They offer a shaded refuge from the hot summer sun, work as natural sponges to absorb rainwater and prevent flooding, pull greenhouse gases from the atmosphere and help clean other pollutants from the air. 

The collection of trees in and around cities — called urban forests — have a critical role to play in helping communities mitigate and adapt to the new realities of climate change.  

But not all communities have easy access to these greenspaces.

“Research shows that poor and racialized communities have less access to greenspace in the city, including parks and tree canopy cover,” says a new Greenbelt Foundation report from researchers at the University of Toronto.

“The absence of trees is another layer of inequality in lives shaped by oppression,” reads a section titled “Trees, Race and Black History” written by Jacqueline L. Scott. Scott is a PhD student at the University of Toronto whose research focuses on how to make outdoor recreation more welcoming for Black people.

The report is the latest in a series from the Greenbelt Foundation that explores the impacts of climate change on people’s daily lives. The Urban Forests in a Changing Climate report focuses on the role trees play in helping communities mitigate and adapt to climate change, the threats climate change and development pose to urban forests and the inequity of access to greenspaces.

The report notes that planting trees is one of the easiest ways to reduce the impacts of climate change, but that “race shapes where trees are planted, who benefits from the trees and who takes part in tree planting.”

A 2018 study from researchers at Ryerson University, for instance, found that “in Toronto, there is a measurable inequality of access to the urban tree canopy based on median household income.”

In an interview, Scott said, “When you look at how tree planting is done in the city, and who is leading the tree planting initiatives, it’s mostly white organizations and surprise, they end up planting trees in mostly white areas.”

The result is that racialized and lower-income communities aren’t seeing the benefits of existing or increased tree cover.

While the Greenbelt Foundation report focuses on the Greater Golden Horseshoe region in Ontario, there are similar issues with inequitable distribution of tree cover in other areas of Canada as well.

In Vancouver, for instance, “there are a variety of neighbourhoods, primarily in the east of the city that have less than five per cent canopy coverage, whereas neighbourhoods largely in the west of the city would be greater than that,” said Chad Townsend, a senior planner with the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation.

While the park board is prioritizing tree planting in areas vulnerable to heat, there are challenges in some neighbourhoods, including the Downtown Eastside, such as the amount of concrete and asphalt that make planting and even growing trees once they’re planted difficult. 

Like Toronto, marginalized residents of Vancouver face unequal access to the city’s urban forests — particularly in the Downtown Eastside. Photo: Suzanne Rushton / Unsplash

Trees help cool buildings, capture rain

Increasing the number of trees in neighbourhoods where the urban forest is sparse could have a variety of benefits. 

As the Greenbelt Foundation report notes, urban forests help reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, keep buildings cool in the summer, and help capture rain, reducing the risk of floods.

Edward McDonnell, the CEO of the Greenbelt Foundation, said it shows that nature isn’t just something that’s “nice to have,” but also something that can help provide municipal-type services for communities. 

Urban forests can also help sustain biodiversity. “For example, flowering trees provide bees with an early spring source of food before many perennial plants begin flowering,” the report notes.

And for people, there are plenty of studies that show time in nature has benefits for mental health.

But urban forests are under threat from both development and climate change, the Greenbelt Foundation report explains.

Alongside the threat of being cut down to make room for construction, trees are at risk from the hotter, drier summers, more intense storms associated with climate change and novel pests and diseases.

“One of the best strategies for protecting urban and peri-urban forests is to ensure a diversity of tree species are present,” said Tenley Conway, one of the report authors and a professor of environmental geography at the University of Toronto Mississauga in a press release. 

“In addition to species diversity, there are a diversity of spaces where protecting existing trees and planting new ones will support resilient urban forests,” Conway said.

Race and the environment

Scott writes however that “municipal tree planting is more likely to occur in rich white areas, and less likely to happen in poor Black neighbourhoods, even though it is these areas which have the greatest need for tree cover.”

“Tree planting by non-profit groups is also less likely to occur in poor Black neighbourhoods,” the report says.

