Afro-Indigenous solidarities: tracing shared histories of dispossession, resistance & survivance // Solidarités afro-autochtones : retracer les histoires communes de dépossession, résistance & survie

This presentation examines Black and Indigenous relationships within the Canadian settler colonial nation-state, tracing shared histories of dispossession, resistance, and survivance. It explores how Black, Indigenous, and Afro-Indigenous solidarities emerge through relational accountability, collective action, and refusals of colonial erasure.

Speaker: Ann Marie Beals is a Two-Spirit Afro-Indigenous scholar, educator, and community organizer from Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. They are an Assistant Professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, located on the traditional territories of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee Peoples.

Ann Marie’s scholarship and community-engaged work centre Afro-Indigenous, Black, and Indigenous ways of being and knowing, with a focus on health and wellbeing. Their work is grounded in survivance, relational governance, and intergenerational responsibility. They emphasize care for Mother Earth and the ongoing ways Black and Indigenous communities sustain cultural continuity while resisting colonial erasure. Through storytelling, land-based learning, and community collaboration, Ann Marie works toward liberatory futures rooted in solidarity, self-determination, and collective wellbeing.