Cameron, and Karima Kinlock disrupt a game show entitled “Whose land is it anyways?” because of the settler colonial and antiblack narratives it perpetuates. Instead, they offer reflections upon what land is and means to Indigenous and Black peoples living on Turtle Island. The episode features a spoken word piece by K.K.Q.

In this episode, Melissa Wilson and Lynn Ly offer an overview of texts that explore settler colonialism, blackness, and land. This episode hopes to make terms more approachable and accessible by connecting them to current examples. Traveling through history, the present, and into the future, this discussion provides insight into the citation practices that ground our podcast. The texts referenced in this episode are listed below, in the order they were mentioned: Palmater, Pamela. (2015). Indigenous Nationhood: Empowering grassroots citizens. Fernwood Publishing Company. Byrd, Jodi. (2011).The Transit of Empire: Indigenous critiques of colonialism. University of Minnesota Press. O'Brien, Jean M. (2010). Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians out of existence in New England. University of Minnesota Press. Wolfe, P. (2006). Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native. Journal of Genocide Research, 8(4), 387-409. Moreton-Robinson, Aileen. (2015). The White Possessive: Property, power and Indigenous sovereignty. Minnesota University Press. Browne, Simone. (2015). Dark Matters: On the surveillance of Blackness. Duke University Press. Walcott, R. (2003). Black like who?: Writing black Canada. Insomniac Press. Brand, Dionne. (2001). A Map to the Door of No Return: Notes to belonging. Vintage Canada. Tuck, E., Guess, A., & Sultan, H. (2014). Not nowhere: Collaborating on selfsame land. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1.

In this “snack” episode (a shorter episode released between full-length episodes) Rinaldo Walcott and Eve Tuck discuss the dilemmas of posing generous and productive questions between Black people and Indigenous people.   Walcott reflects on the long practices within whiteness to frame questions in ways that replicate the brutalities of white imposition, and the implications of those frames on questions non-white communities can engage with each other.   Walcott emphasizes the need for generosity, and to ask each other urgent questions in and beyond our usual frames.   This Henceforward Snack is part of a longer interview between Walcott and Tuck on identity as an analytic category, that will appear as part of a special issue on ‘Late Identity' published in Critical Ethnic Studies in Spring 2017.    

The Henceforward Episode 6: Movement Building Beyond the Moment: On Getting Free Together in #StandingRock and #FreedomSquare with Kelly Hayes. In this episode, Stephanie Latty, Sefanit Habtom, and Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing interview Kelly Hayes, a cofounder of the Chicago Light Brigade and the direct action collective Lifted Voices. Hayes is a member of the Menominee nation, and is based out of Chicago where she works as a direct action trainer. Kelly Hayes recently wrote an article for truthout.org called “From #NoDAPL to #FreedomSquare: A tale of two occupations.” In the article and in this interview, Hayes beautifully details the important time in history that we're witnessing: two simultaneous land-based struggles that shed light on issues Indigenous and Black communities are facing.  This episode travels from Standing Rock to Freedom Square in Chicago, reflecting on these two sites of contestation and creativity, and describing direct action tactics for freedom.  Check out Kelly's writings about #NoDAPL Land Protectors at Standing Rock at the following links:  http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37378-from-nodapl-to-freedomsquare-a-tale-of-two-occupations    http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/37568-erased-by-false-victory-obama-hasn-t-stopped-dapl   

In this episode, Faith Juma and Hunter Knight take you on a journey to the future! And also the past. And also the present. All of them are part of the future because of our nifty TTC delorean, a time-space compression device that formerly happened to be a subway car in Toronto. Featuring special guests Rebecca Beaulne-Steubing, Shequita Thompson, and Mitch Case. 

In this episode, Eve Tuck interviews Kim Tallbear, a scholar who focuses on Indigeneity and technoscience as part of the Faculty of Native Studies at University of Alberta. Tallbear is a member of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota and is also a descendant of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. Highlights in the discussion include ideas on kinship, the ways that race and blood have been constructed differently for Indigenous and Black peoples in settler nation-states, and Eve asking possibly the longest podcast interview question ever. Tallbear speaks to the connections between the police killing of Philando Castile in St. Paul, MN, and the Indigenous peoples who have lived in what is now the Twin cities since time immemorial.  

Reconciliation? This episode explores the challenge and question of reconciliation on the lands now known as Canada. Hosted by Meg Bertasson (Ininiw iskwew) and Rebecca Be aulne-Stuebing (Weesawkoday Anishinabe), conversations with Indigenous and Bla ck community members are woven in to a discussion on reconciliation, settler colonialism, and antiblackness.   Guests include Mitch Case, Shequita Thompson, Jessie Johnson, Stephanie Latty, and Fallon Simard.

Give It Back! What are reparations? Who deserves them? Is it a viable project? In today's episode, we explore the dynamic and, often times, controversial debate around reparations in Canada. We feature a number of important conversations and people including members of local indigenous communities, a prominent figure of the Afrikan Global Congress, and voices from the inspirational Black Lives Matter-Toronto movement #BLMTOtentcity. Together, we imagine the henceforward, an alternative and creative space, separate from dominant, Eurocentric powers.   This episode is hosted by Danielle Cantave, Fizza Mir, Lauren Howard, and Sefanit Habtom, and features the following guests: Dina Paul, Cikiah Thomas, Jeff Kiyoshk Ross, Kory Snache-Giniw (Eagle), Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing, and community members from #BLMTOTentCity.