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Mary Eberts
Is a barrister based in Toronto with a national law practice in constitutional law, equality rights, and Aboriginal rights. She is a co-founder of the Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF) and has been litigation counsel to the Native Women’s Association of Canada since 1991. In January 2010, she will take up an appointment to the Ariel F. Sallows Chair in Human Rights at the College of Law, University of Saskatchewan.
My talk will be about decolonization. I now deliberately identify as a settler, a designation which is historically accurate – my father’s people came from France to Fort Pontchartrain (Detroit) and from Scotland with Lord Selkirk to the Baldoon Settlement in Ontario – and also the source of questions which preoccupy me. I ask myself, how have I and mine experienced and perpetrated colonization, and what can I do to decolonize myself ? Can my decolonization contribute to the larger project of decolonization in and of Canada, and in what ways? My talk sets these questions in the context of the continuing conversation about apology, truth, reconciliation, and self-determination.
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