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Canadian Studies Announcements
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In This Issue:
Program News
• Happy Black History Month!
• We’re hiring our first-ever social media student intern!
Upcoming Events
• From the Shadows: Reflections on Sanctuary in Montreal Over the Long 20th Century
• Panel: Asserting Indigenous Title to Unceded Wolastoqey Territory
Other Events
• USMCA, Nearshoring, and the Future of the North American Market
• The Loft Hour: Cecily Nicholson + Ana María Ochoa Gautier
• Film Screening: Maliglutit |
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Happy Black History Month!
Just like in the United States, February is also Black History Month in Canada. The month celebrates the contributions made by Black people to communities across North America. Black people have been a part of the Canadian story for over four hundred years, since Samuel de Champlain hired Mathieu Da Costa, a free Black man, to serve as his translator.
This year’s theme, “Black Legacy and Leadership: Celebrating Canadian History and Uplifting Future Generations”, recognizes the importance of community leaders to Canada’s diverse Black population, and their impact on Canada more broadly.
Visit Canadian Heritage’s Black History Month portal to learn about significant events in Black history in Canada, read biographies of Black leaders, and discover resources for fighting anti-Black racism. |
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| We’re Hiring A Social Media Student Intern!
Canadian Studies is thrilled to announce that we are hiring our first-ever student intern. This role is an exciting opportunity for a motivated student to shape the program’s social media strategy, establish its digital presence, and engage with the vibrant Canadian community in the Bay Area. Working closely with program staff and leadership, you will play a pivotal role in increasing the visibility of the program and fostering connections within the community. Gain hands-on experience in marketing and social media strategy development while networking with members of the Bay Area’s Canadian community.
This is a part-time job open to current UC Berkeley students. See full job details and apply via Handshake (Job #9657245). Questions may be sent to canada@berkeley.edu. Apply now – we start interviewing this week! |
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From the Shadows: Reflections on Sanctuary in Montreal Over the Long 20th Century
Tues., Feb. 18 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP
In the first decades of the twentieth century, the notion of sanctuary was repurposed in an effort to protect migrants and refugees from deportation and create broad-based social justice movements aimed at reforming existing immigration regimes in the United States and Canada. The New Sanctuary Movement, or what has been called the Sanctuary City Movement or Solidarity City Movement, galvanized supporters while also drawing the ire of critics. These movements also called into question the very notion of sanctuary, its purpose, and how social change might be effected.
The city of Montreal, known as Tiohtià:ke in Kanien’kéha and Mooniyang in Anishinaabemowin, declared itself a sanctuary city in 2017. However, in the face of large-scale immigration in the wake of the first Trump administration’s so-called “Muslim Ban” and other restrictions on refuge, it quickly walked back this decision, opting instead to describe itself as a “responsible city”. The ease with which both the declaration and the change in course were effected offers an opening to interrogate the meaning and substance of sanctuary in our contemporary moment as well as the many ways it has manifested historically.
This presentation explores the history of sanctuary in Montreal, a city long characterized by mobility and contested settlement, to interrogate the ways in which the seeking and forging of refuge has evolved. Using a series of case studies, this presentation underscores the shift from secrecy to public sanctuary in particular and raises questions about the extent to which contemporary sanctuary practices can address the fundamental injustices at the core of experiences of refuge and displacement.
About the Speaker
Dr. Laura Madokoro is an associate professor in the Department of History at Carleton University, unceded Algonquin territory in Ottawa, Canada. Her research explores the transnational history of migration, refuge, settler colonialism and humanitarianism in the long 20th century. Her current research focuses on the history of imperial displacements. Dr. Madokoro’s published works include Elusive Refuge: Chinese Migrants in the Cold War (Harvard, 2016) and Sanctuary in Pieces: Two Centuries of Flight, Fugitivity, and Resistance in a North American City (MQUP, 2024). She is also an active member of several research collectives including the Montreal History Group, Critical Refugee and Migration Studies Canada, and the editorial collectives for activehistory.ca and refugeehistory.org.
If you require an accommodation to fully participate in this event, please let us know at least 7 days in advance. |
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Panel: Asserting Indigenous Title to Unceded Wolastoqey Territory
Tues., Feb. 25 | 12:30 pm | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP
In 2021, six Wolastoqey communities launched a landmark lawsuit asserting an Indigenous title claim over more than five million hectares of territory in eastern Canada, one of the largest in the country’s history. They assert that the area, which covers more than half of the province of New Brunswick, was never ceded under the Peace and Friendship Treaties which various tribes signed with the British Crown in the 18th century. In a first of its kind, defendants in the suit include not just the federal and provincial governments, but also multiple forestry and industrial companies. The Wolastoqey hope that victory will not only increase their influence over issues from land use to taxation, but possibly even result in the return of land to tribal ownership.
