Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples – The Case of the Americas and Australia/Pacific Region

The international conference “Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples – The Case of the Americas and Australia/Pacific Region” will convene Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledge holders and scholars from around the world at the University of Southern California, which sits on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Tongva and Kizh Nation peoples. The conference will provide a forum for knowledge holders and leading and emerging scholars to present and discuss groundbreaking research on the topics of genocide against Indigenous peoples in North America, Latin America, and Australia/Pacific Region; the long-lasting impacts of mass violence on those communities until today; and the resistance, agency, and initiatives of Indigenous peoples from the Americas, Australia, and the Pacific Region to effect change. The conference, organized and hosted by the USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research and cosponsored by the partners below, will foster an interdisciplinary and intercultural dialogue on these subjects across a wide variety of historical, geographic, and cultural contexts. Registration for the conference is free. The conference will be livestreamed on Zoom.

Organizing committee:
Lorena Sekwan Fontaine Cree-Anishinabe, Sagkeeng First Nation (University of Winnipeg, Canada)
Irma A. Velásquez Nimatuj Maya-K’iche’ (Guatemala)
Dorota Glowacka (University of King’s College, Halifax, Canada)
Wolf Gruner (USC Dornsife Center for Advanced Genocide Research)

Supporting cosponsors:
USC Visions & Voices
USC Shoah Foundation
USC Center for International Studies
USC Native American Student Assembly
USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute (EMSI)
USC Dornsife Office of the Dean Humanities Division
Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West (ICW)
University of King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Indigenous Peoples Law and Policy Program – University of Arizona Law
USC Department of American Studies and Ethnicity
USC School of Cinematic Arts

Conference image is courtesy of the names of places project. Indigenous Australian artist Judy Watson and her collaborators created a multimedia project documenting the massacre sites of Indigenous Australians across Australia.

Download the Mass Violence and Its Lasting Impact on Indigenous Peoples conference program here

Profiles of scholars coming soon