In this reflective and personal episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, Prof. Cheryl Thompson of Toronto Metropolitan University and author of Beauty in a Box untangles the wending history of hair relaxers for Black women — and the health risks now linked to them.

For decades, Black women have been using hair relaxers to help them “fit into” global mainstream workplaces and the European standards of beauty that continue to dominate them. More recently, research has linked these relaxers to cancer and reproductive health issues — and a spate of lawsuits across the United States, and at least one in Canada, have been brought by Black women against the makers of these relaxants.

Prof. Thompson and I get into it: including her own relationship to using relaxers as a Black woman, the lawsuits and the wending history and relationship between these relaxants and Black women. We also — for obvious reasons — dip into The Other Black Girl, the novel that is also now a horror-satire streaming series about mind-controlling hair products.

For more information and resource, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of the episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

If you don’t pay close attention to news about COVID, you might think the pandemic is nearly over. But for the millions of people worldwide suffering from long COVID, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

And the number of those experiencing long-term symptoms keeps growing: At least one in five of us infected with the virus go on to develop long COVID.

The effects of long COVID are staggering. Researchers say it can lead to: blood clots, heart disease, damage to the blood vessels, neurological issues, cognitive impairment, nerve damage, chronic pain and extreme fatigue.

And there is no treatment for long COVID.

So why don’t we hear more about long COVID? Why haven’t governments warned people about the risks we face with infection?

It might be that this debilitating disease is largely overlooked because of who gets it: Almost 80 per cent of longhaulers are women.

And in the United States, where our guest on this episode is from, many of those suffering from the prevailing conditions of COVID are women of colour, with Black and Latinx people most likely to get the illness.

Our insightful guest for this conversation on long COVID is Margot Gage Witvliet, assistant professor at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas. Margot is a social epidemiologist who studies health disparities, including as they relate to long COVID and has presented her research findings to the United States Health Equity Task Force on COVID-19.

Margot is also a Black woman living with long COVID and has created a support and advocacy group for women of colour.

For more information and resources, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

Currently the largest electorate in history is heading to the polls in India, where - of course - politicians and political parties are trying their best to influence voters.  Film and popular culture have always provided a reflection of the country's political culture, but  in this election, they are being used more than ever to *sway* voters - especially by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his right-wing, Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, the BJP.  Vinita sits down with two scholars who look at the intersection of politics and popular culture to uncover how Bollywood is creating storylines that support Modi's BJP - and how big a role it might play in the outcome of the world's largest election. Political scientist Sikata Banerjee is Professor Emeritus of Women’s Studies at the University of Victoria She looks at Indian politics through the lens of cinema. And Rakesh Sengupta is Assistant Professor in Department of English and Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. 

Collectively, the global student protests demanding university divestments from Israel are one of the largest mass protests in recent history. Student protesters are risking their futures as they demand their institutions financially divest from Israel and companies connected to supplying weapons and technology to Israel’s government.

Last week, in Calgary, police descended on the University of Calgary campus with riot gear, using shields, batons and rubber bullets, to forcibly remove a group of protesters from an encampment set up on campus.

On today's podcast, Vinita speaks with Pratim Sengupta, professor of learning sciences at the University of Calgary. Sengupta was there the night police engulfed the protesters and says the violence he saw shook him to his core. Also on the podcast is Sarita Srivastava, a university leader of a much smaller arts and design campus in downtown Toronto. Srivastava (sister to Vinita) is a sociologist by background and author of the recent book, "Are You Calling Me a Racist?" Together, they look back on what's been happening on campuses amid this mass protest but also plot out a new - gentler - way forward than the one we've been witnessing.

As we approach the start of gardening season, we figured it’s a good time to bring you one of our most talked-about episodes  about the complicated, colonial roots of gardening - which have affected what we plant and who gets to garden.

How we garden is deeply tied to colonialism — from the spread of seeds and species around the world to the use of forced labour and slavery that went hand in hand  to the collection and commodification of plants. But there is a growing shift away from the  status symbol of the lawn and manicured gardens, in favour of pollinator-friendly native plants. And there is a growing understanding that centuries-old Indigenous knowledge and practices — like controlled burns — can help foster a more resilient landscape. With concerns about our climate crisis growing, one of the possible avenues for creating more sustainable cities may very well lie in our gardens. 

Could we have an impact simply by thinking a little differently about the seeds we sow and the "weeds" we pull?

Vinita gets into it all with researcher Jacqueline L. Scott and community activist Carolynne Crawley, who leads nature workshops that integrate Indigenous teachings into practice.

