Social Movements & the Law

"Conversations in Cultural Heritage" is 5-episode series that highlights the background and work of People of Color in cultural heritage organizations, supported by the Rare Book School’s (RBS) Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship for Diversity, Inclusion, and Cultural Heritage.

Adding new narrations to historical films, Tribesourcing brings untold or suppressed stories to Native communities. Diné Librarian Rhiannon Sorrell shares how inaccurate or culturally uninformed films are a way to reclaim indigenous voice.

Nothing About Us Without Us

Autistics for Autistics Ontario (A4A) is Canada’s national autistic self-advocacy organization. We are an international affiliate of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN). We are an autistic-led organization. We work in partnership with other disability groups to educate the public and transform Canada’s autism policies from a charity perspective to a RIGHTS perspective. Along with our Parent Alliance, we advocate for our federal, provincial and territorial governments to consult directly with autistic people when developing the policies that affect our lives.

To ensure that people with disabilities are treated as equals and that they are given the same decisions, choices, rights, responsibilities, and chances to speak up to empower themselves; opportunities to make new friends, and to learn from their mistakes.

Content about autism by autistic and neurodivergent people. A resource for autistic adults, parents of autistic children, educators, and physicians.

"Written by leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, Voicing Identity examines the issue of cultural appropriation in the contexts of researching, writing, and teaching about Indigenous peoples. This book grapples with the question: who is qualified to engage in these activities and how can this be done appropriately and respectfully? The authors address these questions from their own individual perspectives and experiences, often revealing personal struggles and their ongoing attempts to resolve them. There is diversity in perspectives and approaches, but also a common goal: to conduct research and teach in respectful ways that enhance understanding of Indigenous histories, cultures, and rights, and promote reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Bringing together contributors with diverse backgrounds and unique experiences, Voicing Identity will be of interest to students and scholars studying Indigenous issues as well as anyone seeking to engage in the work of making Canada a model for just relations between the original peoples and newcomers."--

"First book to argue that immigrant and refugee rights are part of the fight for racial justice; offers a humanitarian approach to reform and abolition"--

"In 1987, when Karen Van Fossan's teenage identity was stolen in a botched bank robbery, she maintained an unquestioning allegiance to the colonial legal system. In 2021, when she found herself in a jail cell on a Water Protector charge, she had long since been a resister of her own colonial culture. But what does it mean, as a descendent of colonialism, to seek to be un-colonial?"--

"Across protests and courtrooms, LGBTQ activists argue that true sex or sexuality is encoded deep down, that it circulates in blood and is an expression of brain shapes and genetic codes. Their opponents incite panic over luring child groomers and a contagious "gender ideology" which corrupts the brains-and then bodies-of susceptible teenagers. In Born This Way: Science, Citizenship, and Inequality in the American LGBTQ Movement, Joanna Wuest tells the history of the LGBTQ rights movement, the modern scientific study of gender and sexuality, and the identity politics that formed at the nexus. She too reveals how conservative leaders have undermined science's ability to assist equal rights campaigns, reproductive rights, and climate change policies alike. Born This Way is at once a celebratory and cautionary tale, one which delineates a minority rights movement's impressive victories, its powerful and persuasive allies, and the ongoing assault on equality and science alike"--

By Kirstin Nelson (Follow us on LinkedIn) When I started my job at the National Agricultural Library, I had yet to think much about land grant universities. I attended one (University of Nebra…

students deserve a seat at the table... SEAT is a progressive movement committed to organizing power among a network of young people. We are developing transferable skills and demonstrating youth visibility in traditionally adult-dominated fields of policymaking

Hate crimes include acts of physical harm and threats based on race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, disability.

Listen, and you will hear it: the tangible dread of Autistic individuals around the globe. April is Autism Awareness Month, which kicked off with Autism Awareness Week. Circulating across Twitter and other social media platform there were puzzle piece symbols and tragedy tropes about Autistic individuals needing to be “cured.' When it comes to the podcasting industry, I know the feeling all too well. I was diagnosed six years ago, and it took a long to accept that I am not broken, and that I am actually a 'whole' person. I am not a puzzle or a mystery, or even

Only about 2% of public school teachers in Arizona are Indigenous.

Support our work: https://democracynow.org/giveCivil rights leader Bishop William Barber joins us to discuss his calls for more awareness and justice for dis...

