Welcome to the 10th Biennial Adoption Initiative Conference

The Evolution of Adoption Practice: Activist and Community Perspectives

Password for the Vimeo Videos: AIC2022PAID

PM Friday Session D Pt.1 with Zenia Ismail Allouche https://vimeo.com/717415891

pM Friday Session D Pt.2 with Daniel Drennan https://vimeo.com/717363307

This collaborative oral history research-creation, grounded in Indigenous methodologies (Kovach, 2009; 2010; Smith, 1999; Wilson, 2008), amplifies the critical narrative of transracial/intercountry adoption through the life stories of individuals who experienced transracial/intercountry adoption (adoptees), regardless of their places of origin and adoption. An Advisory committee of adoptees guided the research and 22 collaborators (including the Advisory committee) worked together to ensure a co-authored representation of these long-silenced voices. The creative outcome was a Zoom oral history available here: 

https://storytelling.concordia.ca/projects-item/ineradicable-voices-narrations-toward-rerooting/ 

Research Abstract can be found here: https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/988750

The oral history revealed complex, intimate, intense and unique pathways with intersections of colonial systems, identity formation, and enduring racism. 

Search for origins was perceived as necessary for the healing process and Indigenous custom adoption was identified as the best community-based practice in parallel with investing in preventing separation and breaking the vicious cycle of poverty. 

The research-creation is timely amidst the tragic discovery of the remains of more than 1000 children buried at different colonial residential schools following the 15 May 2021 final report of the Laurent Commission on Children's Rights and Youth Protection calling for reform of the youth protection system in Quebec. 

Internationally, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic will expose children to the risk of falling into transracial/intercountry adoption; and some 150 million people across the globe will be pushed into poverty due to loss of work from lockdowns and closures. Lebanon is of particular concern because of the country's unprecedented economic and political crises.

• Links Shared during this session: 
  • at 01:03:42 Zeina Ismail Allouche shared: https://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/id/eprint/988750/
  • At 01:14:27 Zeina Ismail Allouche shared: https://storytelling.concordia.ca/projects-item/ineradicable-voices-narratives-toward-rerooting/

My Vigil: From the Residential Schools to Gaza [A Creative Performance]

A poster seeking support for an Indigenous girl being rehomed in British Columbia… the recent discoveries at the residential schools… the continued destruction of Gaza, Palestine, and Lebanon... These violent events are not isolated incidents, but wholly connected and linked one to the other; their unlinking is equally tactical. 

This piece combines spoken word, music, and poetry to show the condition of all who are displaced, dispossessed, and disinherited by systemic oppression and to inspire us with the vigilance to face it and fight it through revolutionary activism.

Collaborating with me on this piece is Amany Es-Sayyed in Beirut, as well as Ziad Sader in Nabatieh South. I am grateful for their gracious cooperation as well as their inspiring spirit.