Grounded Solidarities and World Building in a time of Expanding Empire(s)

Session Submission Type: Non-Paper Session: Roundtable Format

Abstract

In the wake of escalating catastrophes against our peoples, lands, and relations, this panel convenes scholars, artists, community organizers, activists, and educators to engage in a dialogue on the practices of Grounded Solidarity. Building on the 2024 “Grounded Solidarity” gathering hosted by Denchinta in Denendeh, our discussion extends the commitments and questions nurtured by the fertile Dene lands, foregrounding the interconnected violences and liberatory movements that shape our collective struggles for freedom and world-building.
From Sudan to Palestine, from Turtle Island to Hawaiʻinuiākea, we ask: what futures become possible when we commit to principled struggle together? Bringing the thoughtful perspectives of our panelists into conversation, this panel considers how grounded solidarity can sustain movements across geographies, histories, and communities. What does it mean to hold space for each other’s struggles while remaining accountable to the specificities of land, place, and experience? How do art, storytelling, and political education fortify our movements? Together, we reflect on the commitments necessary to refuse dispossession and disposability and to build worlds that sustain life, dignity, and collective liberation.

Sub Unit

• Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association

Chair

• Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Nishnaabeg scholar, writer, and artist

Panelists

• Jamaica Heoliemeleikalani Osorio, University of Hawai'i

• Mahdi Sabbagh

• Nisrin Elamin, University of Toronto

• Robyn Maynard, University of Toronto

Biographical Information

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is a Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg independent scholar, writer, and musician. She is the author of eight previous books, including the novel Noopiming: A Cure for White Ladies, which was short listed for the Dublin Literary prize and the Governor General’s award for fiction. Leanne’s album, Theory of Ice, released by You’ve Changed Records was released in 2021 and short-listed for the Polaris Prize and she was the 2021 winner of the Prism Prize’s Willie Dunn Award. Her latest project Theory of Water was ublished by Knopf Canada/Haymarket books in the spring of 2025. Leanne is a member of Alderville First Nation.

Nisrin Elamin
Nisrin is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Toronto. She is currently writing a book tentatively titled: Stratified Enclosures: Land, Capital and Empire-making in central Sudan which focuses on Saudi and Emirati land grabs and community resistance to land dispossession in the Gezira region of Sudan. She is also a member of the Sudan Solidarity Collective which provides material support to local emergency response rooms and other grassroots mutual aid networks in the face of a largely absent international aid community and civilian state. The collective has also been doing political education and organizing around more just Canadian immigration policies.


Mahdi Sabbagh
Mahdi Sabbagh is an architectural scholar and urbanist. He is a co-curator of the Palestine Festival of Literature and editor at large at the Avery Review. He is the editor of Their Borders, Our World (Haymarket Press, 2024) and is a 2023 Matakyev Research Fellow at the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands. His work has been published in the Journal of Public Culture, Jerusalem Quarterly, Curbed, Architecture of the Territory (Kaph Books, 2022), Open Gaza (AUC Press, 2021), the Funambulist, Arab Urbanism, Awham Magazine, and PLATFORM. Mahdi is a Doctoral Student at Columbia University and holds a Masters in Architecture from Yale.

Robyn Maynard
Robyn Maynard is an author and scholar based in Toronto, where she holds the position of Assistant Professor of Black Feminisms in Canada at the University of Toronto-Scarborough in the Department of Historical and Cultural Studies. Her writing on borders, policing, abolition and Black feminism is taught widely in universities across Canada, the United States and Europe.
Maynard is the author of two books. Policing Black Lives: State violence in Canada from slavery to the present (Fernwood 2017)is a national bestseller, designated as one of the “best 100 books of 2017” by the Hill Times, listed in The Walrus‘s “best books of 2018,” shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction, and the winner of the 2017 Errol Sharpe Book Prize. In 2018 the book was published in French with Mémoire d’encrier, titled NoirEs sous surveillance. Esclavage, répression et violence d’État au Canada and won the 2019 Prix de libraires in the category of “essais.” Rehearsals for Living (Knopt/Haymarket, 2022) co-authored with Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, is a Toronto Star, Globe and Mail, and CBC National Bestseller and was shortlisted for a Governor General’s Award for literary non-fiction, designated one of CBC’s “best Canadian non-fiction books of 2022” and the “best 100 books of 2022” by the Hill Times. Other awards include “2018 Author of the Year” from Montreal’s Black History Month and the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQI* Emerging Writers.
Additional writing appears in Washington Post, World Policy Journal, the Toronto Star, TOPIA: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, Canadian Woman Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies Journal, Scholar & Feminist Journal and numerous book anthologies.
Maynard contributed to the research and writing for the Defund the Police website and recently authored two toolkits: “Building the World We Want: A Roadmap to police-free futures in Canada” and “What is Prison Abolition in Canada?” With Pascale Diverlus, she co-hosted Building the World We Want, an abolitionist learning lab.


Dr. Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio is a Kanaka Maoli wahine artist / activist / scholar / storyteller born and raised in Pālolo Valley to parents Jonathan and Mary Osorio. Jamaica earned her PhD in English (Hawaiian literature) in 2018 from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Currently, Jamaica is an Associate Professor of Indigenous and Native Hawaiian Politics at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. In 2020 her poetry and activism were the subject of an award-winning film, This is the Way we Rise which premiered at Sundance Film Festival in 2021. In 2022 she was a lead artist and Co-writer of the revolutionary VR Documentary, On the Morning You Wake (To the end of the world), that premiered at Sundance Film Festival 2022 and won the XR experience Jury award at SXSW 2022. She is a proud past Kaiāpuni student, Ford Dissertation (2017) and Post Doctoral (2022) Fellow, and a graduate of Kamehameha, Stanford University (BA) and New York University (MA). She is the author of the award winning book Remembering our Intimacies: Moʻolelo, Aloha ʻĀina, and Ea which was published in 2021 by The University of Minnesota Press. She believes in the power of aloha ʻāina and collective action to pursue liberatory, decolonial, and abolitionist futures of abundance.