A 2016 report from the Green Infrastructure Ontario Coalition on the state of forests in the Greater Toronto Area noted that higher-income neighbourhoods tend to have resident associations with political influence that are able to advocate for better protection and expansion of neighbourhood tree cover. 

“In addition, residents in these areas are more likely to own rather than rent, which means they can more easily undertake landscaping on their properties and access planting programs that offer subsidized trees,” it states.

‘This is about vulnerability’: Ingrid Waldron on the links between environmental racism and police brutality

Race remains an issue across the environmental sector — from tree planting to advocacy work to outdoor recreation.

“In a lot of fields, what you see is a whole ton of white people and the absence of, in my case, specifically Black people,” she said.

Scott said she saw the full diversity of Toronto on display at the climate marches, but notes the leadership of major environmental organizations is mostly white.

“So, there’s a disconnect between what’s happening on the ground, especially in terms of the climate justice, climate crisis and the leadership that’s present,” she said. 

Organizations involved in tree planting and other environmental work must do targeted outreach to engage and build relationships with Black communities, Scott said, and the first, crucial step is hiring Black staff. 

“They know their community, they know what it means to be Black. Give them the support that they need and they will get results, but you actually have to hire them,” she said.

Outdoor recreation a gateway to environmental awareness

Scott’s own work targets outdoor recreation, which she called a gateway to broader environmental awareness. She focuses on the Black community specifically because of the race-based violence and harassment that Black people experience. 

“You have to recognize that the parks are coded as white spaces for white people and if you want to have Black people in the parks, you actually have to go talk to the Black people and do outreach to the Black community,” she said. 

My daytrip to Brantford, to #hike along the Grand River. And to check out its #Indigenous and #BlackHistory. I had a chat with Chief Joseph Brant, and John Anderson who escaped slavery via the #UGRR. #BlackOutdoors #nature #CdnHistory pic.twitter.com/f8pmAqL9RZ

— Jacqueline L. Scott, Black Outdoors (@BlackOutdoors1) September 21, 2020

One approach is by pointing to the long history of Black people in the outdoors, Scott said, including Harriet Tubman, who led enslaved people to freedom using the Underground Railroad.

“That’s an incredible amount of wilderness skills that she had in order to do that,” Scott said.

There were also Black gold miners who crossed mountain passes to reach the Klondike, Black fur traders who did multi-week canoe trips and Black cowboys, including the legendary John Ware, she said.

“From the day we first arrived in Canada, we’ve always been involved in the outdoors,” Scott said.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

As a teen, Ingrid Waldron knew she had a unique outlook on life. Raised in Montreal, she spent ages 11 through 15 with her family in Trinidad, where she witnessed empowered Black people in high-profile jobs.

She recalls having Black teachers surrounding her during her time in the Caribbean with the message of “you can do it.” But she knew the reality was much different for Black kids in Canada, in schools surrounded by white teachers telling them all the reasons why they wouldn’t succeed at life. 

But the time Waldron had in her early teens to develop a positive self-regard still didn’t protect her from how the outside world saw her. 

It didn’t protect her from the white men who came into Burger King where she was working at the age of 16 and called her the n-word. 

“Imagine, someone hurling the n-word while ordering a burger!” 

Waldron is associate professor of nursing at Dalhousie University in Halifax and head of the ENRICH Project that tracks environmental inequality among communities of colour in Nova Scotia. Waldron is also the author of the book There’s Something in the Water: Environmental Racism in Indigenous and Black Communities, which spawned a documentary by the same name hosted by Ellen Page.  

Her experiencing uprooting structural violence and systemic racism in Nova Scotia, which she says is often referred to as the “deep south of Canada,” gives her unique insight into the current demonstrations, riots and calls for accountability after the May 25 killing of George Floyd. Floyd, an unarmed and handcuffed Black man died after a police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

The Narwhal got Waldron’s thoughts on the importance of social unrest the day after hundreds of Nova Scotians took a knee on Halifax’s Spring Garden Road for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

This interview has been edited for brevity.

