Shades of Green

What will Mi'kma'ki look and feel like when environmental justice is achieved? Over the last couple of years, we've asked this question to dozens of people working on the front lines of these movements. Because it turns out that environmental justice is not just about dismantling systems of oppression like colonial and white supremacy. It definitely IS about those things, but it's also about imagining and shaping futures where we can all safely live, work and play together on these unceded lands, humans and non-humans alike. For some it was a daunting questions. After all, environmental justice can only happen when we've healed from all of the other kinds of injustice too. As Indigenous Climate Justice activist and member of Chipewan First Nation Eriel Deranger describes, "It’s not just about the environmental movement.  Decolonization only works if it’s across the board.  Through economics, through commerce, through trade, through the development of those resources.  For me, decolonization is a restoration of balance in our relationship with mother earth, and it would change everything." Others really relished in sharing their visions of a just future. Mi'kmaq rights holder and activist Barbara Low's vision was on the tip of her tongue.  “This has always been Mi’kma’ki and it will be fully Mi’kma’ki again and that means all of our unceded territories. This whole colonial project is just going to be a drop in the bucket of our whole time." In today's episode we'll be exploring how tools and frameworks from reparations and reconciliation to decolonization and afrofuturism can help us to envision and shape futures where we don't have to fight for environmental justice any longer. African American writer and cultural geographer Carolyn Finney compels us to imagine  how we will attend to the relationships at the centre of these visions, too: "What if  everything from legislation to the way we structure our institutions, our curriculums, and our behaviour, came from that premise that justice is love made public? That’s a state of mind I want to be living in, where we don’t necessarily have to call things out like environmental justice or social justice anymore, because we are always tending to it in a full, rich, and complex way, as part the fabric of who we are." We all have roles to play in imagining and shaping just futures on these lands.  For many of us, it begins with learning to listen. And as we've heard throughout this podcast series, many of us need to be willing to let go and allow environmental justice movements to change everything.  In Mi'kma'ki, it turns out that our ancestors made treaties that lay out a relationship framework that can help show us the way. As Mi'kmaq rights holder, artist and metal fabricator Tayla Paul describes, all of these concepts are within reaching distance. "It’s come to the point where we have to retire the old way of doing things. And I think it’s not just indigenous people that understand that. We already get it on a grassroots level. On a friendship level. We know what friendship, and sharing and peace are."  Featured Voices: Dr. Wanda Thomas Bernard Eriel Deranger Dr. Carolyn Finney Shaya Ishaq El Jones Lynn Jones Barbara Low    Catherine Martin Rebecca Moore Michelle Paul Tayla Paul Dr. Ingrid Waldron Quotes have been condensed here for clarity and brevity. Huge thanks to every one of the ears and voices that made this episode and this five episode series possible.  Our theme was composed by the incredible Nick Durado. We are also grateful to N'we Jinan Artists and youth from Asiniw-Kisik Education Complex in Kawacatoose First Nation, Saskatchewan for allowing us to excerpt the amazing song, Many Paths. This project has been supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network

