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9 September 2021

Decolonising Truth Globally

While recognition and reconciliation remain important, this symposium will explore what truth-telling with an explicitly decolonial focus might look like.

Seeking Sovereignty and Reparations through Truth-Telling

The Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation (ADI) and the Institute for Postcolonial Studies (IPCS) will be running a series of seminars on international experiences of truth-telling with particular relevance to the unfolding conversation about truth-telling in Australia following the release of the Uluru Statement calling for Voice, Treaty and Truth in 2017. 

The seminars are intended to foster a critically important conversation about the possibilities and challenges of truth-telling by drawing on the experience of truth-telling processes in other global contexts. The series will focus particularly on truth processes that have impacted on Indigenous communities in order to share knowledge that may help inform an Australian truth-telling process. 

Thus far, globally, truth-telling has often been linked to discourses of recognition and reconciliation within a multicultural project. While recognition and reconciliation remain important, this symposium will explore what truth-telling with an explicitly decolonial focus might look like. It will ask specifically how truth telling can restore sovereignty and ensure reparations in a practical sense – what initiatives are necessary for this to happen?

Part 1: The Colombian Peace Process: Truth-telling in times of continuing conflict 

The series will begin with a seminar on the Colombian truth process. On November 29–30 of 2016 the Colombian government ratified a historical Peace Accord with the left-wing guerrilla group the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia – People’s Army (FARC-EP). This long-lasting armed conflict has left more than eight million officially recognised victims. Colombia’s post-Accord period has been tied to a quest to understand what happened during more than 50 years of armed conflict involving military, paramilitary, state, business and guerrilla actors with a Truth Commission for the Clarification of Truth and No Repetition created in 2017. More than four years after the Accord’s ratification, state sanctioned denialist politics, ongoing coloniality, and violence continue in Colombia with more than 900 social leaders massacred since day one of the Accord.

Based on this context, this seminar presents the interventions of two speakers from the Truth Commission who have been involved in processes of anti-colonial and Indigenous truth-telling in the Colombian peace process, and who bring to light the intersections of Indigenous sovereignty, decolonisation and peace, which are timely to Australian debates on decolonising truth-telling. 

Descolonizando la verdad globalmente

Parte 1: El proceso de paz en Colombia y la verdad en tiempos de continuidad del conflicto

Ponentes: Maria Patricia Tobón Yagarí (Comisionada) y Alejandra Londoño de la Comisión de la Verdad 

Moderadora: Laura Rodriguez Castro, Investigadora posdoctoral, Instituto Alfred Deakin para la Ciudadanía y la Globalización, Universidad de Deakin, Melbourne, Australia.

El seminario se realizará con interpretación en Inglés y en Español. 

Facilitator / moderadora

Laura Rodriguez Castro is a researcher, writer and educator employed as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute of Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Her research focuses on decolonial feminisms, anti-racism, rurality and difficult memories. Her book, Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place: Sentipensando with Rural Women in Colombia (2021) explores how rural women enact and imagine decolonial feminist worlds.

Laura Rodríguez Castro es investigadora postdoctoral, escritora y educadora actualmente empleada en el Instituto Alfred Deakin para la Ciudadanía y la Globalización de la Universidad de Deakin. Su investigación se centra en temáticas como los feminismos descoloniales, el antirracismo, la memoria y la ruralidad. Además, ha realizado proyectos con métodos artísticos participativos en Australia y Colombia con comunidades rurales, artistas, académica/os y activistas. Su libro públicado por Palgrave, Decolonial Feminisms, Power and Place: Sentipensando with Rural Women in Colombia (2021) explora cómo las mujeres rurales crean e imaginan mundos feministas descoloniales. Sus proyectos más recientes investigan la comprensión translocal de procesos difíciles de memoria y patrimonio.

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Details

Date: 9 September 2021
Time: 9:00 am - 11:00 am Location: Online via Zoom

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decolonisation truth-telling

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Speakers

Alejandra Londoño Bustamante

is a historian with a Masters in Gender Studies from the National University of Colombia. Her research is concerned with the social and political history of Colombian women in the 20th century and the Colombian armed conflict, approaching the implications of historical reconstruction from an anti-colonial perspective. Likewise, her work investigates the construction of pedagogies for processes of historical memory in Colombia, the teaching of the armed conflict in schools and the dynamics of militarism and militarisation in the context of neoliberal capitalism. She is currently part of the Truth Commission in Colombia where she works as a researcher in charge of the analysis of social and cultural factors of the conflict, specifically those associated with historical racist and patriarchal relationships.

Alejandra Londoño Bustamante es historiadora y magister en Estudios de Género de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Ha sido investigadora de temáticas vinculadas a la historia social y política de las mujeres en el Siglo XX colombiano y del conflicto armado colombiano, indagando por las implicaciones de la reconstrucción histórica desde una perspectiva anticolonial. Así mismo se ha ocupado de indagar sobre la construcción de pedagogías para los procesos de memoria histórica en Colombia, de la enseñanza del conflicto armado en la escuela y por las dinámicas del militarismo y la militarización en el capitalismo neoliberal. Actualmente hace parte de la Comisión de la Verdad en Colombia en donde trabaja como investigadora a cargo del análisis de factores sociales y culturales en el conflicto, específicamente los asociados a las relaciones históricas racistas y patriarcales.

María Patricia Tobón Yagarí

is an Indigenous women of the Emberá people of Colombia, speaking two of the dialect varieties of the Emberá language. She is a lawyer with legal training in territorial ethnic rights and specialisation studies in constitutional law. She has experience coordinating consultation processes, building normative instruments and public policies for Indigenous peoples, which has allowed her to establish intercultural dialogues with social movements, state entities, international organisations, academia, the private sector, among others. As Commissioner of the Truth Commission, she accompanies and guides the actions of the Ethnic Peoples Directorate and the Social Dialogue Directorate, specifically regarding the objective of contributions for Non-repetition.

María Patricia Tobón Yagarí es una mujer Indígena del pueblo Embera de Colombia, hablante de dos de las variedades dialectales del pueblo Embera. Abogada con formación jurídica en derechos étnicos territoriales y con estudios de especialización en Derecho Constitucional. Con experiencia en coordinación de procesos de consulta previa, construcción de instrumentos normativos y de políticas públicas para los pueblos indígenas, lo que le ha permitido establecer diálogos interculturales con movimientos sociales, entidades del Estado, organismos internacionales, academia, sector privado, entre otros. Como Comisionada en la Comisión de la Verdad acompaña y orienta las acciones de la Dirección de Pueblos Étnicos y la Dirección de Dialogo Social, específicamente en lo referente al objetivo de contribuciones para la No Repetición.