Q: When you turn on the TV right now or read the news, what stories are you seeing and what messages are you hearing?

A: I see the same narrative that I always see when this happens, which is an unwillingness by media and government to look at the underlying issues. They look at the rioting without understanding why people are angry.

Unlike a lot of people, I believe white people know exactly why we’re angry. I think people are pretending not to understand. They have done that for decades.

I’m cognizant that Black people are hated in this world. Our very existence is considered problematic. As a Black person I know what hate feels like.

Everybody seems convinced this is a turning point. 

I remain skeptical. Protests are great. It doesn’t mean much unless it leads to systemic changes.

Q: Do you see a relationship between the mechanisms behind police violence and environmental racism?

A: Black and Indigenous people are not on the minds of white people. The harms that come to us are not on the minds of white people.

When [Nova Scotia Premier] Stephen McNeil announced the closure of Boat Harbour last year, I thought, wow, the Indigenous community has been calling on the government to close Boat Harbour since the ’80s. [The Northern Pulp mill in Pictou, Nova Scotia, discharged waste into Boat Harbour in the territory of the Pictou Landing First Nation for more than half a century until the plant closed in January 2020].

Why would it take so long after all the activism the communities have been engaged in for this decision to be made?

When it comes to addressing environmental racism, if it has a positive impact on the white community, you keep it going. Closing the mill and addressing environmental racism is often a risk for white people in power who are profiting from these industries. It’s great that the mill was closed at the end of the year, but for the past several decades there was enough evidence to indicate this was harmful to the Mi’kmaq community and it continued anyways.

With police violence, it’s similar. It’s different, but it’s similar in that the physical and emotional impacts on Black bodies are not the kinds of things white people care about.

When I look at George Floyd, I see a white policeman trying to terrorize the Black onlookers. That kind of terror is about the policeman saying, ‘This is what can happen to you. I can put my knee on his neck. This is what I want you to see.’

He was not just harming George Floyd, he was harming those who were watching.

The way he positioned his body — positioned directly in front of the people screaming at him to stop — there’s an arrogance there. He had a knee on the neck and a hand in his pocket. It was a performance.

I’m an academic, I write books and read theory, and we make racism so complex. But it’s not complex in terms of how I receive it. 

Emotionally and spiritually we should focus on the body, on how policemen inflict harm on Black bodies. It’s about terrorizing us emotionally in a way that keeps us caged. 

When I think about environmental racism, I think about terrorizing. 

I had a friend who said, ‘Last night I couldn’t sleep because I kept seeing the image of George Floyd.’ That is what racism is all about. 

Q: It feels like we are living in unprecedented times. We were already coming to grips with that in a world altered by climate change, but now with the pandemic and ongoing racialized police violence, how do you understand the way these big recent events exacerbate the vulnerabilities of minoritized and oppressed populations?

A: There is certainly a moment happening in terms of climate change and the killing and murdering of Black people and then COVID reared its ugly head and further exposed vulnerabilities. I’m thinking about these things happening — and happening in close proximity to one another. People are waking up. 

And people who haven’t seen — or didn’t want to see — disparities when it comes to income, gender and social class are starting to get it because these things are happening one after another.

This is about vulnerability and how some people are exposed to some of these issues or oppressions more than others. These people tend to be Indigenous, racialized and poor. 

I teach nursing at Dalhousie and the way we teach nursing needs to change, the way we teach health needs to change. Nursing wasn’t historically well equipped to deal with inequality.

In 2013, I had just started in the nursing department and I was talking about racism. I knew it was important for students to understand their patients, their races, their cultures, their different understandings of health, because people are diverse.

A lot of hostility was thrown at me early on from nursing students and they tried to get me out. One of my students said to me: ‘why are you teaching us sociology?’ There was a petition, a letter that was sent to my director, to have me removed. My director was great and she went to the students and said, ‘I reject this letter’ and explained why I was teaching what I was teaching.

