I have made some changes to the workshop agenda in order to make specific room to think about and address harm to Indigenous people caused by invoking “civility” and “incivility” in this workshop. One of the goals of this workshop has always been to problematize these terms, and to think about who they get weaponized against. However I (KC) was thinking of these issues generally in terms of how they affect certain racial groups and other marginalized folks. I did not consider the very specific harms they cause because of the way that being “uncivilized” has been a justification for genocide in the US and in other colonized countries, and that the term “civilized” has been used to pit different Indigenous peoples against each other.

For more feel free to check out the Twitter thread I wrote on this earlier this week here. I don’t want to name the two folks who came to me with their concerns about this term because to do so risks their own emotional harm, but I do want to deeply thank them for coming to me and giving me the opportunity to address this.

One of the changes I have made is creating a session immediately after the opening remarks to address the historical and racial harm of the term “incivility,” particularly to Indigenous peoples. I have also spoken to the advisory board so that we can think on how further to address this concern, and I will be discussing this with the moderators of the sessions in a call next week.

Below is the revised agenda for the workshop. I welcome additional thoughts and feedback, especially in Slack. Please note that registration ends very soon!

DRAFT AGENDA