news | Monday August 31, 2015
On September 1, 2015, newly retired chief Bev Sellars will speak at the first panel of a conference on holocaust education, which takes place from September 1 to 3 at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC.
Chief Bev Sellars at the Creative Non-Fiction Collective’s 10th Anniversary Conference, Calgary, Alberta (Photo: CNFC)
“Global Connections: Critical Holocaust Education in a Time of Transition” is an interdisciplinary conference committed to providing emerging and established scholars, together with poets, creative writers, students, Holocaust survivors and community leaders from Canada and around the globe, with the opportunity to meet, learn from one another and develop fruitful collaborations in the fields of Holocaust and genocide studies, education, gender studies, Germanic and Slavic studies, history, Indigenous studies, anthropology, sociology, and child and youth care. Conference participants and attendees have the opportunity to discuss how decades of research on the Holocaust can be used to help understand and educate about other human rights issues and, in turn, how local histories can shed light on the way the Holocaust is represented and taught.
Bev Sellars is the author of the best-selling memoir They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School. She was first elected chief of the Xat’sull (Soda Creek) band, near Williams Lake, BC, in 1987, and has spoken out on behalf of her community on racism and residential schools and their aftermath.