Leslie Spillett: Kohkum, Knowledge Keeper, Cree and Métis Community Organizer, Labour Activist, Feminist

Julie Guard

Leslie Spillett is a Cree and Métis community organizer, Elder, Knowledge Keeper, and  Kokum, who has been active in labour, Indigenous, and feminist grassroots social justice  movements for over four decades. Yet, like too many left, labour, Indigenous, and social  justice activists, especially women, her story has not been told. This presentation, based  on an oral history conducted in 2025, provides an overview of Leslie Spillett’s remarkable life story.

In the 1980s, as an organizer and subsequently senior staff member in the International  Ladies’ Garment Workers Union, representing mostly female and immigrant workers, Spillett battled exploitative employers, including the notorious sex-offender Peter Nygard,  to win rights, liveable wages, equal pay, and paid overtime. She allied with activists from  the radical Canadian nationalist Confederation of Canadian Unions and struggled against  the increasingly bureaucratic labour movement, accusing it of relying on lawyers rather  than mobilizing union members. She accused Manitoba’s NDP government of failing the  most vulnerable workers with much-lauded reforms to labour legislation that failed to  protect the right to strike or prohibit scabs. In the 1990s, she turned her prodigious  organizing skills to Indigenous justice, sovereignty, and equity. She founded a remarkable  number of organizations, including Mother of Red Nations Women’s Council and Ka Ni  Kanichihk. She is active in numerous community and institutional organizations where she  advocates for Indigenous women’s health, rights, knowledge, and on behalf of Missing and  Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, 2SLGBTQQIA+, to name just a few. Leslie Spillett lives  and continues the struggle in Treaty 1 territory.

De l’activité de subsistance au travail : les rapports de production induits par la traite des fourrures en Nouvelle-France

Matthieu Tardif

Ces dernières années, le discours médiatique a souvent parlé d’une « grande démission » post-pandémie pouvant laisser penser que le travail serait une affaire de choix. L’inflation, la hausse des loyers et le spectre de la récession nous rappellent pourtant que le travail est une forme d’exploitation et qu’il conditionne la survie sous le mode de production capitaliste. Penser contre le capitalisme, c’est donc aussi penser contre le travail. Pour cela, il devient essentiel de comprendre dans quelles circonstances historiques le travail est susceptible d’apparaître. Dans cette optique, je propose de revisiter un thème classique de l’histoire canadienne, la traite des fourrures en Nouvelle-France, et d’observer comment elle a transformé l’activité productive autochtone en travail. Avant l’arrivée des Européens dans le Nord-est américain, les Autochtones vivaient selon une économie de subsistance dont le marché était absent. Au contact des explorateurs, des pêcheurs, puis, rapidement, des marchands et des militaires, ils consentirent progressivement à produire et à transporter de la fourrure pour le marché européen. Ils devenaient ainsi producteurs de valeur d’échange au profit du capital commercial européen. Avaient-ils pourtant le choix ? Les historiens ont souvent affirmé que les acteurs autochtones conservèrent une large marge de manœuvre pour participer ou non à la traite. Je propose au contraire de montrer comment les rivalités inter-autochtones déjà existantes et le fossé technologique euro-autochtone ont contraint un grand nombre de nations à participer au commerce des fourrures. De là, je montrerai en quoi ce commerce a instauré des rapports de production proto-capitalistes.

I’s da Power’: The rise and fall of militant unionism among Milwaukee longshoremen, 1934-1942

Michael Billeaux-Martinez

In 1934, longshoremen in the Port of Milwaukee formed a racially integrated, militant local (ILA 815) within the conservative International Longshoremen’s Association. But by 1942, the radicals were defeated, and the local shifted from “class struggle” unionism to “business unionism.” At the same time, the union’s potential as a vehicle for black power was erased.

This presentation examines ILA 815 as a case study of failed interracial class formation in the U.S., highlighting often overlooked dynamics. The local’s decline was not driven by racial divisions but by the market structure of the Great Lakes freight industry, mediated by organizational fragmentation and rising anti-Communism. This case underscores “race-neutral” barriers to interracial unity, showing how capitalism reproduces racial divisions without explicit racial dynamics. The case contributes to debates on racial capitalism, the relationship between race and class, and the connection between anti-Communism, the labor movement, and civil rights struggles.