How to engage young people on climate change? Try screening a doc on environmental racism, says prof

Young people will need to be persistent if they want to make change in the world, says a Canadian author and researcher on environmental racism. 

That's the message McMaster University professor Ingrid Waldron hopes students receive as they hear from three women on Thursday who have been leading fights against industrial impacts on Black and Indigenous communities in Nova Scotia. 

The women were featured in the 2019 documentary, There's Something in the Water, which screens on Thursday on campus before the panel discussion with the three women. The film was co-produced by Waldron, Canadian actor Elliot Page and Ian Daniel and is named after Waldron's book by the same name. 

"What they will get out of this [screening and discussion] is that these are three women who have been organizing around environmental justice issues for over a decade and they haven't given up," Waldron told CBC Hamilton ahead of the event. 

"They have been persistent and consistent and that's the way to do it. You have to stick with it. Just because it's not going as fast as you would like it to be doesn't mean that you give up."

The film highlights the work Indigenous and African Nova Scotian women who are fighting to protect their communities, their land, and their futures. Its Hamilton screening falls on International Day for the Elimination against Racism. 

Dorene Bernard (Sipekne'katik First Nation), Louise Delisle (Shelburne), and Michelle Francis-Denny (Pictou Landing First Nation) will share insights into their environmental justice organizing and activism over the years. 

The event is open to the wider community and runs between 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Togo Salmon Hall.

"In terms of the young people, I think what they will get out of it … in terms of these women and their activism over the years, is just persistence," Waldron said.

"It's not a sprint, right? You've got to be patient. And things sometimes back track, things don't go well and it's like one step forward, two steps back. But you keep on it, and I've seen what has happened due to the fact that they've kept on it, you know, for these women in their communities," she added.

Waldron engages young people in a few areas of her work and said in recent interactions with them, she's observed "kind of a sense of hopelessness that as young people, they're never heard [and] nobody takes them seriously."

But she said the environmental justice movement and the climate justice movement are led by young people, and she disagrees with the belief that they are not respected by older adults.

Waldron is also the co-founder and co-director of the Canadian Coalition for Environmental and Climate Justice that has been providing opportunities for racialized youth to go to the United Nation climate change conference, COP.

"We've sent youth twice … and we plan to keep it up," she said.