Although she harbours the healthy skepticism of a researcher, Iloradanon Efimoff remains hopeful that Canada is lumbering towards a decolonized—or at least Indigenized—society.

Efimoff, an Indigenous PhD student and Vanier Scholar in UM’s psychology department, studies ways to make people less racist. We last wrote about her in the alumni magazine’s Deconstructing Privilege article. Not everything we spoke about made it into that article, however, and we now publish other parts of our conversation because on Wednesday, Dec. 11, President David Barnard will moderate the next Visionary Conversations, which will explore decolonization in Canada.

Professor of Native studies Dr. Emma LaRoque [MA/80, PhD/99], and Dr. Carey Miller, Head of Native studies, were also featured in Deconstructing Privilege article and they will join Dr. Katherine Starzyk, director of the UM’s Social Justice Laboratory (and Efimoff’s academic supervisor), and Dr. Michael Yellow Bird, Dean of the Faculty of Social Work, on the Visionary Conversations panel.

They will surely engage the audience with profound insights into the realities of decolonizing Canada and we encourage you to attend the free event at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. For now, though, we provide an appetizer of sorts, by presenting Efimoff’s thoughts.