Full Transcript

Jay Famiglietti:
Welcome to episode three of the second season of Let’s Talk About Water, a podcast about water and why you should care. We’re coming to you from the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan. I’m your host, Jay Famiglietti.

Jay Famiglietti:
No matter where you live, 2020 has been a great season of reawakening to a chronic issue that affects all humankind. It’s systemic racism. We’ve seen the mass marches in the United States and others in Canada and around the world protesting the killing of George Floyd, Briana Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and supporting Black Lives Matter. Of course, the issue of systemic racism goes beyond America’s borders. It affects other groups and other nations and touch us on other issues, like the one I’ve been involved with for my entire professional life, water security. That brings up a concept that’s being actively discussed in my world, environmental racism. A scourge that is having new and bright light cast on it by a rising star in Canadian academia.

Jay Famiglietti:
Ingrid Waldron is a sociology professor at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Waldron has been very busy over the last decade, advocating for two groups suffering from water insecurity because of environmental racism. There are the indigenous people in her region and those living in the substantial and historic community of African Nova Scotians. That led her, in 2018, to write and release the award-winning book, There’s Something in the Water, Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities, and to participate with famed Canadian actress Ellen Page in a documentary of the same name. That was released in 2019. I’m going to spend the rest of the show talking with Ingrid about her change-making advocacy work. First, here’s the trailer from There’s Something in the Water, streaming now on Netflix

{Trailer start

Speaker 2: Nova Scotia. Canada’s ocean playground. In some ways, Nova Scotia is the embodiment of what many view Canada to be, a sweet escape. When you look beneath the surface, the picture perfect image begins to crack.

Speaker 3: Environmental racism is a problem. In Canada, your postal code determines your health. We know that where you live has bearing on your wellbeing. Indigenous And black communities are the ones that tend to be located near hazardous sites.

Speaker 4: When we got here, they decided they were going to put a dump where everything went. There was body parts, there were food, animals, anything and everything.

Speaker 3: There was concerns about the impact on the environment.

Speaker 6: That’s what our community smells like.

Speaker 7: In one view, in one instant, you’ll realize why we are here.

Speaker 4: How environmental racism has affected this community. It’s killing us.

Trailer end}

Jay Famiglietti:
That was the trailer from the hard hitting, There’s Something in the Water. It was inspired by the award-winning book of the same name by Dalhousie University sociologist and proud African Nova Scotian, Ingrid Waldron. She joins me now. Ingrid, it’s an honor to have you with us today.

Ingrid Waldron:
Thanks for inviting me.

Jay Famiglietti:
First of all, Ingrid, can you please define for us what you mean by the term environmental racism?

Ingrid Waldron:
Environmental racism can be defined as racial discrimination in the disproportionate citing or location of environmentally hazardous industry and other environmentally hazardous projects in indigenous communities, black communities, and racialized communities. It’s the clustering, the spatial patterning in these communities, disproportionately of polluting industries like pulp and paper mills, incinerators, landfills, and other types of waste sites.

Jay Famiglietti:
Ingrid, I’m super impressed that you were able to use your research to inspire yourself to write this book, There’s Something in the Water. Can you tell me a little bit about that process? How did you get inspired?

Ingrid Waldron:
I was an acquaintance of the publisher that I eventually published with, Fernwood Publishing and he contacted me in 2015, around Easter time. He said, “I want you to write a book on environmental racism, and I want it to be from the perspective of both the indigenous and black community. I also want some history in there.” I took a sabbatical in Montreal. I had a kind of fellowship at McGill University in the sociology department. I spent my time finishing it up in February, of 2018. It was released in 2018 in April. Yeah. It wasn’t something that I was planning to do. I was just asked to do it. Then when the offer to do the movie, it was me waking up one morning and going onto Twitter and noticing somebody by the name of Ellen Page following me, not recognizing it was her. It was the actress, going back to my Twitter three weeks later and recognizing, yeah, it is her. She said she had had an interest in environmental racism, went onto Google and my name popped up and she then started to promote my book.

Ingrid Waldron:
When I woke up that morning, my Twitter page was much active than it had typically been. It was her promoting my book. “You’ve got to get Ingrid’s book.” I was like, “This is Ellen Page.” [inaudible 00:06:04] enter on Twitter and I thanked her and that got the ball rolling. That’s when everybody was like, “Do you think we should do a 70 minute documentary?” I said, “Yes, and I should go to TIFF and I should go to the Berlin film festival.” I was thinking kind of big, because I thought, “Well, if we want to get the message out there and we want a broad audience to be aware of this issue, and we want real impact than a film, and a film at a film festival is the way to go.”

