The Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) invites all FASS and Carleton alumni back to campus for Carleton’s annual Throwback weekend.

Community leader, Olympic gold medalist, media personality, celebrated human right activist, and Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) alumna, Waneek Horn-Miller is the 2017 FASS Lecture Guest Speaker for Carleton University’s annual Throwback celebration.

On Wednesday, September 13, 2017, at 6:00 pm, Horn-Miller’s will deliver her lecture Hard Conversations which confronts the much-debated issue of free speech.

In Hard Conversation, Horn-Miller will draw from her own activism experiences including her significant role in the Oka Crisis, to contend that establishing a dialogue with those we disagree with is a necessary first step towards positive social change.

Waneek Horn-Miller graduated from Carleton University in 2000 with a Bachelor of Arts. Her water polo prowess led to recognition as Carleton’s Women’s Athlete of the Year for three years from 1994 through 1997.

She played on the Carleton team that won the OUA championship in 1994-1995 and 1995-1996. After graduation, she went on to win a gold medal at the Winnipeg Pan Am Games in 1999 and co-captained the Canadian team during the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics.

Horn-Miller has overcome discrimination and violence to emerge as one of North America’s most inspiring Indigenous speakers.

A Mohawk from the Kahnawake Mohawk Territory near Montreal, she was behind the lines during the Oka crisis in 1990 when she was stabbed by a Canadian soldier’s bayonet. It was a near-death experience that marked a turning point in her life.

Horn-Miller, who retired as an athlete in 2008, is the host of her own health and wellness show on the ATPN network and tours the country as a motivational speaker. She works to mend the dysfunctional relationship between native and non-native communities through social and political change.

She is also an ambassador for Manitobah Mukluks, the world-famous Canadian Aboriginal footwear brand that has been worn by well-known models and actors.

The Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity recently named her one of Canada’s most influential women in sport.

Horn-Miller was the assistant chef de mission for Team Canada at the 2015 Pan Am Games.

This event will occur concurrent to the development of the on-campus Indigenous Learning Place.

The Indigenous Learning Place project embraces an ethic of \'activating, tending, and stewardship.\' The project is responsive to the needs and desires of a constituency of peoples rooted in deep relationships to the unceded Algonquin territory that Carleton occupies.

As a collective, the Indigenous Learning Place Committee are tasked with the work of activating, tending to, and being good stewards of the relationships between the campus community and the land itself. The Committee has taken on the responsibility of ensuring that every step of the design and execution of the project is attentive to the deep reciprocity between the land upon which the Indigenous Learning Place is situated and the self-determination, history and laws of the Algonquin Nation. As such, the work and thought put towards this project is deeply relational in focus, and driven by an ethic of reciprocity through both space and time.