You have to understand as a Black person walking into a classroom talking about race — that brings with it a certain kind of complexity. 

There are white men who teach what I teach and talk about racism. I’m not only teaching about racism but I am racialized. I wasn’t teaching this in a way that’s safe — I was talking about white privilege. Students became very uncomfortable.

They look at me and think what I’m saying is subjective and not objective. They will look at my white colleague teaching the same thing and think it’s objective. These students look at me and think, ‘I wonder if what Ingrid is teaching us is based on fact, because it’s probably based on personal experience. She’s probably angry. I need to dismiss this.’

I come in with baggage that a white professor would not. There are comments from students that ‘all Ingrid talks about is race.’

There’s an impression that all I talk about is race because I’m racialized. 

And I contextualize racism — environmental racism, Black lives matter — I contextualize it to make it real for them.

Right now I think people are more exposed to this reality. And I hope those students who gave me a hard time in 2013 are looking at the news now and thinking, ‘Hm, now what Ingrid taught me makes sense.’

Q: How can this moment break through to the larger change you hope to see when it comes to systemic racism?

A: If this moment can be sustained through further conversations, I think there can be a breakthrough.

These are the myths about Black violence and the danger of Blackness. That is extremely embedded in white consciousness. That’s what people see in the media.

The media is the most powerful institution that we have. I can understand why it would be difficult for white people to have a breakthrough because of the myths that they have been fed through the media. 

When things are emotional and visceral and people’s hearts are softened — there is a moment that is an opportunity.

I think white people are scared to broach these topics with Black people because it’s uncomfortable, they feel vulnerable, they may have to look at themselves. And sometimes Black people are very angry and they may not be able to say what they want to say because of that anger.

These are things that are very difficult to break through. But right now people are vulnerable. 

When I think of [hundreds of people kneeling in solidarity with protesters on] Spring Garden [Road in Halifax], that was beautiful. I do wonder, is this real? It’s a moment where white people were showing vulnerability. Right at that moment is where there is an opportunity to engage in a conversation that allows white people to hear Black people. That doesn’t mean we will be easy on white people.

But if we want to hear each other, we have to let go of what we hold so dear. Black people are tired of explaining. White people are tired of being blamed for what is going on in Black people’s lives — these are difficult things to abandon.

But we can if we take that opportunity. 

We also have to lay down our arms. That includes Black people because of our unbridled anger at white people who don’t get it, that comes across as blaming. On the side of Black people we need to truly hear people. On the other side, white people need to lay down their weapons and the worst weapon they have is denial. 

White people need to be able to listen to hear Black people and stop the denial because they are weaponizing it. That is the thing more than anything: if you don’t get it then you continue doing it. 

Nowadays with cellphones and Twitter, for any white person to say they don’t get it, they’re terrorizing the Black body and mind: I don’t see it. I don’t know it. I don’t get you. That’s the psychological aspect of racism. 

The killing of Black bodies is horrible. But telling Black people you don’t see it? That is white terror. 

And if you don’t get it, you can continue profiting — in the case of environmental racism — keep benefiting. A lot of it is privilege. You have to start to share, you have to give up some of that privilege.

We need white people to do that work.

The Narwhal’s reporters are telling environment stories you won’t read about anywhere else. Stay in the loop by signing up for our free weekly dose of independent journalism.

First Nations leaders in southeastern Yukon know all too well what new mines can do to their people. They’ve been down this path before. Companies push into communities, prying open the land and taking what’s beneath. Then they bail, leaving behind “nothing but sorrow and suffering,” according to the executive director of a women’s organization.

This could happen again. And not only could the environment be harmed. So, too, could First Nations women — both physically and emotionally, says Anne Maje Raider, executive director of Liard Aboriginal Women’s Society.

Maje Raider and George Morgan, Chief of the Liard First Nation, are calling for more scrutiny of the Kudz Ze Kayah project, a proposed open-pit and underground mine roughly 115 kilometres south of Ross River. To ensure that happens, they asked the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board to extend the public comment period for the project, which the board agreed to earlier this year. Now, the public has until May 31 to have its say on the project.

