There’s Something in the Water

Summary, part 5

Resistance, mobilization, and activism

“Real solutions to environmental racism in Nova Scotia and Canada lie in a transformative agenda premised on anticolonial and anticapitalist environmental organizing where the goal is to build collective power” (p. 131).

DECOLONIZATION

Tensions underpinning colonized and colonizer relationships tend to be that colonizers only recognize their privilege once they come into contact with the colonized. Also, colonized peoples only rise up when they realize that the colonizer has material benefits at the expense of the colonized.

In terms of the mental toll, decolonization is both an event and a process:

• As an event, the level of acknowledgment that colonized people have regarding how colonization has limited their ability to engage in and respond to life’s circumstances.

• As a process, participation in activities that birth, create, and restore (reclamation of cultural beliefs, practices, and values).

The absence of legal tools that acknowledge, respond to, and address colonialism, capitalism, and the patriarchy is one of the biggest challenges for Indigenous and Black communities. Therefore, transformative justice can only be realized once the settler-colonial nations:

1. Acknowledge, enable and support Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination,

2. Value community-based organizing focused on healing for Black and Indigenous communities,

3. Recognize Indigenous knowledge as a way to respond to state-sanctioned violence,

4. Honour grassroots resistance (especially by female and youth-led organizers)

DEMANDS

Resistance is about (1) grounding theories of liberatory struggles of Indigenous, Black, and other racialized peoples, and (2) disrupting colonial conditions that dehumanize them.

What are Indigenous peoples mainly fighting for?

• Land dispossession, or being denied access to land,

• Resource exploitation of indigenous lands,

• Legacy of residential schools (for example, the most recent news coming from British Columbia),

• Historical extinguishment of their rights (131),

• Self-determination and sovereign independence, and

• Reconstituted partnership with the Crown.

MULTI-PRONGED STRATEGY FOR ADDRESSING ENVIRONMENTAL RACISM

Centering Race in an Environmental Justice Framework (EJF)

The First National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit is a national and international movement to challenge environmental injustice in their community. They drafted 17 principles of environmental justice all focused on issues surrounding the destruction of Indigenous land and communities, cultural and spiritual independence and liberation, and environmentally safe livelihoods.

The environmental justice framework is a cohesive framework that, in general, adopts a public health model that seeks to prevent and eliminate harm (or the threat of harm) on resources where environmental problems are the greatest. The framework is grounded on three main principles: 

• procedural (rules, regulations, etc., are enforced fairly), 

• geographic (fair spatial configurations of harmful pollutants), and

• social equity (sociological factors such as poor and racialized people in dangerous jobs and polluted neighborhoods, and child exposure to environmental toxins).

Ultimately, adopting the EJF would mean a move beyond the color-blind approach which fails to recognize the historical struggles and contexts which have informed how these communities have been shaped and how they are treated today.

Environmental Policy: Addressing Structural and Environmental Determinants of Health

Environmental policy must address the cumulative health and mental health impacts of environmental racism as well as the structural inequities that racialized, already vulnerable, communities face (159). To carry out more intentional impact, environmental assessments must incorporate a health equity impact assessment. This is because impact assessments are not designed for Black and Indigenous communities, as they are premised on western and scientific constructs of the environment. While Indigenous methods of data collection are based on holism (and are thus more encompassing), they are not considered “valid” by impact assessment standards (160).

Culturally relevant participatory democracy

This is an approach that provides people with the “education and competence to understand and communicate in the technical jargon often used by environmental professions” (p. 160). When done in a meaningful way, it can empower community leaders with the tools needed to get their community involved in the decision-making process early on.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) 

CBPR “is a collaborative approach that involves researchers and communities working in partnership in ways that enable power to be shared among all participants” (p. 36). CBPR requires community involvement at every stage of the research process; i.e., work with communities rather than on behalf of them. This would mean each partner contributes their own expertise. When beginning CBPR, community ownership is crucial (particularly in studies involving vulnerable communities). CBPR means that stakeholders must discuss:

• How communities are engaged,

• How the studies are conducted, and

• How the knowledge/resources from these studies are shared.

*Refer to the appendix for Waldron’s case study on the impacts of research on a community.

Building Coalitions and Solidarities for Environmental Justice Organizing

Collaborative partnerships

White-led environmental organizations need to forge more relationships with  Indigenous and Black led communities to address the lack of diverse representation in their organizations. In addition to that, white-led environmental organizations must be more proactive in collaborating with communities that are “out of the way” or “off the map” because otherwise they are missing a whole side of the story and will remain disconnected from these communities’ struggles.

Building bridges between Indigenous and Black communities

Even more important than building connections between affected communities and environmental organizations is building bridges between Indigenous and Black communities in their fight for environmental justice. We need to recognize the reasons in which these two communities have been deterred from building alliances. Waldron notes that it could be because Indigenous communities are more focused on land which Black communities are more focused on racism. However, there is power in solidarity, and Waldron encourages these communities to think about how they may provide strength for each other.

FINAL WORDS

“Engaging in marginalized communities requires a shift in thinking about how power, privilege, and equity are implicated in relationship building, partnerships, and research… this involves respecting community members as experts in their own lives … and ensuring … That they are full participants in the co-creation and dissemination of knowledge” (p. 165).