A former member of the Dr. Ingrid Waldron’s Enrich project talks about growing up poor, becoming aware of white privilege, and the need to fight alongside communities in Nova Scotia who face environmental racism, all in the plainest of language.
We talk with Justin Brake about the serious criminal charges he faces. Brake was the only journalist to report from the indigenous-led occupation of Nalcor property in protest of the Muskrat Falls development. “This is is more than an attack on my right to be a journalist, this is an attack on all journalists everywhere.”
Justin Brake, the fearless Newfoundland and Labrador journalist for the TheIndependent.ca is facing jail for reporting on an occupation of Nalcor buildings at Muskrat Falls by indigenous people. Everybody should care, and Nova Scotians doubly so, because through the Maritime Link these things are a lot closer than they appear.
How does environmental racism manifest in Nova Scotia? How do you establish a direct link between health issues in a community and the landfill down the road? We speak with Dr. Ingrid Waldron of the ENRICH project. and meet with two scientists who looked at water quality issues in Lincolnville, an African Nova Scotian community situated near a large landfill.
Residents of the South End, a black community within the Town of Shelburne, fear for their health because a nearby landfill has been allowed to operate without many constraints for most of its 75-year existence. The Town isn’t really listening to their concerns, they say.
This weekend’s featured video is In Whose Backyard?, a documentary about people dealing with environmental racism all over Nova Scotia. The documentary came out of Ingrid Waldron’s ENRICH project. It premiered in 2014, and that’s also when I wrote this article. Check it out.
Dr. Ingrid Waldron explains how environmental racism operates in partnership with other forms of structural violence to disproportionately harm African Nova Scotian communities. In doing so, she provides some much-needed context to the recent reports on violence in the African Nova Scotian community.
The city should stop pretending that the Africville case was settled in the courts. It never was.
A quick read on how all that focus on “conquered people”, shameful as it is, ignores a larger question. How come government lawyer Alex Cameron was allowed to make a very similar argument in June?
Land protectors in Labrador continue their resistance against Muskrat Falls. Just because the national and Nova Scotia press stopped reporting doesn’t mean all is quiet. We talk with Ossie Michelin about the Nova Scotia connection. Ossie’s 96-year old aunt was just served with a court order for visiting a protest site.