Sunday December 6th is Canada’s National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women. This day of remembrance was started following the Ecole Polytechnique Massacre that happened in 1989 in Montreal, where 14 female engineering students were murdered by a man who hated feminists, and targeted them because of their gender.

In Vancouver on December 6th 2015, Women Transforming Cities hosted their 30th Cafe, with the topic: Does Remembering Lead to Action. I interview Ellen Woodsworth about how conversations about violence against women have changed since 1989, and where activism needs to focus moving forward.

News 101 Director Emily Blake interviews PhD Candidate Lucia Lorenzi on topics of sexual assault, and the institutional response to on campus sexual assault.

Aired on November 19th, today I talk about Transgender Day of Remembrance, which falls on November 20th 2015.

From the archives, in 1997, one year before Transgender Day of Remembrance started, Queer FM's Heather Kitching handed the mic over to two trans* activists on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. One is Mardi Pieronick of PACE (Prostitution Alternatives Counselling Education), and the other contributor is unnamed. They talk about their personal journeys as trans* women and address barriers that they fight through activism.

For more information on TDoR: https://vancouvertdor.wordpress.com/

This week's Tick Talk we're revisiting a podcast written and produced in collaboration with the Native Youth Program out of the Museum of Anthropology.

The Native Youth Program (NYP) is a youth summer program that has been in place at the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) since 1979. Each year, six urban Aboriginal youth from the Greater Vancouver area are selected to participate. Through a focus on cultural connection and hands on learning, they explore their own identities and gain workforce skills. Indigenous guest speakers and artists also work with the interns to help them complete arts- and media-related projects.

This year as a final project, the NYP produced a podcast with CiTR.

http://moa.ubc.ca/nyp/

This week on Tick Talk, we have an interview with the Director of the Museum of Anthropology, Dr. Anthony Shelton. On Tuesday September 29th, Dr. Shelton gave a lecture at the Museum of Anthropology entitled, "The Wixiariatari and the Heart of the World". He discusses the cosmology of this unique group of indigenous people who live in what is today known as Mexico, the impact of colonialism on their culture, and his experiences living with them in the 1970's. Christine Kim, and Arts Report contributor reviews the lecture in the last five minutes of our episode.

This week, we've got the first installment of Salia Joseph's podcast series, Mingling With Matriarchs! Salia is CiTR's new indigenous collective coordinator. Her research as a student in the First Nations and Indigenous Studies program focused on indigenous women on campus, and the diverse ways they have found for telling their stories, and exploring indigenous female identity. In this first episode of Mingling with Matriarchs, Salia interviews Dory Nason, an Anishinaabe and Mexican American Indigenous Literature and Feminisms Scholar about her journey to teaching.

Welcome to Tick Talk, formerly known as Talk Time! Tick Talk is CiTR's weekly spoken word check-in. This week, we have excerpts from a lecture about women who fight in the guerilla militia's of Kurdistan, as well as a poetry reading by a CiTR volunteer.

David Usher has been a volunteer with CiTR for over one year. He is one of our most senior volunteers, and wants to share stories from his life through his passion for poetry. His experience is rich and varied, exploring themes of familial love, self-exploration, patriarchy, and pain. He writes and selects the poems he would like to share, and then we record them together and I edit them for air. The poems we heard today were:

My Friend David - By Toni McGregor

Tyra at two, already an artist

Thirteen, a birthday poem for Ella

Eric

Two Hours

Domineer

On Sunday September 13th, Simon Fraser University’s Institute for the Humanities hosted A panel discussion about the power of female fighters in Kurdistan from both the Canadian and Kurdish perspective. Female fighters in Kurdistan are called the YPJ, which is a branch of the leftist People’s Protection Unit militia. This group is quite controversial, but they have been one of the most effective units actively fighting ISIS on the ground in the MIddle East for the last few years. The presentation centered around the story of the Kurdish people, and a photo and video presentation done by Hanna Böhman, a Vancouverite who volunteered and fought for the YPJ militia this year. In this piece, you will hear excerpts from the panel discussion. Hanna Bohman and Nissy Koye, a Kurdish activist, discuss Hanna’s experiences in Rojava, and the way women are treated in the militia. Following this is a short interview by Eleanor Wearing with Nissy Koye.