Research shows social media apps are designed to entrap children who are even more susceptible than adults to its harms. Plus, technologies are not neutral: They’re embedded with and actively reinforce structures of racism. A recent survey of Canadian children in grades 7 to 11 found nearly half of participants reported seeing racist or sexist content online, and youth from marginalized groups were more likely than others to encounter this type of content. So, what’s to be done? 

Five school boards in Ontario have recently sued the makers of Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and  Snapchat for $4.5 billion, arguing the social media giants are causing mental health issues and other harms that are making the jobs of educators much harder. The Ontario Premiere has called the lawsuit a waste of time and money, and announced its government was doubling down on a 2019 ban on cellphones in schools as a way to address the problem. It also pledged $30 million to a surveillance program they think will help solve problems in school like cell phone and vape addictions. 

On today's episode, Vinita gets into it with two education researchers, both former teachers, who challenge the idea of a ban and think there are better ways to address the problem.

Over the last 30 years, there has been an exponential growth of Indigenous media and Indigenous media makers, especially here in Canada which has one of the largest repositories of Indigenous media. However, the road to get here hasn’t been easy. Indigenous filmmakers, producers, and artists have had to navigate the complex and often unfriendly terrain of Canadian media institutions and media production companies. Their negotiations -- and struggles -- have helped make space for a generation of Indigenous media-makers who are increasingly making shows and films on their terms, with their ideas.

Karrmen Crey who is Stó:lō from Cheam First Nation, is an associate professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, and the author of “Producing Sovereignty: The Rise of Indigenous Media in Canada.” In this special  episode, recorded on-site with an audience in Vancouver at Iron Dog books, Karrmen speaks with Vinita about  the ways  Indigenous creators are using humour along with a sharp critique of pop culture to show just how different the world looks when decision-making power over how stories get told shifts and Indigenous media makers take control.

This episode was produced in front of a live audience at Iron Dog Books in Vancouver, in partnership with Simon Fraser University's Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology and the Amplify Podcast Network. Simon Fraser student, Natalie Dusek performed tech duties. Theme music by Zaki Ibrahim, Something in the Water.

Image credit: Jana Schmieding plays Reagan, a member of the fictional Minishonka nation, on the sitcom, Rutherford Falls. (Evans Vestal Ward/Peacock)

Many news organizations have reported on the Israel-Gaza war. However, many journalists have criticized those same media organizations for how they have covered the conflict, and have spoken out against what they say is a stifling of Palestinian voices and perspectives. In today's episode, Vinita talks to Sonya Fatah and Asmaa Malik, associate professors of journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University whose research focuses on newsroom culture, global reporting practices and equity in journalism. They argue that these press freedom concerns go far beyond Gaza.

Around the world, people are being forced to leave their homes in droves.  We are seeing it happen in Gaza, as Israeli forces continue to wage war. And in Sudan, which has also been wracked by war.  Then there are the people fleeing political or economic strife - like those living in Haiti, or Venezuela.  Canada has various refugee programs designed to take in those seeking asylum from what's happening in their home countries.  But the problem is, they weren't all created equal.  In today's episode, Vinita talks to Christina Clark-Kazak, professor of public and international affairs at the University of Ottawa.  Clark-Kazak says Canada's refugee system has always been politicized - but never more so than now.

The release of Beyoncé’s new album, Cowboy Carter, was a much awaited event for a lot of us. There was much anticipation about this being a country album — and  a lot of talk about the resistance some radio stations had and still have to that idea. That’s because country music is considered  "white music," even though its Black historical roots  are well documented. But Cowboy Carter is about so much more than country music. It honours other Black musical legends — and challenges the segregation we still see and hear in the music industry today.  Vinita is joined by two experts to talk about it all. Alexis McGee is an Assistant Professor of Writing Studies at the University of British Columbia and author of "From Blues to Beyoncé: A Century of Black Women’s Generational Sonic Rhetorics." And Jada Watson is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the School of Information Studies at the University of Ottawa. Her current research, called SongData, uses music industry data to examine representation in the country music industry.

