Beverley Diamond
“Re” Thinking: Revitalization, Return, and Reconciliation in Contemporary Indigenous Expressive Culture.
Wednesday, June 1, 2021
12:15 to 13:20
Edmund Casey Hall, Ted Daigle Auditorium
In partnership with the Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation
After a century in which innovation was arguably a defining feature of modernity, what are the political and social weights given to various concepts of repetition and return in defining contemporary indigenous modernity? Drawing on her research with Native American and Sami musicians and dancers, Dr. Beverley Diamond will explore how expressive culture is used to define new forms of social community and cross-cultural engagement. She will offer commentary on the charged debates surrounding reconciliation and its utopian claims.
Often consumers of indigenous performance, whether consciously or not, shape a “patron discourse” that demands repetitive behaviours that can stifle and normalize creative expression. With this in mind, Dr. Diamond will ask how artists can successfully evade the “re”creation of new and old cultural stereotypes.
Dr. Beverley Diamond is a Trudeau Fellow and holds the Canada Research Chair in Traditional Music at Memorial University.