When it comes to environmental justice, are environmental organizations listening? Are we willing to change in the ways that we are being asked? Environmental justice movements define our environment more broadly than the mainstream environmental movement, recognizing the interconnectedness of the social and ecological crises we are facing. Centring the voices of Black, Indigenous and people of colour, environmental justice works to resist and reshape the ways that race, space and power intersect. These grassroots advocates have also repeatedly called on mainstream environmental organizations to address environmental racism, elitism in the movement, and lack of diverse representation on their staffs and boards. As questions around diversity, decolonization, and justice begin to gain more traction in mainstream social movements, environmental organizations are beginning to respond. But the path is messy and uncertain. As Ecology Action Centre‘s Joanna Bull describes: “We don’t actually even see what were being asked to do yet, I don’t think. We being the environmental movement. I don’t think we fully understand what is seen as problematic about the way we are now. And I think a lot of those things that are problematic are really deeply entrenched with the structure of how we exist.” In this episode we’re going to explore some of the ways that the environmental movement has responded to the challenges presented by environmental justice, including some stories of Ecology Action Centre’s own journey here in unceded Mi’kmaq territory. We’ll be asking some uncomfortable questions as part of this work to explore our complicity with the oppressive systems we are fighting. We’ll be practicing listening to environmental perspectives from outside of our bubble. And we’ll be wondering about our own roles and responsibilities when it comes to a just future here in Mi’kma’ki and beyond. We don’t have any answers, but we want to share the questions we have been asking so far, in the hopes that more of us can begin to share this messy work of shifting from good intentions to good practice. As Dr. Carolyn Finney suggests, these questions are just the beginning: “Maybe what we need to do is to be asking different questions. Maybe what we need to do is to restructure the way we’re in relationship to one another across difference. And that is a lot more work. It might change everything we’re doing.” We hope you’ll tune into this Shades of Green podcast episode, “Listen Up: On Building Relationships Across Difference in the Environmental Movement.” Stay curious with us as we dig into some juicy questions that challenge us to step up to the work of building a just future together. Featured Voices: Joanna Bull Eriel Deranger Dr. Carolyn Finney Barbara Low Randolph Haluza-Delay Lynn Jones Stephen Thomas Dr. Ingrid Waldron Quotes have been condensed here for clarity and brevity. Huge thanks to every one of the ears and voices that made this episode possible. Further thanks to Joanna Brenchley, Erica Butler, Cintia Gillam, Jen Graham and Peter Lane. Our theme was composed by the incredible Nick Durado. We are also grateful for permission from Ansley Simpson to excerpt from her lovely song A Mixture of Frailties. This project has been supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or Feedburner. And follow us on Twitter! Further Reading: https://shadesofgreenweb.wordpress.com/2018/03/01/listen-up-building-relationships-across-difference-in-the-environmental-movement/

"We are all Treaty people". It's a phrase we're hearing more often these days. But what does it really mean, here in Mi'kma'ki? And what does it have to do with environmental justice? Most settlers don't think about the Treaties much. Even here in unceded Mi'kmaq territory, many of us imagine them as one-time transactions in the deep past. However, as we'll hear in this episodes of Shades of Green, many Mi'kmaq rights holders understand the Peace and Friendship Treaties as sacred, living agreements. As Sipekne’katik District Warrior Chief Jim Maloney puts it: “I agree that we are a treaty people, and I have heard the Premier say that. His Treaty is on paper. My Treaty is on land. My tracks on my ground: that’s my signature, not on a piece of paper.”   In this episode of Shades of Green, we spend time with frontline Water Protectors resisting the Alton Gas project at the Truckhouse and Treaty Camp along the banks of the Sipekne'katik River. Alton Gas is proposing to dump massive quantities of mined salt waste into the river, which would pose serious risks to the river ecosystem along with the health, livelihoods and rights of Mi’kmaw communities. Water Protector and Treaty Scholar Michelle Paul sums up what has brought folks to the front lines:  "There is no recipe for water. It is that simple. When water is gone that's it. From water is life, and without water there is no life." This Mi'kmaw-led resistance has asserted the Peace and Friendship Treaties in ways that are at once spiritual, political, and deeply practical. As Kukuwes Wowkis describes, "Last year when we built the Truckhouse seven of us from seven different districts threw our eel traps in the water. So right there, Alton Gas had to stop what they were doing with the brine because in our treaties, it’s our right to hunt and fish wherever we feel we can do that on Mi’kmaw territory.” We hope you’ll tune into episode three of our Shades of Green podcast series, “Peace, Friendship and Environmental Justice."  Join us at the treaty camp to get a taste of what it's like on the front lines of a movement that is so much bigger than stopping a single project. Let's listen and reflect on what what stopping a natural gas storage project has to do with Indigenous self-determination, how the Peace and Friendship Treaties might help us understand how to build just relationships with the land and each other, and what it means to be a Treaty person. Note: explicit language Featured Voices: Michelle Paul Kukuwes Wowkis (Madonna Bernard) Giju Muin (Paula Isaac) Catherine Martin Jim Maloney Quotes have been condensed here for clarity and brevity. Huge thanks to every one of the ears and voices that made this episode possible, and particularly the Water Protectors holding down the Truckhouse and Treaty Camp against Alton Gas. You can support this Mi'kmaw-led resistance here. Further thanks to Erica Butler and Peter Lane. Our theme was composed by the incredible Nick Durado. We are also grateful to Jeremy Dutcher for his rendition of the Honour Song.  Kepmite'tmnej, the Mi'kmaw Honour Song, was received in a sweatlodge by singer-songwriter George Paul in the 1980s.  This project has been supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or Feedburner.  And follow us on Twitter! Further resources available at: https://shadesofgreenweb.wordpress.com/2018/02/15/peace-friendship-and-environmental-justice/

