At the center of Prof. Laura Hall’s work at Carleton is a focus on land back, a vast movement calling for the return of Indigenous land and debunking settler narratives.
Hall, an avid horror movie watcher and interdisciplinary scholar, joined Carleton as a faculty member in 2021. Hall’s research interests focus on settler colonial theory and intersectionality, often touching on Indigenous women’s and 2SLGBTQ+ rights and land back.
“The work that I do is always about recentering Indigenous governance and land-based rights,” Hall says.
Prof. Laura Hall (Photo: Laura Blanchette)
Land back is a movement committed to the reclamation and return of Indigenous land. Although part of the movement involves the physical shift of ownership and control back to Indigenous nations, Hall uses land back as a framework for decolonizing the classroom.
Hall challenges students to reflect on how the dispossession of Indigenous land is perpetuated throughout our daily lives in Canada.
In Winter 2023, Hall taught a course titled Pop Culture, Indigenous Feminisms and Settler Colonial Studies (INDG 3901/SOCI 3220). The course looked at pop culture in the form of music, film and television through an Indigenous feminist lens and sought to challenge students’ perceptions and raise decolonial awareness.
In one of the lectures, Hall uses an example from Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” music video to discuss how mainstream culture reinforces Indigenous land loss. Hall calls for a reworking of the narrative, to bring Indigenous voices back into the conversation.
“Decolonial scholarship, to me, is like constantly saying, ‘No, we can’t be erased. Indigenous people can’t be erased,’” Hall said.
In addition to Hall’s ongoing projects supporting Indigenous theatre and arts, Hall is working on a book about horror films and Indigenous feminism. In the book, Hall will use a settler colonial studies lens to look at feminism, class analysis and disability studies while also embracing their love of horror.
“I want there to be a deeper engagement of theory in fun ways,” said Hall.
In the upcoming fall semester, Hall will be teaching a land-based learning course titled Sociology on the Land: Decolonizing, Storytelling and Land-Based Engagement (SOCI 3220E) and will be teaching Pop Culture, Indigenous Feminisms and Settler Colonial Studies (INDG 3901/SOCI 3220) again in Winter 2024.