Storytelling and Epistemic Reparations

Jennifer Lackey (Northwestern University)

The Epistemic Reparations Global Working Group is an international, interdisciplinary team of scholars and activists. They aim to create a more holistic and victim-centered framework for understanding reparations and to generate recognition of the “right to be known” for victims of gross human rights violations.

More information on the group here: https://buffett.northwestern.edu/research/global-working-groups/epistemic-reparations.html

In this free public event, Project Lead Jennifer Lackey (Professor of Philosophy and Law (courtesy) & Director, Northwestern Prison Education Program) will moderate a panel discussion with Senator Mary Jane McCallum and Photo Laureate of Toronto, Nadya Kwandibens on “Storytelling and Epistemic Reparations”. What forms can storytelling take beyond those told in words and print? What role can storytelling play in the healing process for victims of gross violations of human rights? Join us on September 15, 6-7pm, in the Ilipvik Learning Steps at Qaumajuc-Winnipeg Art Gallery, for a lively interactive discussion. Stay afterwards and check out the latest exhibit at Qaumajuc, Inuit Sanaugangit – Art Across Time!

Nadya Kwandibens is Anishinaabe (Ojibwe) from the Animakee Wa Zhing #37 First Nation in northwestern Ontario. She is an award winning portrait and events photographer, Canon Ambassador, and the current Photo Laureate for the City of Toronto. In 2008 she founded Red Works Photography. Red Works is a dynamic photography company empowering contemporary Indigenous lifestyles and cultures through photographic essays, features, and portraits. She currently resides in Tkarón:to on Wendat, Haudenosaunee, Mississauga of the Credit River & Dish With One Spoon Territory.

Senator Mary Jane McCallum is a citizen of the Barren Lands First Nation in Brochet, Manitoba. She attended the Guy Hill Residential School in The Pas for 11 years. She is an advocate for social justice who, over the course of her distinguished career, has provided dental care to First Nations communities across Manitoba. In addition to her professional endeavours, Dr. McCallum leads workshops and presentations in which she shares her personal experience as a residential school survivor in an effort to raise awareness and understanding.

Jennifer Lackey specializes in epistemology, with a particular emphasis on a broad range of issues in social epistemology. She is the Director of the Northwestern Prison Education Program. Her recent work focuses on false confessions, the criminal justice system, the duty to object, norms of credibility, the epistemic status of punishment, the epistemology of groups, expertise, and the distribution of epistemic goods. She is the author of Criminal Testimonial Injustice (2023, Oxford: OUP), The Epistemology of Groups (2021, Oxford: OUP), Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge (2008, Oxford: Oxford University Press) and has co-edited (with Ernest Sosa) The Epistemology of Testimony (2006, Oxford University Press) and (with David Christensen) The Epistemology of Disagreement (2013, Oxford University Press). She is Editor-in-Chief of Episteme, Editor of Philosophical Studies, and Subject Editor for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  *This event is generously supported by the Northwestern Buffett Institute for Global Affairs, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics, University of Manitoba, Brandon University Research Committee, and the Canadian Journal of Philosophy.