Why are there so many garbage dumps close to African Nova Scotian communities? Why do Mi’kmaq communities experience food insecurity on their unceded territory? Who defines what counts as environmental racism? The roots of environmental racism run pretty deep in Nova Scotia. About 500 years deep. On this episode of Shades of Green, we get curious about the forces that have shaped how we relate to the land and to each other here in unceded Mi’kmaq territory. Colonization has wrapped the histories of Mi’kmaq rights holders up with communities of Acadians, Scots, Black Loyalists, Maroons, Planters, and more recent immigrant communities. These displacements and migrations set the scene for the environmental racism that we see here today. Before European colonizers arrived on these shores, Mi’kmaq communities had long been caring gently for these lands and waters. We talked to Roger Lewis about the violent disruption that colonial settlers brought with them. Roger is the Curator of Ethnology at the Nova Scotia Museum of Natural History and a member of Sipekne’katik First Nation: “Environmental racism, really, dates back to those Indian reserves. They go from the whole province of Nova Scotia to tiny reserves; from like 1,200 acres instead of 40,000 square miles. So they’re on the river in Shubenacadie because it’s the most productive area, and then all of a sudden they’re up in Shubenacadie (Reserve)with no access to rivers.” Some European settlers brought enslaved African peoples to Mi’kma’ki. After the American Revolution, colonial governments also promised freedom, equality and land to Black Loyalists and other Black refugees coming northwards. Spoiler alert: these promises were broken. As activist and Lincolnville resident James Desmond described the origins of his small African Nova Scotian community: "(Black Loyalists) were promised land after they landed here, and were granted 3000 acres. But not too long after the French Acadians arrived and the 3000 acres was re-granted to the French Acadians. That was a loss of our good fertile land and our economic base because of the attachment to the fishery.” In 1974, a large municipal dump opened one kilometre away from Lincolnville. Since then, the community has been concerned about the potential impacts of various contaminants, including cadmium, phenol, and toluene. When it closed in 2006, a large second-generation landfill almost immediately opened in the same location. Sadly, Lincolnville’s experience is echoed across African Nova Scotian and Mi’kmaq communities. These disproportionate impacts are part of a larger racist pattern of displacement and blocked access to land and resources. Join us as we pull back and take a bit of a long view, exploring some of the histories of colonization on these lands and how these severed relationships with the land connect to the environmental racism we see today. Thanks to the ears and voices that made this episode possible. Further thanks to Erica Butler and Jen Graham. This project has been supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or Feedburner. And follow us on Twitter! Further reading etc here: https://shadesofgreenweb.wordpress.com/2018/02/08/s2ep2/