“This mine is in the heart of Kaska territory.”

BMC Minerals, the company behind the project, wants to build a zinc, copper and lead mine. It’s eyeing a site that falls within the traditional territories of the Liard First Nation and the Ross River Dena Council. The plan is to operate it for 10 years, after which a 26-year closure and reclamation project will occur, according to the assessment board’s draft screening report. The mine’s workforce will number roughly 350 during the 10 years it’s active.

BMC president Scott Donaldson said the company has been working closely with the Ross River Dena Council, the lead Kaska community for the project, to address outstanding issues. He didn’t say, however, what those issues are.

Jack Caesar, Chief of the council, wasn’t immediately available for comment.

The Ross River Dena Council and BMC “have maintained a close relationship since we purchased the project in January 2015 and have jointly developed a number of programs to ensure that when the mine is finally approved, that there is a meaningful involvement by Kaska at all levels,” Donaldson said in an email.

Morgan told The Narwhal the proposed mine is slated to go in the vicinity of traditional villages, campsites and drying racks, noting that a new mine would bring in waves of workers, disrupting traditional ways of life. 

Caribou frequent this area. He’s worried about them. 

“This mine is in the heart of Kaska territory,” he said. “We’re talking about a breadbasket here for hunting, for our people harvesting in the fall. In fact, the name of the mine, Kudz Ze Kayah, is actually Kaska for land of the caribou.”

The Finlayson caribou herd, which has seen a steady decline over the past 20 years, is in the area, and many Kaska hunters rely on it, he said, noting there are rutting and calving areas next to the proposed site.

He also wants assurance that the mine, once closed, is adequately cleaned up and not foisted on taxpayers. There are already four abandoned mines in the surrounding area — Faro, Ketza, Wolverine and Cantung.

Yukon seeks $25 million in outstanding cleanup fees from owners of shuttered, contaminated Wolverine mine

“We are committed to making sure that our traditional territory is clean,” Morgan said. “Big projects like this are only going to be acceptable to the Kaska if we can avoid significant harmful impacts.”

“Of course, economic development is important for our members,” he continued. “Our communities need jobs desperately, so we’re just really concerned about doing our due diligence when it comes to the environment. We’re also concerned about capturing traditional knowledge in these areas of activity before that knowledge is lost.”

BMC has agreed to bankroll an independent environmental and traditional knowledge review led by the First Nation, Morgan said. The review is underway, but COVID-19 has thrown a wrench in the process and a completion date hasn’t been set, he added.

The assessment board’s executive committee, responsible for screening large projects like this one, determined the mine, as currently proposed, “will result in significant adverse effects to water resources, traditional land use and human health and safety.”

It outlines several mitigation measures for the company to make good on as a result, including sustained water quality monitoring, caribou and moose monitoring and ongoing geochemical studies.

The Faro Mine in south-central Yukon was abandoned in 1998, leaving behind 320 million tonnes of waste rock and 70 million tonnes of tailings. Photo: Matt Jacques / The Narwhal

‘Women have been targeted, women have been harassed’

First Nations women could be placed in an even more vulnerable position. 

Part of the project includes building permanent camp facilities. The majority of the workforce is likely to be male.

The draft screening report says the project is likely to result in “significant adverse effects to personal safety” of women and LGBTQ and two-spirited people.

“Violence against women is persistently a major issue with large-scale natural resource development activities, with First Nations women being particularly vulnerable,” it says. “The potential effects are wide-ranging as this violence affects not only the individuals themselves, but also children and communities, sometimes resulting in intergenerational trauma.”

There could be an increase in sexual assault and domestic violence, the report says.

Maje Raider, who wrote a letter to the assessment board in December calling for an extension to the public comment period, told The Narwhal First Nations women could be in danger if issues aren’t addressed.

Her organization conducted a series of meetings with women in Watson Lake and Ross River in February. Their concerns will be encapsulated in a report and sent to the assessment board.

