Second International Conference, Dispossessions in the Americas

Systemic racism is built on historical, structural, and institutionalized dispossessions of Indigenous, Latinx, and Afro-descendant populations. From the first colonial encounters to the present-day, marginalized communities have been dispossessed of territory, natural resources, freedom, rights, and cultural patrimony. These dispossessions have been legitimized by colonial and patriarchal values and institutions that have systematically overwritten the priorities of Indigenous, Latinx, and Afro-descendants, as well as women, and Queer/Trans people. Dispossession is thus both material and ideological, traceable to historical conquest, yet marked in the present. To rectify dispossession is to look both backwards and forwards, to repair material losses and to attend to the values and ideologies that hybridize our present.

Our interdisciplinary research project has two main goals. First, we seek to document territorial, embodied, and cultural heritage dispossessions in the Americas—through the mechanisms of deceit, disease, and warfare—from 1492 to the present. Second, we aspire to collectively outline and identify models of repossession and the processes through which the restoration of land, embodiments, and cultural heritage can recover histories and promote restorative justice. 

In this international conference, our main goal is to foster a conversation about documentation, reclamation, restoration, and repair. The conference will be hosted in a hybrid-format. All presentations can be watched via Zoom or in person at the Forum in the Ronald O. Perelman Center for Political Science and Economics. You can use the QR code to RSVP and to register to get the Zoom link via email. Simultaneous interpretation English-Spanish-Portuguese will be available both in person and online (please bring your own tablet/cellphone and headphones).