Marginalized Ways of Understanding Death: From Fiji to Africa to Turtle Island -- A Centre for Death and Society Panel Discussion with Dr. Ron Vave, George Gumisiriza, and Dr. Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner

Description

Information about our panelists and their talks:

Dr. Ron Vave

Presentation title: “Indigenous Fijian Funeral culture in Fiji: Contemporary challenges and Strategies for Socioecological and Economic Sustainability”

Talk description: The talk will look at the social, environmental and economic dimensions and challenges of indigenous Fijian funeral culture in Fiji and the familial and communal negotiations for survival.

Brief Bio: Dr. Ron Vave is an indigenous Fijian and an Assistant Professor at the Department of Pacific Islands Studies at the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa (UHM). He holds three degrees from the University of the South Pacific in Fiji: a Bachelor’s in Biology and Chemistry, a Postgraduate Diploma in Marine Science, and a Masters in coral ecology. His PhD in Marine Biology at UHM investigated how the cultural practice(s) of indigenous Fijian funerals in Fiji influenced and affected social and ecological resilience.

Link: https://hawaii.edu/cpis/people/core-faculty/ron-vave/

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George Gumisiriza

Presentation title: "Mapping the difference: exploring African migrant deathways in the UK"

Talk description: This paper reflects on the ordinariness of death matters in the UK and how regulations, policy, and practice frame death politics in the UK. The paper draws on my PhD research into body repatriation among African migrants in the UK to address two critical areas:

--- The social, cultural, and political factors that highlight African migrant funerary practices in the UK.
--- Understanding African migrant ‘transnational localisms’, barriers to body repatriation, and how these inform social constructions of belonging in the UK.

Brief Bio: George Gumisiriza is an early career researcher who focuses on popularising Afrocentric perspectives on death through repatriationscapes studies. He is pursuing a PhD in Social and Policy Sciences at the University of Bath. George’s on-going PhD research concerns the repatriation of African diaspora corpses [and human remains] from the UK to places of their heritage connection(s) in Africa. His research explores African diaspora transnational localisms, belonging and restoration for both the living and the dead. George’s multidisciplinary research highlights barriers including migration and mobilities, changing social, cultural, economic, and political situations.

Link: https://vimeo.com/724961538

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Dr. Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner

Presentation Title: “Indigenous Feminist Approaches to Death Car(e)cerality: Land, Liberation, and Resistance to Settler Necropolitics in Turtle Island”
Talk description: This talk interrogates the settler colonial governance of death as a site of necropolitical control, examining interconnected examples of car(e)cerality, including the denial of funeral access for incarcerated Native people, the disruption of mourning through police violence, the privatization of stolen burial grounds, the displacement of unrepatriated Native remains, the regulatory stranglehold of the funeral industrial complex, the ecological harm of “green” burial practices that fail to recognize Indigenous land, and the generational damage to Indigenous death cosmologies caused by the criminalization of ceremonies. Grounded in Indigenous feminist frameworks, this work positions these issues as part of a broader colonial project to control Indigenous life cycles, including death. It advocates for coalition-building and the creation of networks of support for Indigenous death care workers, as exemplified by organizations like the Decolonizing Death Collective and Native American and Indigenous Death Care Autonomy (NAIDCA), to resist settler car(e)cerality and envision relational, anticolonial approaches to death care.

Brief Bio: Shelbi Nahwilet Meissner (Luiseño & Cupeño) is an Indigenous feminist philosopher. Shelbi researches, teaches, and consults on Indigenous research and evaluation methods, cultural and language reclamation, Indigenous epistemologies, Indigenous feminist interventions in critical social work, and land-based feminist coalition-building. Shelbi is fascinated by the intersections of Indigenous knowledge systems, caretaking, power, and trauma. Shelbi is a proud first-generation descendant of the La Jolla Band of Luiseño Indians, and is of both Luiseño (Payómkawichum) and Cupeño (Kupangaxwichem) descent. She is an assistant professor in the Harriet Tubman Department of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at University of Maryland, College Park and the founding director of the Indigenous Futures Lab, a hub of Indigenous feminist research and evaluation.

Link: https://wgss.umd.edu/directory/shelbi-nahwilet-meissner

Period	19 Mar 2025
Held at	Centre for Death and Society
Degree of Recognition	International