Episode 6: Still Kicking: Health, Community Building, and the Meaning of Care - a podcast by The Insurgent Architects House for Creative Writing

Show notes:

This roundtable chaired by Sharanpal Ruprai with Aruna Srivastava, Chrystos, Fred Wah, and David Garneau as participants was recorded during a TIA House symposium called Wisdom Council in September 2019. Wisdom Council recognized the imperfect knowledge transmission methods of the colonial system, and particularly the ways it has tended to fragment non-Western knowledges and privilege the textual over the oral. Using a combination of traditional and contemporary practices, it brought together a small council of mostly BIPOC senior practitioners in the contemporary arts to sit in council over three days to discuss such topics as what our communities need now; memory and forgetting; care of elders in racialized communities; stories of the past, present and future; stories in cyclical time; community formations they’ve experienced; community formations they remember; how they understand the work that needs to be done; and practices and strategies that might be of use or interest in the present moment. This roundtable was recorded as part of the gathering's work.Aruna Srivastava has spent many years working as an anti-racism educator in various community-based, arts, and academic contexts, focused in more recent years on the complexities and intersections of disability, illness, age, and trauma in this work.
Chrystos is a Menominee poet and activist. Chrystos was born in San Francisco. In her work, she examines themes of feminism, social justice, and Native rights.B.C. poet Fred Wah most recent project is a collaboration with Rita Wong about the Columbia River, beholden: a poem as long as the river. He lives in Vancouver and on Kootenay Lake.
David Garneau (Métis) is a Visual Arts Professor at the University of Regina whose practice includes painting, curation, and critical writing.00:00 Please note that the recording starts mid-way through Sharanpal Ruprai’s introduction of herself and the purpose of the roundtable. We apologize for the inconvenience.


We recognize the generous support of the Canada Research Chairs program and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. We also appreciate the support of the Faculty of Arts and the Department of English at the University of Calgary, where our offices are housed, as well as the guidance of Marc Stoeckle at the Taylor Family Digital Library. TIA House is run by Larissa Lai, Trynne Delaney, Rebecca Geleyn, Isabelle Michalski, and Joshua Whitehead.Our Intro/Outro music is Monarch of the Streets by Loyalty Freak Music, accessed from the Free Music Archive.

Further episodes of TIA House Talks

Further podcasts by The Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing

Website of The Insurgent Architects' House for Creative Writing