Canada’s northern ‘zombie mines’ are a lingering multi-billion dollar problem

It was during these meetings that a picture of the dangers posed to women started to develop. Concerns centre around women who work at mine sites and miners funnelling into surrounding communities, Maje Raider said.

“They have every right to work there,” she said, referring to First Nations women, “and they have every human right to be safe, to have an environment that’s safe, but that’s not always the case, because as we heard through our meetings, women have been targeted, women have been treated badly, women have been harassed, and so women end up quitting.”

The organization and others made a submission to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, the final report of which was released last June. A section of it says extraction projects can exacerbate violence against Indigenous women and girls.

“We expressed concerns that the violence that happens, the racism that happens, the attacks that happen against Indigenous women who work in the mining industry,” Maje Raider said of the submission to the inquiry. “Really, the impacts that these mines have had on our communities dates back years, decades.”

The draft screening report says Kudz Ze Kayah doesn’t have “notable provisions to prevent the pattern of violence against women and sexual minorities, which occurs consistently as a result of other resource extraction projects in Canada’s North.”

BMC proposes no drug or alcohol use onsite, random drug testing and counselling services, among other things, according to the draft screening report.

The assessment board takes it a step further, recommending mitigation measures such as mandatory harassment prevention training, developing policies that promote a safe environment for women and LGBTQ and two-spirited people and clear procedures for assisting victims of domestic violence. 

One measure is aimed at the Yukon government. The executive committee recommends it earmark more funding for childcare, detox and counselling services and shelters for victims of abuse in Watson Lake and Ross River.

Work on a final screening report will begin when the public comment period ends next month.

Maje Raider has been here before. She’s seen projects just like this one make their way through assessment processes. She’s seen mines come and go, and, once they do, all that’s left is a gaping hole in the ground and toxins in the environment, she said.

“I’ve not seen a mine yet that’s come into our homeland that’s provided everything it’s promised to our people. There’s no wealth that comes into the community. It’s been nothing but sorrow and suffering, because it brings more addictions, more drugs. I’m sad to say, but that’s the reality of it.”

B.C. failed to consider links between ‘man camps,’ violence against Indigenous women, Wet’suwet’en argue

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By Candis Callison, Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Journalism, University of British Columbia and Mary-Lynn Young, Associate professor, Graduate School of Journalism, University of British Columbia

What can the events surrounding Colten Boushie’s death, the trial verdict and its media coverage tell us about the role of journalism and journalists in relation to Indigenous concerns in Canada? All too much.

There is a well-documented history of Canadian newspapers’ complicity with colonialism and state-sponsored violence against Indigenous people from pre-Confederation forward. And despite the last several decades of front-page coverage that includes the uprising in Oka to Idle No More and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, mainstream media are only doing marginally better than they have before.

Why race matters

Instead, Indigenous scholars, activists and community members are largely doing the important work of situating Colten Boushie’s life and death within the colonial context, answering not if race was a factor, but how and why it matters.

For those countering more than a century of journalism in Canada, the work requires looking at news media’s embedded and interwoven relationship with colonialism. In their book, Seeing Red: A History of Natives in Canadian Newspapers, Carmen Robertson and Mark Cronlund Anderson argue that Canadian media have — since before Confederation —continually reproduced stereotypes in which Indigenous people are found wanting morally, physically, mentally, historically.

This “othering” helps to “promote a nation,” an “imagined community” of Canada, in Benedict Anderson’s terms, in which Indigenous people are seen as on the margins and the brutality of settler colonialism is seen as natural and normal.

Indigenous journalists and public intellectuals do this work on social media, where trolls attack freelancers and not-for-profit media outlets, and the legal and institutional supports afforded to mainstream media are limited or unavailable.

This work entails articulating over and over the impact of white supremacy, colonialism and the indifference of Canadians about Indigenous peoples, and the enduring injustices and structural inequities they experience.

