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Decolonizing Wealth

Powell's City of Books 1005 W Burnside Street, Portland, OR, United States

Decolonizing Wealth (Berrett-Koehler) is a provocative analysis of the dysfunctional colonial dynamics at play in philanthropy and finance. Though it seems counterintuitive, the philanthropic industry has evolved to mirror colonial structures and reproduces hierarchy, ultimately doing more harm than good. After 14 years in philanthropy, award-winning philanthropy executive Edgar Villanueva has seen past the field’s glamorous, altruistic façade, and into its shadows: the old boy networks, the savior complexes, and the internalized oppression among the “house slaves” and those select few people of color who gain access. All these funders reflect and perpetuate the same underlying dynamics that divide Us from Them, and the haves from the have-nots. With great compassion – because the Native way is to bring the oppressor into the circle of…

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Free

Liz Prato in Conversation with Jacqueline Keeler

Broadway Books 1714 NE Broadway, Portland, OR, United States

We welcome Liz Prato, author of Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege: Essays on Hawaiʻi, in conversation with Jacqueline Keeler at 7 pm on Thursday, September 12th. Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege, published by Overcup Press, explores what it means to be a white tourist in a seeming paradise that has been formed – and largely destroyed – by white outsiders. Hawaiian history, pop culture, and contemporary affairs are woven with personal narrative in fifteen essays that examine how the touristic ideal of Hawai’i came to be. In the book, Prato examines her multi-layered relationship with Hawai’i and her soul connection with this group of islands. Author Lidia Yuknavitch describes the book as “a love letter to the land and people of Hawai’i.” Prato will read…

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Free

Summer 2020 Delve Readers Seminar Online: Nigerian Voices: Chinua Achebe and Helon Habila

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

From the precolonial period to modern times, these two authors show the complexity of Nigerian history: the original tribal forms of organizing the society, where the strong man rules for good and for bad; the colonial era where those tribal communities transform in order to negotiate with the colonizers; and the postcolonial period that shows how the thirst for oil from the western powers also generates conflicts between the native peoples and a level of corruption that pervade every aspect of their lives. The transformations narrated in these two books are journeys of no return, with echoes from Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Texts: Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe Oil on Water by Helon Habila Participants are responsible for purchasing texts. First assignment: For the…

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$150

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz in Conversation With Reece Jones

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

Whether in political debates or discussions about immigration around the kitchen table, many Americans, regardless of party affiliation, will say proudly that we are a nation of immigrants. In her bold new book, Not "A Nation of Immigrants" (Beacon), historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz asserts this ideology is harmful and dishonest because it serves to mask and diminish the U.S.’s history of settler colonialism, genocide, white supremacy, slavery, and structural inequality, all of which we still grapple with today. She explains that the idea that we are living in a land of opportunity — founded and built by immigrants — was a convenient response by the ruling class and its brain trust to the 1960s demands for decolonialization, justice, reparations, and social equality. Moreover, Dunbar-Ortiz charges that…

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Free

Colonial Domesticity

Online N/A, Portland, OR, United States

This lecture considers the centrality of forms of domesticity, such as family, kinship, and schooling, to the social reproduction of colonialism and racial capitalism in the United States. Colonial and capitalist social relations are materially reproduced through feminized household, care work, and biological labor. While homes and households are primary sites for the invisible and mostly unwaged labors of colonized, racialized, and immigrant women that reproduce human being, social reproduction takes place on plantations, in schools, factories, on assembly lines, in hospitals and prisons and in other institutions, at both intimate and global scales. Lisa Lowe is Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University, Director of Graduate Studies, and an affiliate faculty in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work is…

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Free
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