The Indigenous Elsewhere of Aging: Elder Epistemologies for Decolonial Futures
The 2022 Stephen Katz Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Interdisciplinary Aging Studies was held on Thursday October 6th in the Gathering Space at Trent University.
In her public lecture Dr. Sandy Grande (University of Connecticut) reimagined global aging as a site of possibility; as a conceptual opening for rethinking the central dichotomies and contradictions of contemporary society built on the exigencies of capital and settler hegemony: the centrality of work to existence; of economic growth to production; of age to declining yield, and ultimately of life beyond the productivist logics of capital.
In so doing, she considered how the lives, knowledge and care of Indigenous Elders help to structure conditions for societal renewal.
Her central claim was that Elder epistemologies will become increasingly important as we work collectively to create new possibilities for anti-racist and decolonial futures.
About the speaker
Sandy Grande is a Professor of Political Science and Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Connecticut with affiliations in American Studies, Philosophy, and Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Across her work, she aims to produce more nuanced analyses of the colonial present. She was recently awarded the Ford Foundation, Senior Fellowship (2019-2020) for a project on Indigenous Elders and aging. Her book, Red Pedagogy: Native American Social and Political Thought was published in a 10th anniversary edition and a Portuguese translation is anticipated to be published in Brazil in 2021. In addition to publishing numerous articles and book chapters, she is a founding member of New York Stands for Standing Rock. As one of their projects, they published the Standing Rock Syllabus. In addition to her academic and organizing work, she has provided eldercare for her parents for over ten years and remains the primary caregiver for her 94-year old father.