CICADA Meetings & Conferences
The Centre for Indigenous Conservation and Development Alternatives, CICADA, brings together the projects of more than seventy academic co-investigators and collaborators from numerous universities and research institutions internationally, working in partnership with more than thirty indigenous partner communities and organizations in the Americas, East Africa, Asia and Oceania. Our research program is structured by seven thematic and methodological axes and is composed of five large team research initiatives as well as several independent projects.
In late February of 2015 we held a first meeting of CICADA axis leaders and directors of participating research projects. We devoted the bulk of that meeting to conceptual elaboration and integration of our Centre’s agenda and to considering how to increase synergies between thematic axes and participating projects; to communication and resources development, including plans for training and exchange among indigenous partners in community mapping and community video/photo voice methodologies; and to identifying possibilities for new grant applications to advance the work of the Centre.
We also laid plans at that February meeting for our first full conference of CICADA researchers and indigenous partner representatives that was held in late October 2015 at Le Baluchon near Saint Paulin, QC. The eco-resort—situated on traditional indigenous territory of the Atikamekw First Nation, just south of the Parc national de la Mauricie—was a stimulating setting for a dynamic conference.
Our next meeting took place August 28 – September 1, 2016 in Wendake, QC.
In addition to hosting annual conferences or regional meetings, CICADA sponsors periodic guest speakers who address the research themes and preoccupations of the centre.
CICADA Events in Partnership
In 2017, CICADA co-sponsored the International Colloquium on Indigenous Struggles for Territory: Latin America and Quebec, where representatives of indigenous organizations from various countries in Latin America presented to an academic public, to members of other indigenous groups and to the public in Quebec, their experiences of struggles for territory against large extractive project.
In partnership with the ICCA Consortium, CICADA organized a series of three regional conferences – a Latin American Meeting, an African Meeting, and a meeting for Canada, the United States, Australia, and New Zealand – between October 2018 and May 2019. Through presentations and roundtable discussions, the meetings addressed the process of co-creating action-oriented knowledge, rights-based approaches to conservation, natural resources and land management, and rights and reconciliation.
From May 5 to 8, 2019, CICADA co-sponsored the first North American Dialogue on Biocultural Diversity, which gathered more than 120 representatives from indigenous peoples, governments, the UN system, non-governmental organizations and academia to discuss the links between biological and cultural diversity in the North American context.
CICADA conferences offer simultaneous translation in English, French and Spanish.
