On April 17th 1964, Jerrie Mock became the first woman to fly a plane solo around the world. Lasting just under one month, Jerrie flew her plane “Charlie” nearly 37,000 km. Join us this month for amazing adventures of another sort. We’re delving into indigenous storytelling, trans reproductive health, and programming productivity – we’re excited to go on this nerd journey with all of you!

Hosted by: Kaylee Byers and Michael Unger

This month:

1. Dallas Yellowfly - "Indigenous Storytelling"

Indigenous storyteller Dallas Yellowfly brings Qwalena: The Wild Woman Who Steals Children to life in this unique theatrical multimedia storytelling presentation. The purpose of this presentation is to create awareness on the inter-generational impact of Indian residential schools. Qwalena is the allegorical creature that represents the Indian agents who stole Aboriginal children from their families and forced them into government funded Indian residential schools. Yellowfly's own father was one of these children.

Bio Indigenous storyteller Dallas Yellowfly is from the Siksika Nation (Blackfoot First Nation). Having been born and raised on Coast Salish, Sto:lo, territory he has been taught both coastal culture and plains culture from Elders. Dallas has been working in Aboriginal Education for 17 years. Using his experience in stand-up comedy and storytelling Dallas is presenting across the province focused on increasing awareness of Indigenous perspectives in education.

2. Ducky Sherwood - "Productivity and the myth of the "rock star"

Especially in computer programming, there is common knowledge that productivity varies by more than an order of magnitude between different people. In this talk, I will show how that is utter bullshit. While I will not be able to magically make everybody an order of magnitude more productive at everything, I will show you a few research-proven techniques to make problem-solving faster, explain a little about the neuroscience behind it, and - perhaps most importantly - give you tools to think more productively about individual and team productivity.

Bio: Kaitlin Duck Sherwood has been interested in productivity for many years. She studied programmer productivity in the course of getting a MSc in computer science, and wrote the books Overcome Email Overload with Microsoft Outlook 2000 and 2002 and Overcome Email Overload with Eudora 5. Among her many jobs, she was a Senior Product Designer for the Open Source Application Foundation's personal information manager project, and wrote an email program for a tablet computer project at Interval Research.

3. A.J. Lowik - "Trans-Reproductive Health"

Join me in untangling the complicated relationships between sex, gender and reproduction where men can get pregnant, women can produce sperm, and non-binary people navigate menstruation, among other things - trans people lead rich reproductive lives and are using their bodies in ways that health care providers aren't always equipped to handle. What does trans-inclusive reproductive health care look like? What are the obstacles for trans people who are navigating their gender identities and expressions, as well as their reproductive capacities and desires? When embodied reproductive experiences are affixed to specific bodies and assumed to belong to specific genders, we end up with gendered silos of health care delivery and service - and trans people's reproductive health care needs are frequently overlooked and unmet. Let's expand our understanding of reproductive justice to include trans people in all their complexities!

Bio: A.J. Lowik is a PhD Candidate with the Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia, where they study all facets of trans people's reproductive lives from menstruation to abortion to lactation and chest-feeding. They teach Intro to Trans Studies, and help all kinds of organizations on their path towards trans-inclusion, including schools and teachers, reproductive and other health care providers, yoga studios and more. They are currently working on an edited collection called "Reproduction and Parenting Beyond the Binary," which will highlight non-binary people's experiences with reproduction, fertility, parenthood and family. A.J. loves board games, cats, and their cozy home with partner Michelle.