Jay Famiglietti:
We can write opinion pieces, we can do news reports, but it’s next level when you write a book and you’ve sort of hit the gold mine in terms of science communication, when you get to that movie level. Do you feel like the message has gotten out? What’s been the response and in particular, some of the stories in the movie or some of the stories in the book, and I know it’s a little soon, but maybe what might happen with policy?

Ingrid Waldron:
When the book came out, that just created more awareness about because journalists, they were asking to speak with me. Before you can make an impact, you want awareness. I want to create awareness and I want to create empathy. If people don’t have empathy for an issue, if you don’t know about an issue, then there’s going to be no impact. That’s the first kind of step-by-step stage. With the movie, TIFF, the Toronto international Film Festival, is not considered to be the best film festival in the world with quality films, where movie stars from all over the world and regular folks from all over the world come together. The opportunity to screen it to such a broad audience has had a measurable impacts that I see today. I got a lot of email and Twitter messages from people who are commenting on the movie.

Ingrid Waldron:
Then when I came home to Halifax, somebody emailed me at midnight saying, “I can’t believe what I just saw at TIFF. That this is a community in Canada that doesn’t have clean water. Please tell me how I can help.” This is somebody who wrote this to me by email at midnight. Since the screening of the movie and before the Netflix streaming of this movie, major impacts have happened since December, I would say. The mill that has been pumping effluent into Pictou Landing First Nations boat harbor since 1967. It was announced that it would close at the end of January of this year and it did. When I go onto the Facebook page and the Twitter pages of the people in that community, they say, “Finally, I can breathe great air. This is the first time ever. It’s so satisfying that finding this has happened.”

Ingrid Waldron:
I don’t know why that happened all of a sudden, but I do feel it has everything to do with the exposure that was given to environmental racism around the world and the pressure maybe from that exposure that our government [inaudible 00:08:54]. Another achievement is that the Sipekne’katik First Nation, which is concerned about Alton Gas brining in their community. They have always contended that there were not proper consultations done in their community, that they have treaty rights, but they were never told about the project. They were told about it when it was kind of had already started. Over the past three years, they’ve gone to the courts to try to reverse the decision by the Nova Scotia government, that consultations were done. In April, or is it March of this year, for the first time, their appeal was approved, not just Alton gas, but also the Nova Scotian government.

Ingrid Waldron:
They said, “You’ve got to go back and do proper consultations.” That’s major. With Shelburne, it’s not in the film, but Ellen Page in February announced that she was going to pay for the community well in the South end of Shelburne. This is a community that in addition to environmental, racism has been on well water ever since the founding of that community. The white community in the North end is on municipal water. Ellen is paying for that well. She’s also paying for the annual fees. Before the film, however, in 2016, I want to congratulate the community because they got the landfill closed for the first time, since 1940s.

Ingrid Waldron:
I have to say that there’ve been so many achievements. One of the things I wanted to do with my research is what community-based research does well, is to provide communities with the tools to fly. That’s what I say. You don’t want to hold their hands all the time. You want to provide them with the tools. What are the tools? The tools are research. The tools are a network of professionals like geologists and environmental scientists who can help them and support them for free, without cost.

Jay Famiglietti:
It sounds to me, Ingrid, like what you’ve really put forward here is a template for many of our colleagues who are working on important problems. You’ve done the science, you’ve done the research, you’ve written the papers, you’ve done the reports you started giving the talks. The real difference maker in your case, it sounds was your writing the book and then of course, having the movie come out, and those are steps that are super, super difficult to take because we’re not really rewarded in academics, at least in, I’m in physical sciences and engineering, and we’re only rewarded for our journal publications. Yet, the work that you just described to me, and it has been my experience too, just with writing opinion pieces, is that sort of work, like your book and having the movie come out and the work that you’ve done in support with communities, which you probably don’t get a lot of academic credit for, has probably had the most environmental impact.

Ingrid Waldron:
Yeah. When I was doing the project, I said, “Okay. If I’m going to spend a lot of time doing community engagement, I’m not going to get tenure. I’m not going to get these things that I want as an academic because I’ve worked hard.” The truth is Dalhousie is changing. We have something called the Boyer’s Model, which is in our collective agreement. Now, recognizes researchers like myself who understand the importance of doing different things to help communities. This has been really crucial because I have to say that while I was anxious about it, before that Dalhousie has recognized my work.

Jay Famiglietti:
The Boyer’s Model sounds transformational. Let me just relate to you a recent conversation we had and my academic department. It was on the topic of people doing community based research. It was exactly this conversation, is that really tenure worthy stuff. You absolutely had the old guard standing up there saying, “Well, you just have to do it all. You have to write your X number of papers and bring in your X number of grants and this community-based stuff. Well, if you’re going to do that, well, then you just have to work a hundred hour week, especially you have to get this stuff done.” It sounds like the model that you’re talking about is very, very important in the broad areas of environmental science and climate change, where we have a lot of information and expertise as academics and we’re training all these young people, there’s an urgency to co-develop solutions.

