One of the Assyrian Democrats of the Bay Area goals is promote progressive values such as democracy, equality, and social and racial justice through education, participation and advocacy. The upcoming online seminar on February 8th 2022 (7:00 pm Pacific Time) by Dr. Mariam Georgis is an effort in this direction. To participate in this seminar please register with the following link:

In this presentation, Dr. Mariam Georgis will explore the meaning and workings of colonialism and how it connects Indigenous peoples globally. She will explore how anticolonial struggles connect Assyrians in the homeland to Assyrians in the Diaspora, and to First Nations in the Americas. What does our resistance look like? What do we have in common with decolonial struggles and movements for social justice and transformation such as Land Back, Idle No More, Standing Rock, Black Lives Matter, Sanctuary City, LGBTQ2S+ and others? How can we think about our complicity in the settler-colonial projects of the Americas, given our context as Indigenous peoples who have been dispossessed from our native homeland through colonialism and have arrived to settle and benefit from stolen Indigenous land? In thinking about Assyrians’ connections with these movements and groups, she will explore the meaning of solidarity. What does solidarity look like? How can we show up for others and be allies in their struggles? She will conclude the talk with an exploration of how solidarity defines and grounds us in our own Assyrian identity, both in the homeland and in the Diaspora.

About Dr. Mariam Georgis

Dr. Mariam Georgis is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Political Studies and Mamawipawin: Indigenous Governance and Community Based Research Space at the University of Manitoba. She is Assyrian, Indigenous to present-day Iraq and is currently a settler on the stolen lands of the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg and Mississauga of the Credit First Nation in present-day Hamilton, Ontario (Canada). She received a PhD from the University of Alberta (2017) in Political Science, specializing in International Relations and Comparative Politics of the global South. Located at the nexus of International Relations, Middle East Studies and Critical Indigenous Studies, her research centres Indigeneity and race to look at global issues of security, colonialism and decolonization, nation and state building and borders, nationhood and sovereignty, civil and social transformative movements, and displacement. Her work focuses on the global South, particularly the region of southwest Asia (colonially known as the Middle East). She is committed to doing community engaged work, especially around solidarity and forming relations with Indigenous and other racialized groups.