The Institutional Equity Office (IEO) invites members of the University of Toronto and community members to attend our Inclusion in Action Speaker Series.
The goal of this series is to host local and international experts, academics, and advocates to increase dialogue and understanding of equity, accessibility, and inclusion in postsecondary environments. Through an intersectional lens, the series focuses on systems of discrimination with the aim of dismantling attitudes and processes that uphold ongoing exclusion and marginalization.
This series is a collaboration between the Institutional Equity Office and the UTM Equity, Diversity & Inclusion Office.
Previous Events
Indigenous, Black, and other racialized and marginalized communities are disproportionately vulnerable to the climate crisis resulting from their greater exposure to environmental racism in the form of pollution and contamination from nearby industry, as well as their residence in regions where they are more likely to be impacted by rising sea levels, disappearing shorelines, frequent and heavy rainfall, raging storms and floods, intense heat waves, increasing wildfire, and poor air quality that hit them first and worst.
In this presentation, Dr. Ingrid Waldron (Professor & HOPE Chair in Peace and Health, Global Peace and Social Justice Program, Faculty of Humanities, McMaster University) will discuss the relationship between environmental racism and climate change inequities and their impacts in Indigenous, Black, and other marginalized communities in Canada. She will examine Canada’s role in creating and maintaining environmental racism and climate change inequities by highlighting how the relationship between environmental racism and climate change inequities is rooted in “place” or geography, slavery and colonialism, and a legacy of structural inequities in these communities. Using environmental and climate justice frameworks that are premised on justice, human rights and civil rights, Dr. Waldron will discuss how she has been addressing environmental racism and climate change impacts through her organizations, as well as the role of government, institutions of higher education, and the public in addressing these issues.
Speaker:
Dr. Ingrid Waldron
Professor & HOPE Chair in Peace and Health,
Global Peace and Social Justice Program,
Faculty of Humanities, McMaster University
Dr. Ingrid Waldron is Professor and HOPE Chair in Peace and Health in the Global Peace and Social Justice Program at McMaster University, the Founder and Executive Director of the Environmental Noxiousness, Racial Inequities and Community Health Project (The ENRICH Project), and the Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice (CCECJ).
Her research focuses on the health and mental health effects of social inequalities and discrimination in Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities, including environmental racism and climate change inequities, mental illness, dementia, and COVID-19. Her research and advocacy on mental illness experienced by Black women in the Halifax Regional Municipality played a significant role in the creation of the Sisterhood Initiative, the first health service for Black women in Nova Scotia.
As the Director of the ENRICH Project and the Co-Director of the CCECJ, she is addressing the ecological, social, political, and health impacts of environmental racism and climate change devastation in Black, Indigenous, and other racialized communities across Canada. Her research and advocacy, as well as her 2018 book There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities and her 2020 Netflix documentary of the same name have played a pivotal role in creating awareness about and addressing environmental racism. In 2020, she co-developed with former politician Lenore Zann the first federal environmental racism private members’ bill (Bill C-226). Bill C-226 is currently at Senate waiting to be voted on. If it passes, it will be the first environmental racism/justice law/legislation in Canada.
Dr. Waldron is currently writing her next book entitled From the Enlightenment to Black Lives Matter: The Impact of Racial Trauma on Mental Health in Black Communities. It will trace the history of racial trauma experienced by Black communities in Canada, the US and Britain from the colonial era to the present day.
Learning Objectives
- Define environmental racism and understand examples within a Canadian context
- Connect contemporary examples of environmental racism to colonization of North America and the trans-Atlantic slave trade
- Build skills to identify patterns and processes of environmental racism and their connections to current environmental crises/disasters
- Reflect on the role of post-secondary institutions in issues of environmental racism
- Consider policies and actions that can challenge the impacts of environmental racism and advance climate justice at institutional and interpersonal levels
This session will explore disability justice and its principles with a particular focus on conversations of intersectionality and Blackness. Participants will learn practical strategies within teaching and learning to embed disability justice within various environments. Dr. Schalk will join a panel of U of T community members to critically analyze how ableism manifests and can be disrupted in working and learning environments.