Some of these issues include: Missing and murdered women, youth suicide, poverty, lack of safe drinking water, inter-generational trauma from residential schools, lack of access to high school education in northern communities — a right of all other youth in this country — and the resilience required in the face of these and many other injustices.

With all of the rhetoric around journalism as a public service, it is a wonder that journalists haven’t produced more reporting and analysis that might work towards transforming the systems that continue to be stacked against Indigenous people, including youth like Colten Boushie.

How the Media Failed Colten Bushie https://t.co/c2S0r2Qias via @candiscallison @marylynnyoung @UBCJournalism @ConversationCA #JusticeForColten #media #indigenous #journalism #cdnpoli pic.twitter.com/z0QUis2r9f

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) February 16, 2018

Public interest in Indigenous issues

Despite a surge of reporting on Indigenous issues over the past five years as a result of both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Idle No More movement, as well as the broad public interest in Indigenous issues as newsworthy, mainstream media are often late to coverage or they don’t show up at all.

Recent coverage of the trials related to the killing of Tina Fontaine and Colten Boushie illustrate exactly how problematic mainstream media can be when they do show up. That’s in part because Canadian journalists are largely abdicating their role in both understanding and articulating for their audiences “what happened” about an event involving Indigenous concerns in a way that accounts for colonialism and structural disparities.

Common critiques of media inlude: Persistent racialized stereotypes, lack of Indigenous voices and experts, an over-emphasis of conflict between two parties instead of multiple parties and perspectives, a lack of complexity and historical context and ignoring fly-over or rural communities.

Enduring whiteness of Canadian journalism

As researchers and journalism educators examining and teaching the relationship between journalism, gender, technology and colonialism, we continually encounter a lack of resources and an underdevelopment of Canadian journalism and journalism education when it comes to these issues.

Even though many Canadians are finally beginning to recognize the colonization and genocide that undergirds the foundation of this country, it might surprise you to know that there is only one full-time Indigenous journalist at a national Canadian newspaper in 2018: Tanya Talaga at the Toronto Star, the author of Seven Fallen Feathers.

There are more Indigenous journalists in public broadcasting in Canada, which is in part a result of the specific regulatory environment that requires greater attention to issues of equity and inclusion. APTN provides an important platform as part of its mission and mandate.

Journalism education isn’t much better than Canadian media institutions. One of us is among the few Indigenous professors at a school of journalism in Canada. Journalism schools also rely on working journalists such as the CBC’s Duncan McCue to come in as adjunct professors to teach students how to report in Indigenous communities.

In addition, most journalism schools in Canada are often in separate units from their communications school cousins, which may result in journalism students having less access to important critiques of structural power relations and inequities — and how media representations can further those inequities.

This is not a surprise given the many studies that have reported on the persistent whiteness of Canadian journalism:

• A 1998 study by scholars David Pritchard and Florian Sauvageau, referenced in this report, showed that the vast majority (97 per cent) of journalists in Canada were white from a survey across media.
• A 2006 study of diversity at Canadian newspapers by John Miller at Ryerson University found that visible minority journalists accounted for 3.4 per cent of the workforce.
• A 2011 study of journalists and diversity in the major journalism organizations (text and broadcast) in the Toronto GTA by Wendy Cukier, John Miller, Kristen Aspevig and Dale Carl found that 4.8 per cent of media decision-makers were visible minorities.
• The CBC’s 2016 employment equity annual report identified that Indigenous employees accounted for two per cent of permanent staff, while visible minorities were 10.5 per cent.

These gaps are particularly problematic because of both the long history of getting it wrong on Indigenous people and the implications this has for rights, land, shared histories and the many systems that govern everyday modern life. Not only that, Indigenous communities are a vital aspect of Canada’s media audiences, and they are paying attention as the outcry over recent media coverage demonstrates.

Digital media has played a role in enabling talking back through platforms like Twitter and independent Indigenous media. These media counter news agendas, engage with audiences and encourage a transformation of perspective that allow us to see various colonial histories and varied Indigenous perspectives.

However, even as strides have been made to represent Indigenous concerns, journalism must do better.

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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