What is environmentalism? What do we mean when we talk about “the environment” here on unceded Mi'kmaq territory? Who defines what's included in that meaning, and what's left out?  At Shades of Green, these juicy questions have led to... well, more questions.  The Canadian Encyclopedia tells us that the environmental movement got started in the early 1900s, "when conservationists aimed to slow the rapid depletion of Canadian resources in favour of more regulated management.”  It sounds like a time where settlers were beginning to sense that the forests of Turtle Island weren't as endless as they'd once seemed. When we talked to Mi'kmaq rights holder and land defender Barbara Low, she described the origins of environmentalism a little differently. “When settlers started showing up we were doing our best to show them how to be human beings, like us. 'We’re the human beings and this is how the human beings interact with the trees and the rocks and the beavers and the deer and the moose'. They wouldn’t listen... they were just going to go on their way. And so they went on their way. Now a few hundred short years later, they come around and they are like, 'We need to save the environment!' 'Join us!" Environmentalism has shifted and changed over time, but as we'll hear in this episode, the movement is still shaped by colonial thinking, including unacknowledged racism and paternalism. As Dr. Carolyn Finney told us: "A student asked me, ‘I don’t know how to say this... but it’s so interesting how in the environmental movement it seems people care so much about animals, but they don’t really care about black people. So what do we do with that?” I said, ‘well you just hit that on the head!’" We found that folks outside of the mainstream environmental movement tend to define “the environment” more broadly. Mi'kmaq artist and metal fabricator Tayla Paul summed it up like this:  "This is my environment too. Kjipuktuk. Halifax. This is where my ancestors are. This is where their bodies are buried in the ground. This is the environment. It’s not just about the trees and the undeveloped areas. It is definitely about those areas but it’s not just about those areas. It’s about the environment that we experience every day, and that includes the social environment." Environmental justice takes that expanded definition and works to highlight how race, space and power intersect in unjust ways across the land and in our communities. As poet and activist El Jones put it, "The environment isn’t unattached to police brutality, police shootings and mass incarceration of black people. For me, adding justice moves it beyond simply thinking in terms of land and environment to thinking about how space and race intersect and interact, and how poverty and space interact.” We hope you'll tune into our first Shades of Green podcast episode, "What is the Environment and Where is the Justice?"  Pause, listen and get curious with us as we explore some different ways of understanding ourselves, our environment, and our work to protect it.   Featured voices:  Dr. Julian Agyeman Eriel Deranger Dr. Carolyn Finney El Jones Mark Leeming Barbara Low Catherine Martin Tayla Paul Dr. Cheryl Teelucksingh Dr. Ingrid Waldron Quotes have been condensed here for clarity and brevity. Huge thanks to every one of the ears and voices that made this episode possible. Further thanks to Joanna Brenchley, Erica Butler, Jen Graham and Christen Kong. Our theme was composed by the incredible Nick Durado. We are also grateful for permission from Lido Pimiento to excerpt from her gorgeous song Humano.  This project has been supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network Subscribe on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher, or Feedburner. And follow us on Twitter!                        For further reading, visit the original post at ShadesofGreenweb.wordpress.com/Season2Ep1

Shades of Green is a podcast series exploring environmental justice from unceded Mi'kmaq Territory. It is supported by Ecology Action Centre and the Community Conservation Research Network. Our theme was composed by Nick Durado. (https://budi.bandcamp.com/) Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Feedburner or Soundcloud!

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to be invited to visit to elder Alan Knockwood’s house in Sipeknekatik . Alan Knockwood is an elder and pipe carrier. He is also active as a Human Rights consultant and Historian. It was a glorious, welcoming place with open doors for pets and kids and family to come and go, which explains some of the background noise you will hear. In fact, his brother Wallace Nevin just happened to drop by, who just happens to be something of an historian, and we were lucky double over because he was generous enough with his time to st down at the itchen table and join us. We had a long and free flowing conversation all afternoon. So what I have tried to do for the purposes of our show is piece together some of the highlights of our conversation to give you a sense of perspective about what Alan and Wallace feel is happening in Sipeknekatik, including the imposition of the proposed Alton Gas storage project and how that relates to the struggle to even conceive of a concept of environmental justice.

Tayla Paul and Dylan Letendre are two participants in a project exploring urban Aboriginal identity called “This is What I Wish you Knew.” Fifty community members carved and painted their personal stories onto rectangular clay tiles that are now displayed at the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Centre in Halifax, working to build on the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The project was one of six projects across Canada approved through the Canada Council for the Arts (RE) conciliation Initiative which receives funding from the J.W. McConnell Family Foundation and the Circle on Philanthropy and Aboriginal Peoples in Canada. Stay tuned for our conversation but I would also urge you to get yourself to the Friendship Centre on Gottingen Street in Halifax, and spend some time with these beautiful and important tiles.