U of T Community Members:
Alicia Abbot
President, University of Toronto Accessibility Awareness Club (U-TAAC)
Undergraduate Student at U of T
Chloë Atkins
Visiting Associate Professor, Department of Policial Science at the U of T Scarborough
Primary Investigator, Phenomenological Research/Remedies on Under-employment and Disability (The PROUD Project)
Máiri McKenna Edwards
Coordinator, Diversity, Equity & Student Experience, Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at OISE
Speaker:
Dr. Sami Schalk
Dr. Sami Schalk (she/her) is an associate professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the author of Bodyminds Reimagined: (Dis)ability, Race and Gender in Black Women’s Speculative Fiction (Duke 2018) and Black Disability Politics (Duke 2022). Dr. Schalk’s academic work focuses on race, disability, and gender in contemporary American literature and culture. She also writes for mainstream outlets, including a monthly column called “Pleasure Practices” in TONE Madison. Dr. Schalk identifies as a fat, Black, queer, disabled femme and a pleasure activist.
Watch Dr. Schalk’s talk below.
In this session, participants will develop an understanding of how the gender binary plays out in everyday life, forming the basis of assumptions about students, staff, faculty, and librarians within post-secondary settings. Participants will explore how long-held beliefs about sex and gender (as well as race and disability) can shape approaches to teaching, learning, working, and providing services that result in the disproportionate exclusion and marginalization of gender expansive people. This presentation reveals how the gender binary imposes limitations on gender expression and gender identity for many people, not only for those who fall outside the gender binary. The presentation traces the intersections of gender with racialization, colonialism, and ableism, increasing participants’ capacity to identify how myths about the sex and gender binaries impact all members of post-secondary communities. Participants will explore strategies to challenge these myths in order to create more inclusive, responsive, and supportive post-secondary environments for all.
Speaker:
ALOK
ALOK (they/them) is an internationally acclaimed author, poet, comedian, and public speaker. As a mixed-media artist their work explores themes of trauma, belonging, and the human condition. They are the author of Femme in Public (2017), Beyond the Gender Binary (2020), and Your Wound/My Garden (2021). They are the creator of #DeGenderFashion: a movement to degender fashion and beauty industries and have been honored as one of Huffington Post’s Culture Shifters, NBC’s Pride 50, and Business Insider’s Doers. Over the past decade they have toured in more than 40 countries, most recently headlining the Vancouver Just for Laughs Comedy Festival and selling out their runs at the Soho Theatre in London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. They are currently on a world tour of their new show which has been described as “provocative and powerful” (Chortle), a “Potent combination of comedy and poetry” (The Scotsman), and a “Jaw-dropping celestial event” (To Do List London). On screen, they will make their feature film debut in Netflix’s Absolute Dominion. On television, they have appeared on Netflix’s Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness, HBO’s Random Acts of Flyness and The Trans List.
By attending this session, participants will:
- Develop a deeper understanding of the myths that uphold whiteness;
- Draw links between whiteness and intersecting forms of oppression and hierarchy, such as anti-Black racism, colonialism, capitalism, and ableism;
- Gain skills to identify and analyze patterns and processes of whiteness within the academy; and
- Self-reflect on how whiteness as a system is upheld through attitudes and actions within the workplace and learning environment and how these attitudes and actions can be challenged on individual and interpersonal levels.
Speakers:
Dr. Sheelah McLean
Sheelah McLean is a third-generation white settler who was born and raised on Treaty 6 territory. Dr. McLean has worked in education for thirty years teaching high school, adult education and graduate and undergraduate courses in anti-racism at the University of Saskatchewan. As a scholar and Idle No More organizer, Sheelah’s work has focused on research projects and actions that address colonial violence. She is currently a curriculum developer for San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training Program.
Dr. Alex Wilson
Dr. Alex Wilson is Neyonawak Inniniwak from the Opaskwayak Cree Nation. She is a professor with the Department of Educational Foundations. Dr. Wilson’s scholarship has greatly contributed to building and sharing knowledge about two spirit identity, history and teachings, Indigenous research methodologies, and the prevention of violence in the lives of Indigenous peoples. Her current projects include two spirit and Indigenous Feminisms research: Two-Spirit identity development and “Coming In” theory that impact pedagogy and educational policy; studies on two spirit people and homelessness; and an International study on Indigenous land-based education.
Dr. Wilson is one of many organizers with the Idle No More movement, integrating radical education movement work with grassroots interventions that prevent the destruction of land and water.