Allyship: From Tokenism to Activism

The allyship workshops were proposed as a way to complement/challenge the approach that focuses on racial profiling.

These workshops aim to create an inviting and safe space for sharing and learning, enabling participants to unpack their privileges and enhance their ability to act as ethical allies. The workshops will be facilitated by Zeina Ismail Allouche and Safia Boufalaas.

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Catherine Richardson/Kineweskwêw

Catherine Richardson/Kineweskwêw, Ph.D. is Métis with Cree, Gwichin and English ancestry. She is the Director of First Peoples Studies at Concordia University in Tiohtià:ke/Montreal.  Cathy is a Métis psychotherapist in private practice and a co-founder of the Centre for Response-Based Practice.  Catherine provides clinical supervision to human service workers who assist Indigenous people.   Catherine holds a chair in Indigenous Healing Knowledges at Concordia University.  Her most recent books are called “Facing the Mountain:  Indigenous Healing in the Shadow of Colonialism Speaking the Wisdom of Our Time” and “Structural Violence Against Youth in Canada:  Speaking Out and Pushing Back.”  Catherine is interested in promoting healing, recovery and well-being in a spirit of dignity and social justice.

Kimura Byol-Nathalie Lemoine

kimura byol-nathalie lemoine ( 키무라 별 - 나타리 르뫈 - 木村 ビヨル - ナタリー レムワンー) is a multimedia artist and feminist curator of Korean-Japanese origin who questions perceptions of identities - diaspora, ethnicity, colorism, post-colonialism, immigration and gender - primarily through the multimedia art of calligraphy, painting, writing and collaborative practice.

Dr. Lisa Ndejuru

Dr. Lisa Ndejuru is an independent researcher, a psychotherapist and Mental Health consultant who specializes in helping survivors of violence find accessible, non-medicalized pathways to healing and change through storytelling, play, and improvisational theatre. Her research focuses on individual and collective meaning-making, care and empowerment in communities impacted by the violence of anti-blackness, intergenerational trauma transmission within black communities as well as Afrotopias (future imaginaries). She has been the 2017 Concordia Public Scholar, the 2018 John F. Lemieux Fellow for Genocide Studies as well as a 2020 Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto. In 2023 she received the AMI Québec (Action on Mental Illness) Ella Amir Award for Innovations in Mental Health, and was recognized by CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) as a Black Changemaker. Founder of the Omora healing organization, Ndejuru was awarded funding by Canada’s Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council for a 3 year community mental health initiative entitled ‘Centering Community Knowledges: Fostering Black Wellness In Montreal (CCK).

Facilitated by:

Zeina Ismail Allouche

Zeina Ismail Allouche has a PHD in Social Sciences and Arts with over 25 years of experience in the field of child protection, gender-based violence, and child trafficking for illegal transracial/international adoption practices. She has assumed leadership positions within numerous international organizations. Zeina has contributed to international initiatives promoting family strengthening to prevent separation and lead integrated reform initiatives to reform the child protection sector in many countries. She collaborated with Georgetown University to design and deliver a child protection specialist training program with a focus on interdisciplinary and comprehensive case management. She developed a policy on child protection for media (UNICEF Lebanon).

An oral history/autoethnography storyteller and performer, Zeina is grounded in Indigenous methodologies and decolonized research practice. She contributed to various publications advocating for child protection, with a specific focus on gender-based Violence, transracial/international adoption, child protection in the media, and the rights of children without parental care.

Safia Boufalaas

Safia Boufalaas is a research professional and a doctoral student. She is interested in questions of violence and transgression in the context of criminal groups with a focus on the concept of identity. With a decriminalizing stance, she uses documentaries to explore questions of socio-economic context, gender, and identity, to understand how some people take this path. Before becoming a researcher, she worked as a social and community facilitator in France in several settings, notably in an abolitionist ogranization whose aim is to support survivors of human trafficking, in secondary schools and in shelters for at-risk girls. Her role for the CSLP, is to be a community mobilizer, she uses her experience in social intervention and her “savoir-faire” as a researcher to look at the relationships and tensions between practitioners, theorists, and institutions through the prism of ethics and in an anti-extractivist way of collaborating with communities (racialized and marginalized).