Sudha Nandagopal oversees Seattle’s new environmental justice initiative — one of the only examples of its kind in the country. As program director, she convenes a working group that represents the interests of people of color, immigrants, refugees, and low-income and limited-English individuals in the face of environmental decision-making. Part of this work has been the creation and now, more recently, implementation of the Seattle Equity and Environment Agenda, a groundbreaking new document outlining the ways in which Seattle can begin to pair equity and environment in its work. You should definitely look it up: http://www.seattle.gov/Documents/Departments/OSE/SeattleEquityAgenda.pdf

Describing himself as a father, birdwatcher, and cycle commuter, Randolph Haluza-Delay spent 15 years as a wilderness guide. As a sociology professor at The King’s University in Edmonton, Alberta (Canada) for the past twelve years, he has published over 40 academic journal articles and book chapters, and occasional items for magazines and newspapers. This includes two co-edited books: Speaking for Ourselves: Environmental Justice in Canada (The University of British Columbia Press, 2009), and the recently released How the World’s Religions are Responding to Climate Change: Social Science Investigations (Routledge, 2014). His PhD is in Education from the University of Western Ontario. He also holds a Bachelor’s degree in Zoology and Master’s in Recreation. As a social scientist, his research focuses on social movements, religion and the environment, environmental education, and the cultural politics of sustainability. As a citizen, he is active in peace and anti-racism initiatives, and interfaith dialogue.

Dr. Bernard has been a professor at the Dalhousie School of Social Work since 1990, where she held the position of Director from 2001- 2011. She teaches in the area of anti-oppression at the graduate level and cultural diversity in the undergraduate program. She also teaches an elective course entitled Africentric Perspectives in Social Work, the only one of its kind. Besides this, she finds time to She Chair the Health and Wellness Ministry at the East Preston United Baptist Church. She has received numerous awards and honours, most notably, her appointment to the Order of Canada in 2005 for her work on racism. Dr. Bernard is a founding member, and past president of the Association of Black Social Workers. She is the first African Nova Scotian to hold a tenure track position at Dalhousie University and to be promoted to Full Professor. She is a community-engaged scholar who actively links her research, teaching, practice and community activism. She spoke about what environmental justice means to her, what environmental racism has looked like in her community and why she is excited about the Mobile Food Market pilot project.

One of Canada's most versatile, experienced and seemingly, busy, professional authors, I don’t have time to provide a biography for Silver Donald Cameron that really does him justice. But jut as a start, Dr. Cameron is the Host and Executive Producer of TheGreenInterview.com, an environmental website devoted to in-depth conversations with thinkers and activists who are leading the way to a sustainable future. Interviewees have included green giants like Vandana Shiva, Farley Mowat, Robert Bateman, Jane Goodall, David Suzuki, George Monbiot, and the former Prime Minister of Bhutan. Dr. Cameron also wrote and narrated The Green Interview's two documentary films, Bhutan: The Pursuit of Gross National Happiness (2010) and Salmon Wars: Salmon Farms, Wild Fish and the Future of Communities (2012). He has also written plays, films, radio and TV scripts, an extensive body of corporate and governmental writing, hundreds of magazine articles and 17 books, including two novels, for which he has won countless awards. Maybe most pertinent to our conversation today, Silver Donald Cameron is the writer and narrator of GreenRights.com, a multimedia project about environmental rights. I’m excited to be sitting with him today to learn a little about the many facets of this project, which explores the idea of incorporating rights for the natural world, as well as the right to a healthy environment, into our constitution, and now includes a book called “Warrior Lawyers”, a film called “Defenders of the Dawn” and even a “rolling transcontinental medicine show.”

Our guest today is James Desmond, a resident of the small African Nova Scotian Community of Lincolnville and a member of the Lincolnville Land Voice Council. James has been fighting on behalf of his community for over forty years, ever since an unlined and unwanted dump was sited there without community consent back in the early 1970s. In 2006 a 2nd landfill was added and the community’s concerns are still being ignored.

