Storying land on our bodies

Storying land on our bodies: A symposium on tattoos, healing, and health justice

Join us for an incredible event, "Storying Land on Our Bodies," which seeks to foster conversation at the intersections of tattooing, healing, and health justice. As an interdisciplinary gathering, the symposium weaves Indigenous and Black studies of health, education, social and political thought, arts, and resistance, with tattooing. Engaging with meaningful making of and making meaning with Tattoos, Tatau, Tā moko, Tunniit, Asasowin, Azhaasowin, and Batok (among many other words for these practices), our goal is to delve into the underlying social, political, and cultural foundations that supports healing and health justice. By centering discussion on how tattoos inscribe stories of land on the body, we aim to theorize material practices of sovereignty, anticolonial and antiracist liberation, to commemorate histories of struggle, and to promote liveability amidst and beyond the racial, capitalist, and settler-colonial violence of our times. The program is designed to stimulate dialogue and kindle exchange that melds the intimate with the political, centres the creative in social action, and nurtures international solidarity for health justice.

The event will feature five dynamic circles, with facilitators and speakers from around the world, each designed to provoke thought and inspire action through facilitated discussion, creative practice, experiential workshops, and more. Sessions will include:

Skin is Sovereign: On Land, Language, and Liberation, featuring:

• Waikaremoana Waitoki, Associate Professor of Māori and Indigenous Studies, Te Pua Wānanga ki te Ao, University of Waikato, Hamilton, Aotearoa
• Rariwi Horne, Tā Moko Artist, Christchurch, Aotearoa
• Joni Waitoki, te reo Māori teacher and artist, Christchurch, Aotearoa
• Horomona Horo, Māori musician, composer, and practitioner of taonga pūoro, Auckland, Aotearoa
• Regan Balzer, Artist, Auckland, Aotearoa
• Rongomaiaia Te Whaiti, Deputy Director of Māori Art. Massey University Te Kunenda Ki Purehuroa, Wellington, Aotearoa
• Luke Rowe, Senior Researcher and Clinical Psychologist, Research Centre for Hauora and Health, Wellington, Aotearoa

Scar Wounds: On Grief, Mourning, and Memorial

• Rebecca Beaulne-Stuebing, Assistant Professor in Education, York University
• Nathalie Morning, Doctoral Student in Social Justice Education, OISE, University of Toronto

Marked Resistance: On Anticolonial and Antiracist Struggle

• Ashley Caranto Morford, Assistant Professor of Writing and Literature in the Department of Liberal Arts at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
• Jo Billows, Doctoral Student in Social Justice Education, OISE, University of Toronto

When the Ink is a Creation Story: On Life Promotion

• Sheri Nault, Indigenous tattoo practitioner and Assistant Professor in Studio Arts at the University of Western Ontario
• Shanna Peltier, Doctoral Student in School and Child Clinical Psychology, OISE, University of Toronto, Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory
• Cara Samuel, Doctoral Student in Counselling and Clinical Psychology, OISE, University of Toronto and Clinical Resident with Saskatoon Health Region, Treaty 6

Stitching Solidarity: On Why Health Justice is Internationalist

• Jeffrey Ansloos, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Critical Studies in Indigenous Health, OISE, University of Toronto
• rosalind hampton, Assistant Professor of Black Studies in the Department of Social Justice Education, University of Toronto

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Bloor Street West, Toronto, ON, Canada