Systemic racism may seem challenging to understand, but with examples from Dr. Ingrid Waldron’s research and her lively explanations of how threats to land and water, climate change, and the pandemic negatively impact Black and Indigenous communities, it becomes very clear. 

 Dr. Ingrid Waldron is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Health at Dalhousie University and the Director of the NGO Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities & Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project). As the Director of the ENRICH Project over the last eight years, Dr. Waldron has been investigating the socio-economic, political, and health effects of environmental racism and other public infrastructure inequalities in Mi’kmaq and African Nova Scotian communities. 

 The ENRICH Project formed the basis to Dr. Waldron’s first book There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities, which received the 2020 Society for Socialist Studies Errol Sharpe Book Prize and the 2019 Atlantic Book Award for Scholarly Writing.

The 2020 Netflix documentary There’s Something in the Water is based on Dr. Waldron’s book and was co-produced by Waldron, actor Elliot Page, Ian Daniel, and Julia Sanderson. 

 The ENRICH Project also formed the basis to the creation of the provincial private members bill An Act to Address Environmental Racism (Bill 111), which was introduced in the Nova Scotia Legislature on April 29, 2015, and the federal private members bill a National Strategy to Redress Environmental Racism (Bill C-230), which was introduced in the House of Commons on February 26, 2020 and moved to second reading on December 8, 2020. 

 At the end of 2020, Dr. Waldron co-founded the National Anti-Environmental Racism Coalition with Naolo Charles from the Black Environmental Initiative. The Coalition has brought together organizations in the environmental and climate change sector across Canada to collaborate on projects and share expertise and resources to address environmental racism and climate change impacts in Indigenous, Black, and other marginalized communities across Canada.

 Find out more about The ENRICH Project.

 We are gradually building a list of resources related to racial justice issues in our UCC  eastern Regions.  You can find that list here: https://ucceast.ca/justice-mission-outreach-2/racial-justice/ 

You can reach us by email at [email protected] .

Remember you can always find more what’s happening with Justice, Mission, and Outreach by visiting the website, https://ucceast.ca/justice-mission-outreach-2/   and by joining the Facebook Group, Justice and Mission – UCC Atlantic.