Category Archives: Decolonization
“Critical Muslim Voices and The Elections”: A Conversation with Hasan Alam
Hasan Alam is a lawyer, activist and a founding member of Critical Muslim Voices. A few weeks ago I got the chance to sit down with him and talk about Critical Muslim Voices, what the upcoming federal election means for Muslims, the Islamophobic rhetoric surrounding the elections, and the presence of CSIS (the Canadian Security […]
Meat is Murder
There is no existence more complicated, convoluted and rewarding than being a human being. We live within our own inventions: insulated homes, organized municipal communities, restaurants, the internet, language – so who would want to be anything else? Now, across cultures relationships with land and animals vary, and since I cannot personally speak on the […]
Angélica Choc at UBC: “We come carrying more than 500 years of resistance”
Angélica Choc is a Mayan Q’eqchi’ woman from the community of La Union, in the Guatemalan municipality of El Estor. Adolfo Ich Chamán, her husband and an outspoken critic of the Canadian-owned nickel mine operating in the area, was brutally murdered on the 27th of September, 2009. The security manager of the mine was arrested […]
Frontlines Beat Pipelines 2: Supporting The Unist’ot’en Through Creative Resistance
The first week of school brings more than just the familiar and notorious whirlwind of welcome back events, parties, and Imagine Day-related hysteria. It also conjures up the long legacy of on-campus colonial violence and misogyny that sometimes rears its head in traditions like Frosh. The Sauder School’s “Pocahontas chants” of 2013 readily come to […]
Introducing the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival 2015
The Talon – UBC’s alternative student press – is back from our summer hiatus! This year brings in a fresh start, with new ideas, exciting content, and a set of amazing incoming editors! We will be publishing again in a couple of days. We’re proud to kick the year off by announcing our media partnership […]
The Problem with Social Work
My name is Morgan Yee, a name that is representative of both my Chinese and Caucasian ancestry. I am in my last term of my Bachelors of Social Work at UBC, and am specializing in child welfare. I grew up in the small, primarily First Nations community of Hazelton, British Columbia, on the traditional lands […]
Social Justice Synonyms #21: “Prostitute”
On Sunday March 29th #facesofprostitution went viral. The hashtag was a response from queer Australian sex worker Tilly Lawless to an article posted on the website Exodus Cry entitled “The Reality of Pretty Woman.” The article argued that Pretty Woman, the 1990 movie in which Julia Roberts plays a sex worker, romanticizes the realities of […]
Homelessness is Not a Choice
I am deeply indebted to the Coast Salish people, the Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam nations on whose unceded lands I think, teach, learn, and write. With my heartfelt gratitude. It is springtime again and the Five Days for the Homeless Campaign has recently concluded at UBC. The campaign’s website states that student participants had to […]
Pièce de Résistance – Art as Revolution
“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ― Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings At an open mic evening called Spoken Works III: Centring Black Voices, some of those stories were released. Held on March 4th at Heartwood Community Café, non-black organizer Jane Shi explained that the […]
UBC SPHR Press Release: UBC’s AMS Officially Opposes Campus Boycott and Divest Campaign
Vancouver, BC – On March 4, 2015, the University of British Columbia’s (UBC) student union, the AMS, voted to officially oppose the boycott and divestment campaign put forth by on-campus student group Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights (SPHR). The campaign seeks to implement the BDS movement at the student union level at the university that […]
