TRU’s Main Campus is located on the traditional territory of the Secwpemc people. It is customary for a Secwepemc Elder or leader to welcome all visitors to their territory and give a time- honoured blessing of the events to follow.
We are delighted to invite you to join us in the kickoff to International Days 2014 with:
Keynote Speaker
Clemantine Wamariya was six years old when the genocide started in Rwanda. Miraculously, she and her sister, Claire, managed to survive, although they were separated from their parents. During the six years following the genocide, Ms. Wamariya lived in numerous refugee camps in seven different African countries before coming to Chicago in 2000.
Ms. Wamariya’s experiences as a Rwandan genocide survivor and former refugee have emboldened her to fight injustice and to champion the cause of the unprivileged and disadvantaged. Ms. Wamariya recently received her BA in literature at Yale University, and she is involved in several human rights and genocide intervention activities.
Since first discussing her experiences as both a survivor of genocide and her life as a refugee on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006, Ms. Wamariya has traveled extensively, presenting at numerous universities, high schools, and other organizations. Ms. Wamariya has been featured as speaker at Chicago Ideas Week’s Edison Talks, TEDxYale, Huffington Post’s The Third Metric, and has been invited as a guest four times to the Oprah Winfrey Show. More recently, President Barack Obama appointed Ms. Wamariya to serve on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