"Fleeing war and violence, many refugees dream that moving to the United States will be like going to heaven. Instead, they enter a deeply unequal American society, often at the bottom. Through the lived experiences of families resettled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Blair Sackett and Annette Lareau reveal how a daunting obstacle course of agencies and services can drastically alter refugees' experiences building a new life in America. In these stories of struggle and hope, as one volunteer said, "you see the American story." For some families, minor mistakes create catastrophes-food stamps cut off, educational opportunities missed, benefits lost. Other families, with the help of volunteers and social supports, escape these traps and take steps toward reaching their dreams. Engaging and eye-opening, We Thought It Would Be Heaven brings readers into the daily lives of Congolese refugees and offers guidance for how activists, workers, and policymakers can help refugee families thrive"--

"A call for the rethinking Navajo sovereignty in a way more rooted in Navajo beliefs, culture, and values"--Provided by publisher.

"Illuminating the First Nations struggles against the Canadian state, It's All about the Land exposes how racism underpins and shapes Indigenous-settler relationships. Renowned Kahnaw:ke Mohawk activist and scholar Taiaiake Alfred explains how the Canadian government's reconciliation agenda is a new form of colonization that is also guaranteed to fail. Bringing together Alfred's speeches and interviews from over the past two decades, the book shows that Indigenous peoples across the world face a stark choice: reconnect with their authentic cultures and values or continue following a slow road to annihilation. Alfred proposes a radical vision for contesting and confronting the ongoing genocide of the original peoples of this land: Indigenous Resurgence. This way of thinking, being, and practising represents an authentic politics that roots resistance in the spirit, knowledge, and laws of the ancestors. Set against the historic arc of Indigenous-settler relations in Canada and drawing on the rich heritage of First Nations resistance movements, It's All about the Land traces the evolution of Indigenous struggle and liberation through the dynamic processes of oratory, dialogue, action, and reflection."--

"The book provides individual Diné/Navajo examinations and understandings of Níhi kéyah, Navajo homeland. These examinations and understandings represent a distinctive lens of Diné/Navajo peoples and way of life"--

"Through an examination of the historical development and contemporary outcomes of the "aggravated felony" category of deportable crimes, From Criminalization to Deportation provides new understanding of the ways that criminal justice system inequities are reproduced through processes of immigration enforcement and deportation. The severe, expansive, and racially disparate outcomes of the aggravated felony are met with innovative legal responses, bolstered by networks of community-based resistance-with key implications for those concerned with creating equal systems of justice and protecting the rights of immigrants nationwide"--

Diné perspectives : revitalizing and reclaiming Navajo thought-book

"Informed by personal experience and offering an inclusive view, Diné Identity in a Twenty-First-Century World showcases the complexity of understanding and the richness of current Diné identities"--

"The Border Reader is an anthology which gathers previously published foundational works of humanities and interpretive social science scholarship on the U.S.-Mexico border. Edited by anthropologist Gilberto Rosas and American and Latinx studies scholar Mireya Roza, this Reader brings together essays that mobilize feminist, queer, Indigenous and critical ethnic studies perspectives to theorize the border region as a site of epistemic rupture and knowledge production"--

"This book presents a gripping analysis of the hidden factors that affect the asylum claims and rights of unaccompanied minors in the US. This book reveals how politics, economics, and social pressures shape the decisions of immigration judges and how federal courts respond to policies impacting these vulnerable minors"--

"International law is rich in promise but poor in detail and practical application about the rights of indigenous people. This book focuses on practical measures that have been implemented in states to give effect to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC); self-determination by indigenous people; special electoral measures to benefit indigenous people; and the role of advisory bodies to advocate for indigenous interests. In many comparative works there are often only scant or brief reference to some country-experiences, but in this book several case studies are explored in depth to promote a greater understanding of the self-determination arrangements that have been implemented. These case studies represent a form of glocalisation, whereby global principles are applied to find local solutions, and local solutions in turn inform greater clarity and specificity to global principles. At the end of each chapter key lessons that can be drawn from the respective case studies are identified in the hope that those may inform developments in other countries and in international law"--

"An original account of the stakes of sovereignty for recovering anticolonial pasts and fashioning anticolonial futures. Despite their signal contributions to present-day anticolonial struggles from #NODAPL to Idle No More, Indigenous societies around the globe are recurrently neglected in histories and theories of decolonization. What results from this disregard is not only skewed history, but also diminished political horizons for those (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) striving to transform an unequal world profoundly shaped by colonialism. Bridging political theory and Indigenous Studies, political theorist David Temin shows how key 20th-century Indigenous intellectual-activists in lands today claimed by Canada and the United States fundamentally recast the philosophical substance and normative goals of decolonization. Through history, textual interpretation, and conceptual analysis, his book recasts a vision of anticolonial thought and agency that circles around a politics of self-determination disentangled from sovereignty as institution and ideal-one committed to the relational flourishing of human and other-than-human beings against colonial domination"--