Celebrate the book launch of How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, a new book edited by Sara Sinclair from Haymarket Books and Voice of Witness, with a roundtable conversation about Indigenous sovereignty today.

How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life. In myriad ways, each narrator’s life has been shaped by loss, injustice, resilience, and the struggle to share space with settler nations whose essential aim is to take all that is Indigenous.

“How We Go Home is a testament to modern-day Indigenous revitalization, often in the face of the direst of circumstances. Told as firsthand accounts on the frontlines of resistance and resurgence, these life stories inspire and remind that Indigenous life is all about building a community through the gifts we offer and the stories we tell.” — Niigaan Sinclair, Winnipeg Free Press

“The voices of How We Go Home are singing a chorus of love and belonging alongside the heat of resistance, and the sound of Indigenous life joyfully dances off these pages.”—Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, author of As We Have Always Done

This event is cosponsored by Haymarket Books, Fernwood Publishing and Voice of Witness. While all of our events are freely available, we ask that those who are able make a solidarity donation in support of our important educational and publishing work.

Speakers:

Sara Sinclair is an oral historian, writer, and educator of Cree-Ojibwe and settler descent. Sara teaches in the Oral History Masters Program at Columbia University. She has contributed to the Columbia Center for Oral History Research’s Covid-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, Obama Presidency Oral History, and Robert Rauschenberg Oral History Project. She has conducted oral histories for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, and the International Labor Organization, among others. Sara is co-editor of Robert Rauschenberg: An Oral History, published with Columbia University Press in 2019.

Gladys Radek (Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en First Nations) is a tireless grassroots advocate fighting for justice for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in Canada. Gladys' niece Tamara went missing in 2005 at age 22 along the notorious Highway of Tears. This inspired Gladys to become a community activist and eventually a Family Advocate for the National Inquiry into MMIWG in Canada. Gladys is a co-founder of Walk4Justice, an organization created to fight for the families and all women who went missing or were found murdered, as well as to get all of the answers they deserve. With Walk4Justice, Gladys has crossed the country 7 times and has spoked to thousands of families whose lives have been impacted by violence perpetrated against Native women and girls.

Ashley Hemmers is an enrolled member of the Fort Mojave Indian Tribe, whose reservation spans the states of California, Arizona, and Nevada. Ashley is a strategic specialist in multi-state cross-jurisdictional Development and Management of Tribal Economies. She holds over 10+ years of experience in Tribal Enterprising including fiscal and capital wealth strategies. In addition to capital projects and operational development, Ashley is experienced in grants administration and administrative oversight in the areas of Telecommunications, Tribal Law, Critical Infrastructure, Emergency Management, Public Safety, Healthcare, Systems of Care, Education, Intervention, and Community Relations. During her time within Tribal Government, she has worked to strengthen Tribal/Federal and Tribal/State partnerships by developing strategic models of performance for service areas within the Tribal organizational structure. Ashley graduated with her B.A. from Yale University and a Graduate Certificate in Non-Profit Management & Masters of Public Administration from the University of Nevada Las Vegas.

Suzanne Methot is the author of the non-fiction book Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing, co-author of the Grade 11 textbook Aboriginal Beliefs, Values, and Aspirations, and a contributor to Scholastic’s Take Action series of elementary classroom resource books. She is a social historian and speaker on human rights, pedagogy, Indigenous literatures, Indigenous worldviews, Indigenous approaches to health and wellness, trauma- and healing-informed practice, and decolonization. She also designs programs and facilitates change-making sessions for the education, health care, environmental, and museum sectors. Suzanne is Asiniwachi Nehiyaw (Rocky Mountain Cree) of mixed Indigenous and European heritage.