Interfaith Summer Institute Full Program – Early Registration Now! Early bird registration ends in three weeks- May 15, so we encourage you to register now for the ISI’s exciting 2008 program. Course descriptions and public forums are listed below and you can check our website www.interfaithjustpeace.org for more information. the resource people.    Interfaith Summer Institute for Justice Peace and Social Movements Displacement and Migration: Restoring Dignity and Sacred Connection PUBLIC FORUMS June 14, 2008 Aboriginal Worldviews on Truth and Reconciliation June 27-28, 2008 Human Dignity and 2010 Olympics: Challenging the Trafficking of Women   SUMMER PROGRAM August 5-15 , 2008 August 5-8 Decolonizing the Body and Indigenous Principles: Connecting through Creativity Alannah Young and Denise Nadeau This course will combine theory and practice to present an approach to healing from racist, colonial and sexual violence. This method, initially developed with Indigenous women living in inner city Vancouver, combines expressive arts therapies with ceremony and ritual and draws on Indigenous Knowledge as a framework for healing. The course will use a training format and will be useful for those who work with women who have experienced multiple forms of violence, including intergenerational violence, residential schooling, sexual violence and the violence of forced migration. August 7 Interfaith Organizing Around Economic Justice Israel Alvaran August 8 Welcoming Ceremony and Panel August 9 Sanctuary: Creating Zones of Peace Against State Violence August 10 Solitude and the Land: a morning to experience the holiness of the land August 11-15, 2008 Religion's Role in Peacebuilding: Sikhs and Muslims in Malerkotla, Punjab and Beyond Karenjot Bhangoo This course is organized around the topic of Punjabi and Sikh history with an emphasis on diverse perspectives in interreligious understanding that can be used in peacemaking. It will examine a case study of how Sikhism interacted with other religions, primarily Islam, in the Punjab, as an example of how religion manifested in conflict and peace in the twentieth-century. Thematically, the course is organized around identifying major topics and trends linked to religious peacemaking in the Punjab as well as in Diaspora communities. This course will build skills in intercultural understanding, cross-cultural awareness, and conflict transformation. The Girl Child, African Women, Religion and HIV&AIDS Esther Mombo In the fall of 2007 The Circle of Concerned African Women Theologians met in Cameroon on the subject of women, religion and HIV/AIDS.. The Circle and its methodology is set within the ecumenical and multi-faith context of its membership, which consists of members of African Traditional Religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism. This course will consider how the methodology of the circle has been applied to the subject of women and HIV/AIDS. Mass Media’s Role in Progressive Politics and Religion Robert Jenson and Junaid Ahmad The vast majority of mainstream media coverage reflects and reinforces the perspective of the culture’s most powerful institutions, offering a picture of the world that is supportive of economic inequality and First-World domination, and that, in subtle ways, remains patriarchal and white-supremacist. In coverage of religion, journalists tend to default to centrist and conservative definitions of faith, with most stories relegating issues of faith to lifestyle sections. This course will offer critical analysis and skills training for groups engaged in long-term projects to enhance media literacy and create a more just and democratic media system. It will offer skills in (1) how to be more effective in working with mainstream journalists, and (2) how to create better independent media. Truth and Reconciliation: The Politics and Possibilities of Memory Lorena Sekwan Fontaine and Angela Contreras-Chavez with Chief Robert Joseph The course will offer different perspectives on the meaning of truth-telling and reconciliation in the present context of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Residential Schools in Canada. It will consider critical analyses of the strengths and weaknesses of past Truth and Reconciliation Commissions and will examine the Inter-Diocesan Project “Recovery of the Historic Memory” in Guatemala, which played a double role as a venue for Mayan participants to honour the memory of their loved ones and as the basis for developing healing programs for the survivors. It will provide a forum to discuss how the present TRC process can be used to create community-driven, community- based projects that can benefit grassroots Indigenous communities. Islam in the Hinterlands: A Critical Exploration of Canadian Muslim Cultural Politics Jasmin Zine This course will allow participants to develop a critical understanding of some contemporary issues in Muslim Canadian Studies such as the debates on "Reasonable Accommodation in Quebec, Herrouxville Citizen's Code, security policies, Muslim youth and "home grown terror," shariah tribunals, religion and multiculturalism. The seminar will also involve a critical interrogation of Canadian Muslim cultural politics, the development of social movements like Progressive Islam and the neo-conservative influence of Islamist groups. Through these contemporary issues we will examine the dialectics between Islamophobia and religious extremism within the Canadian context. In order to assist educators and social justice activists in challenging Islamophobia, the seminar will also provide an introduction to curricular resources for Anti-Islamophobia education.