Jay Famiglietti:
There’s an urgency to work with communities, but we’re not rewarded for it. I hope we can change. It sounds like the model that Dalhousie is embracing is a good one. I’m going to have to take a look at that. It seems to me that there’s a nice sort of report, case study, in science communication, in successful science communication based on what you’ve done, based on your experiences.

Ingrid Waldron:
It’s very interesting that you said that because about three weeks ago, I did a presentation, online presentation, to a group called Montreal in Action. The host said to me, “Have you ever documented these steps in writing?” I said, “No.” He said, “You probably should. You have a blueprint and a template. It would really be great if you put this in writing.” when I find the time, I actually should do it. I did kind of do it in a journal article, an American Journal article called Kalfou. Many things have changed since then. That was 2018 before the film and probably before my book came out. Yeah. I think I should be doing that because it really provides a strong template for how to do this work and how to make an impact.

Jay Famiglietti:
I spent most of my career in the United States. My blueprint was to write the paper and if was impactful, I would go to Washington DC. I built up a network of the water interested Congress members and agency heads. Have you done much work either provincially or in Ottawa?

Ingrid Waldron:
Yes. In terms of legislation, in 2015, I collaborated with an MLA here in Nova Scotia to develop the first environmental racism bill. That was called Bill 111 and we introduced that in the Nova Scotia legislature in 2015. It went to second reading later that year, but it stalled and then we kind of changed it or modified it. It’s now called Bill 31. Lenore Zen who collaborated on that bill with me, contacted me early this year before the pandemic. She said, “Why don’t we modify that 2015 bill and turn it into a federal Canadian bill? What do you think about that?” I said, “Well, of course, that’s great. It’s federal. We can address all of the kind of indigenous communities that have been impacted by environmental racism.”

Ingrid Waldron:
We did and February 26th, she introduced it in the house of commons and she said, “Ingrid, do you want to come down to Ottawa late March? We can put it to second reading together. Wouldn’t that be fun?” Then the pandemic in Nova Scotia hit March 15th. I said, “What are we going to do now?” She said, “We’re going to see what’s happens in the fall.” Her plan is to put it forward in the fall. She feels very hopeful about this bill because she got support from David Suzuki, who wrote an article about the bill, and she got support from Elizabeth Mae. We feel very hopeful. Yes, I have done work with respect to legislation.

Jay Famiglietti:
Congressman John Lewis recently passed away and he talked about good trouble in this op-ed that was published the day after he passed away. He said, “Keep on getting in good trouble.” it sounds like that’s the kind of trouble you’re after, which I think is incredibly important. I’m interested in the historical background that set the stage for this conversation that we’ve been having. Can you talk to us about why so many African Nova Scotians became so disadvantaged over these two centuries of settlements in Nova Scotia?

Ingrid Waldron:
Well, as you probably know, there are about 54 historic African Nova Scotian communities. They’ve been here for 300 years, making them a very distinct community in Canada and the largest black Canadian community in Canada. Now, when they are descendants of African American loyalists from the United States, Jamaican, Maroons, people from Sierra Leon, et cetera. When they came to Nova Scotia, they were promised land and that kind of never panned out, but they were kind of segregated into rural areas, isolated out of the way areas and that kind of intersection of race and racial discrimination and rural residents, and isolation to me provides the context or setting for environmental racism to happen. Environmental racism typically happens of course, in indigenous communities that are on reserves. It has happened in African Nova Scotian communities that are isolated out of the way places. I think there’s something to that.

Ingrid Waldron:
I think it’s much easier to put a landfill in a community that is out of the way, because you think that they’re not going to make a big fuss about it. If it were in a white elite community in downtown Halifax, of course, it’s going to be pressed. They’re going to make a big deal about it. I think this happens because of racism, because of the fact that in Nova Scotia, this was a community that was pushed to rural areas that were out of the way. They experienced similar things to African Americans like Sundown laws, where they had to be in their homes at a particular time. Many of them were educated in segregated schools, black schools, which had less resources. The land that they were given, that they were pushed onto, is poor quality land. And the people in Lincolnville would say we got poor quality land.

Ingrid Waldron:
They had many disadvantages, socio, economically, and politically. That provides a fertile ground for environmental racism to flourish because government says, “This is a community that lacks power. They lack power because of race. They lack power because of socioeconomic status. They lack power because they have lower education than other communities. They lack power because they live in isolated communities.” This means in many ways, they’ve been disempowered in a way. They’re not going to be heard as much as other communities. I’m talking about political clout and economic clout. I am a professor. I know that I have clout. I know that I have privilege. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t just because I’m black and female. I am trying to use my educational privilege, my socioeconomic privilege, the networks that I’ve forged with professionals to support the work that these communities are doing to meet that is the work that academics should be doing.

