Events

Mon, 27 March, 3-5 pm

Aboriginal Studies, the Centre for the Study of the United States, Decolonizing History, and Latin American Studies at UofT present a special talk by a legendary human rights activist

A key figure in the women's liberation movement of the 1960s, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz produced the important journal series, /No More Fun and Games/. Her group, Cell 16 occupied the radical fringe of the growing movement. She was a dedicated anti-war activist and organizer throughout the 1960s and 1970s. During the war years she was a fiery, indefatigable public speaker on issues of patriarchy, capitalism, imperialism, and racism. She worked in Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, and formed associations with other revolutionaries across the spectrum of radical and underground politics, including the SDS, the Weather Underground, the Revolutionary Union, and the African National Congress. In 1981, she was asked to visit Sandinista Nicaragua to appraise the land tenure situation of the Miskitu Indians in the northeastern region of the country. Her two trips there that year coincided with the beginning of United States government's sponsorship of a proxy war to overthrow the Sandinistas, with the northeastern region on the border with Honduras becoming a war zone and the basis for extensive propaganda carried out by the Reagan administration against the Sandinistas. In over a hundred trips to Nicaragua and Honduras from 1981 to 1989, she monitored what was called the Contra War. Her book, /Blood on the
Border: A Memoir of the Contra War/ was published in 2005.

* No registration is required

For more information please contact camille.harrison@utoronto.ca