INDIANS ON INDIAN LANDS: No Past to Long For


DATE
Monday September 22, 2025 - Tuesday September 23, 2025
TIME
2:00 PM - 8:30 PM
COST
Free

Book Talk Lecture and Panel

Join us for a book talk and discussion on Nishant Upadhyay’s “Indians on Indian Land: Intersections of Race, Caste, and Indigeneity” alongside short film, “No Past to Long For” by director Monica Cheema.

This talk is free and open to the public. Registration is required.

This event is sponsored by UBC Asian Studies and the Onkarbir Toor Memorial Punjabi Enhancement Fund, and co-sponsored by Centre for India and South Asia Research (CISAR).

Date & Time:
Tuesday, September 23, 2025 | 6:00pm – 8:30pm (PDT)

Location:
Room 120, C.K. Choi Building, 1855 West Mall, Vancouver


Events in Conjunction

Open Graduate Seminar

This event will be held online and in-person. Registration is required.

Date & Time:
Monday, September 22, 2025 | 2:00pm – 3:30pm (PDT)

Location:
Online via Zoom and Room 351, C.K. Choi Building, 1855 West Mall, Vancouver


Speakers

Nishant Upadhyay is an Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. In their new book, Nishant unravels Indian diasporic complicity in its ongoing colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples, lands, and nations in Canada. Upadhyay examines the interwoven and simultaneous areas of dominant Indian caste complicity in processes of settler colonialism, antiblackness, capitalism, brahminical supremacy, Hindu nationalism, and heteropatriarchy.

Monica Cheema is a Punjabi filmmaker, researcher and community facilitator. Recent shorts Let Us Try Again (Ao Phir Koshish Karie) and When It Falls Apart reflect on land, labor, and resource extraction as it relates to colonial railway histories and ‘ghost’ towns.