The lawsuit has major implications for Indigenous title claims across Canada, and the Wolastoqey have already scored several key victories in their fight to assert their land rights. In November, a New Brunswick judge ruled that a declaration of Aboriginal title could be made to privately-held lands. And change of provincial government has also softened the province’s stance, opening the door to greater cooperation. Join leading negotiators and legal experts from the Wolastoqey Nation as they discuss the case’s current status; the state of Crown-Indigenous relations; and how the suit could change the future of Indigenous nations across Canada.
About the Speakers
Allan Polchies Jr. is the four-term Sakom (chief) of the Sitansisk Wolastoqey (St. Mary’s) First Nation, located in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Sitansisk is the second-largest Wolastoqey community in the province, and one of the six plaintiffs in the title suit. Polchies has served over seventeen years on the band council, and has led the community through its Indigenous title claim.
Renée Pelletier is a partner at Olthuis Kleer Townshend LLP, and the lead counsel on the Wolastoqey title claim. She is a member of the New Brunswick and Ontario Bars, specializing in Aboriginal and treaty rights litigation and negotiation. She teaches courses on land claims and self-government at the University of New Brunswick and serves as co-chair of Osgoode Professional Development’s Certificate Program in the Fundamentals of Indigenous Peoples and Canadian Law. She was awarded the Osgoode Hall Law School’s Alumni Gold Key Award for a Career of Distinction in 2024.
If you require an accommodation to fully participate in this event, please let us know at least 7 days in advance. |
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USMCA, Nearshoring, and the Future of the North American Market
Wed., Feb. 12 | 3:30 pm | San Francisco, CA | RSVP
The Bay Area Council and Bay Area Council Economic Institute invite you to a conversation with Canada’s Consul General Rana Sarkar and Mexico’s Consul General Ana Luisa Vallejo Barba on the US Mexico Canada Agreement (USMCA), nearshoring, and the future of the North American market. This is the latest in a series of forums organized by the Council to introduce its members and partners to the diplomatic representatives of our leading global business partners and to issues that will shape our future relationships.
The USMCA is up for renewal in 2026, but with the recent change in administration in Washington its provisions are on the table starting now. President Trump has threatened tariffs against both Canada and Mexico linked to both trade and non-trade issues. And a nearshoring boom in Mexico as companies shift their supply chains away from China may be at risk if an integrated North American market – supported by USMCA – is weakened. Participants will discuss these and other issues, and strategies for governments and businesses to adapt to a rapidly changing policy environment. |
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The Loft Hour: Cecily Nicholson + Ana María Ochoa Gautier
Thurs., Feb. 13 | 12:00 pm | Hearst Field Annex D23
The Berkeley Arts Research Center invites you to an informal lunchtime conversation between Canadian poet Cecily Nicholson and musicologist Ana María Ochoa Gautier, moderated by Berkeley professor Tom McEnaney.
Cecily Nicholson is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia and the 2024/25 Holloway Lecturer in Poetry and Poetics at UC Berkeley. She is the author of four poetry books, and has won BC’s Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (2015), the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry (2018), and the inaugural Phyllis Webb Memorial Reading Award from the Poetry in Canada Society (2023). Her poetry addresses issues of social and environmental justice, including the displacement of Black and Indigenous Canadians.
Ana María Ochoa Gautier is a professor and chair of the Department of Music at Columbia University, and a visiting professor at UC Berkeley in Spring 2025. She writes on music and cultural policy, forced silence and armed conflict, and genealogies of listening and sound in Latin America and the Caribbean. Her book Aurality, Listening and Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Colombia (Duke University Press, 2014) was awarded the Alan Merriam Prize by the Society for Ethnomusicology.
Tom McEnaney is an associate professor in the department of Comparative Literature and Spanish & Portuguese, and director of the Berkeley Center for New Media. His research concerns the intersection of literature, sound technology, and politics. |
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Film Screening: Maliglutit
Fri., Feb. 28 | 7:00 pm | BAMPFA | Buy tickets
Inspired by the Westerns he grew up watching, Canadian Inuit filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk’s Maliglutit (Searchers) strips away some conventional elements of the Western (the arid deserts, horses, and cowboys) to highlight the invincible power of the Arctic landscape and the importance of community and ancestral knowledge for survival. Set in Nunavut, Northern Canada, in 1913, the wife and daughter of Kuanana are kidnapped by a trio of greedy, rapacious men. Calling on his father’s spiritual guide, Kuanana and his son set out to find them. Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq provides the hauntingly effective soundtrack. “An emotionally arduous journey with fierce twists and an unrelenting sense of urgency up until the final, hard-fought frame” (Shane Scott-Travis, Taste of Cinema). The screening will feature an introduction by Canadian Studies affiliate professor Shari Huhndorf.
Writeup modified from original provided by BAMPFA associate film curator Kate McKay. |
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Royal Canadian Legion, US Branch #25 