Jay Famiglietti:
I agree, 100%. I want to talk about the landfills because there is a scene in the movie where there’s the map of African Nova Scotian communities and the map of indigenous communities overlaid with the map of landfills and dumps. It’s about one-to-one. I found that really unfortunate. For me, it was an emotional point in the movie. Did you know about that ahead of time?

Ingrid Waldron:
Before that was created for my project by a research assistant, I knew it anecdotally because the communities I was meeting through my project were indigenous and black, but that map has been powerful because it provides solid evidence on some people want solid evidence. They don’t want anecdotal information. When we created that map and we posted it, I got calls from… What is it called? Canadian geographic and CDC and everybody wanted to talk about that map and interviews in the media. It was kind of a big deal. I realized how important having evidence is. That just is kind of, it confirms what many of us have been saying, but for the people who are doubters, the people who would doubt the existence of environmental racism and the way that it impacts these specific communities, when they look at that, I think in many ways their minds have been changed.

Ingrid Waldron:
I did receive some comments on email from individuals who said to me, “Yeah, but white communities are still near the landfill. That doesn’t prove that why communities aren’t near the landfill.” I said to them, “You are right. What we’re not saying with this map is that historically, and even currently, there aren’t white communities near to landfills. What we are saying is that disproportionately, they tend to be black and indigenous.”

Jay Famiglietti:
Ingrid, thank you so much for that. My last question for you is when you think about the future of environmental racism, are you an optimist or pessimist?

Ingrid Waldron:
The reason why I’m an optimist is because I’ve had the privilege of connecting with young people. Of course, they’re most invested in climate change and environmental issues. I am heartened by how bright they are, how sophisticated they are, how passionate they are, how determined they are. If those young people that I’m meeting are our future leaders, our future MLA’s, our future ministers of environment, then I’m extremely hopeful because I think the young people that I’ve connected with, they have that language of colonialism and racism. They’re not as scared as their parents to talk about racism. At least the young people that I’m meeting, maybe I’m in a bubble, but in Nova Scotia… I’m talking about also white students. I’m not necessarily talking about Boston. These are white young people who have been so engaged in my project, so passionate and have the language.

Ingrid Waldron:
Then I look at them, I say to myself, “Oh, there is hope because they’re the future leaders.” that’s why there’s a project I’m doing right now to embed environmental racism into the middle school and high school curriculum for that purpose. Because those young people in high school and middle school, they’re our future leaders. If I can get them to think about the right language and the right discourse and the right ideologies around these issues, they’re going to take that with them throughout their lives and in government, if that’s where they choose to be. My answer is yes. Because of the young people I’ve connected with, I’m very hopeful.

Jay Famiglietti:
I hear you on that. They are the future. I think we’ve turned a corner where the young people are now fully aware and they know it’s their future. I feel like they are not going to stand for it. People like you are empowering them. At the end of the day, that could be the most impactful thing that you do. Not writing the book and not having the movie and certainly not writing any of our academic papers, but empowering those young people who, as you say, they’re aware, they’re not afraid. They are the future. For those of us that want to purchase the book, There’s Something in the Water, where can we get it?

Ingrid Waldron:
The best way to order the book is on the publishing site. It’s called Fernwood Publishing. Just type in Fernwood Publishing and you will see access to or purchasing an e-book, depending on the book and also a hard copy of the book.

Jay Famiglietti:
Thank you so much, Ingrid.

Ingrid Waldron:
Thank you so much for having me.

Jay Famiglietti:
Dr. Ingrid Waldron is a sociologist and an associate professor in the faculty of health at Dalhousie University. Ingrid leads, multiple projects to improve the health and the environmental security of Nova Scotians, especially African Nova Scotians. She’s the author of the award-winning book, There’s Something in the Water, which has been spun off as a Netflix documentary. I recommend that you watch that documentary tonight, if possible. You can stream it on Netflix or download it from several other popular platforms, including Apple TV and Amazon prime. It may be that will inspire you to buy her book of the same name available online, as you heard in her interview from Fernwood Books. You can follow her on Twitter at Ingrid_Waldron.

Jay Famiglietti:
That completes our current episode of Let’s Talk About Water, our production of the Global Institute for Water Security at the University of Saskatchewan and the Walrus Lab. I’m your host, Jay Famiglietti. Thanks to all of those who helped put the show together this week, including Mark Ferguson, Laura McFarland, Amy Hergut, Jesse Widow, our producers, Sean Perpich, and special thanks to Linda Lilienfeld. Look for us again when our next episode comes out in a couple of weeks on your favorite podcasting app. You’ll never miss another episode if you subscribe to us on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Elsewhere on the web, you can find us on Facebook at Let’s Talk About Water podcast or on Twitter at L-T-A-W podcast.

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