A member of Millbrook First Nation in Truro, Catherine Martin is an independent film producer, director, writer, facilitator, communications consultant, community activist, teacher, drummer, and the first female Mi’kmaw filmmaker from the Atlantic region. She also holds the Nancy’s Chair in Women’s Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. Catherine’s daughter Natalie Clifford is a lawyer with a specific passion for Aboriginal Law, and the rights and future of First Nations in Canada. She has opened her own firm with a colleague called Clifford Sheils. This is part one of a two-part conversation.

A member of Millbrook First Nation in Truro, Nova Scotia, Catherine Martin is an independent film producer, director, writer, facilitator, communications consultant, community activist, teacher, drummer, and the first female Mi’kmaw filmmaker from the Atlantic region. She also holds the Nancy's Chair in Women's Studies at Mount Saint Vincent University. Catherine’s daughter Natalie Clifford is a lawyer with a specific passion for Aboriginal Law, and the rights and future of First Nations in Canada. She has opened her own firm with a colleague called Clifford Sheils. This is part 1 of a two-part conversation.

This week I’m really excited to have had the chance to speak with the members of the North End Community Action Committee. These six young adults from Halifax’s North End have joined together to try and help ensure that the concerns of their North End community are adequately heard and addressed by municipal planning processes, including the Centre plan. The Centre Plan is an effort to update the municipal planning strategies for communities within Halifax’s Regional Centre, which includes Dartmouth within the Circumferential Highway and Peninsular Halifax. These strategies are broad planning documents that establish policies concerning land development- and its effects, - as well as policies to provide a framework for environmental, social and economic development.

Mark Leeming is an historian, born in Pictou County, Nova Scotia and holds degrees from StFX, McMaster and Dalhousie. He is a recent SSHRC postdoctoral fellow through Memorial University of Nfld, where he studied the intellectual history of radical environmental ethics. He has published on the history of environmental protest music, on anti-nuclear activism and worked for several years as a freelance journalist exploring questions around environmental activism and ethics.

El Jones is a spoken word activist and teacher who was Poet Laureate in Halifax between 2013 and 2015. She was the captain of the back-to-back national championship Halifax slam team in 2007 and 2008. She is dedicated to using poetry in prison outreach and youth engagement, including on a weekly radio show at CKDU called Black Power Hour. And Rebecca Thomas is Halifax’s new Poet Laureate – and the first Indigenous Poet Laureate in Atlantic Canada. Along with being the current Halifax Slam Master, she also holds the position of Coordinator of Aboriginal Student Services at the Nova Scotia Community College.

Our guests today are Mi'kmaq land defender Michelle Paul, Sipekne'katik Warrior Chief Jim Maloney and treaty defender Kevin Christmas. They’ve all been involved in the fight to stop a natural gas storage project that threatens the health of the Shubenacadie River.

Our guest today is Aaron Ward. Aaron holds a law degree from Dalhousie’s Schulich school of law, sits on the board of the Ecology Action Centre, and also sat on the board of directors of the East Coast Environmental Law Association until 2015, after which he took on a staff role. The East Coast Environmental Law Association, or ECELAW, is Atlantic Canada’s only environmental law charity, established in 2007 as a non-profit organization. ECELAW responds to community inquiries, carries out legal and policy research and presents educational resources and opportunities to increase public awareness of environmental laws in Atlantic Canada. Aaron has been working with ECELAW on many things, but most relevant to us today, including an environmental bill of rights.

Ingrid Waldron holds a PhD from the Sociology & Equity Studies in Education Department at the University of Toronto, a MA in Intercultural Education: Race, Ethnicity and Culture from the University of London (England) and a BA in Psychology from McGill University. Her scholarship focuses specifically on the impact of inequality and discrimination on the health and mental health of African Nova Scotian, African Canadian, Mi’kmaw, immigrant and refugee communities in Canada. Dr. Waldron is the director of the ENRICH project (which stands for Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health) and an assistant professor in the School of Nursing at Dal. Dr. Waldron was recently named the Advocate of the Year at the Better Politics Awards for her work fighting environmental racism in Nova Scotia. We were excited to be able to ask Dr. Waldron a bit more about how she got started working on environmental justice issues, how the ENRICH project is making a difference, and some of the challenges in defining and working on environmental justice issues in Nova Scotia.