In today's episode, we're continuing the conversation we started last week about using forced famine as a tool to control land, resources and people.  For centuries, starvation has been effectively used by colonial powers to control populations, to acquire land and the wealth that comes with that.  Today, we’re looking at the decimation of Indigenous populations in the Plains of North America –.  and the 1943 famine that took three million lives in Bengal, India, which was then under British rule. These are two vastly different populations that were devastated by a complex set of factors. But both populations had a few things in common: they were thriving with healthy and wealthy communities. And although disease and famine existed before the arrival of Europeans, it cannot be denied colonial powers accelerated and even capitalized on chronic famine and the loss of life due to disease and malnutrition. Through these two examples, Vinita looks at how starvation has been used as a tool in the colonial "playbook." She is joined by James Daschuk, Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina and the author of Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life. And Janam Mukherjee is an Associate Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan University, and the author of Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire. 

On Monday, the European Union's foreign policy chief accused Israel of using starvation as a weapon of war and provoking famine in Gaza.  They were some of the strongest words against Israel we have heard from a western power about the situation in Gaza since October.  They come on the heels of a UN-backed report that warns that more than one million people — half of Gaza’s population — face catastrophic starvation conditions. The report goes on to say that without an immediate ceasefire and a major influx of food and to areas cut off by fighting, famine and mass death in Gaza are imminent. Scholars of famine say this is, in fact, the worst food deprivation they have observed in war time since the Second World War. And according to international law, intentional starvation of a population is a war crime. In this episode, Vinita breaks down the use of hunger as a tool of war in Gaza with Hilal Elver, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and research professor of Global Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.

In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we continue our conversation about forced famine and its use as a powerful tool to control people, land and resources. Starvation has, for centuries, been a part of the colonizer’s “playbook.”

We speak with two scholars to explore two historic examples: the decimation of Indigenous populations in the Plains, North America, which historian David Stannard has called the American Holocaust and in India, the 1943 famine in Bengal. According to a recent BBC story, the Bengal famine of 1943 killed more than three million people. It was one of the worst losses of civilian life on the Allied side in the Second World War. (The United Kingdom lost 450,000 lives during that same war.)

Although disease, environmental disasters and famine were features of life before colonialism, decades of research has shown how these occurrences were manipulated by colonial powers to prolong starvation and trigger chronic famine. In other words, starvation has been effectively used by colonial powers to control populations, acquire land and the wealth that comes with that. This colonization was accompanied by an “entitlement approach” and the belief that Indigenous populations are inferior to the lives of the colonizer.

According to scholars, prior to the arrival of colonialists, both populations at the heart of today’s episode were thriving with healthy and wealthy communities. And although disease and famine existed before the arrival of Europeans, it cannot be denied colonial powers accelerated and even capitalized on chronic famine and the loss of life due to disease and malnutrition.

As the famous economist Amartya Sen has said, famine is a function of repression. It springs from the politics of food distribution rather than a lack of food. Imperial policies such as the Boat Denial Policy and Rice Denial Policy meant that, as curator Natasha Ginwala wrote: “freshly harvested grain was set on fire, or even dumped into the river.”

Joining on this episode were two experts on the North American and Bengal famines.

James Daschuk is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Kinesiology and Health Studies at the University of Regina. He is the author of Clearing the Plains: Disease, Politics of Starvation and the Loss of Aboriginal Life.

We also spoke with Janam Mukherjee, an Associate Professor of History at Toronto Metropolitan University, and the author of Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire. Mukherjee was recently a primary historical advisor on the BBC Radio 4 series “Three Million,” a five-part documentary on the Bengal famine of 1943.

For more information and resources about this, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

On Sunday, nine years after #OscarsSoWhite, millions of us tuned in to the 96th annual Academy Awards — some to simply take in the spectacle. And some to see how much had changed.

The hashtag #OscarsSoWhite started after many people noticed that, for a second year in a row, all nominees for four of five major categories were white. The movement called on Hollywood to do better: to better reflect America’s demographic realities and also to expand its  depiction of our histories.

The reason: representation in Hollywood matters. What gets put on screens and by whom has reverberating impacts on how all of us see each other and see ourselves.

So .... how did the Oscars do this year? And how is the entertainment industry in general faring when it comes to diversity and inclusion?

It's a mixed bag. Despite some recent wins, a report from Telefilm Canada revealed that Black women have the least representation in TV and film. They also lead the fewest projects and receive the least funding overall.

In today's episode, Vinita breaks down the progress made and the challenges still present especially for women of colour. She is joined by Naila Keleta-Mae, the Canada Research Chair in Race, Gender and Performance and associate professor of communication arts at the University of Waterloo and Mariah Inger, an actor and director and chair of ACTRA National’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Committee.

Follow us today so you don't miss an episode.

Monk is the lead character of the new movie "American Fiction," which is based on the 2001 novel "Erasure" by Percival Everett. Monk is a Black man but never feels 'Black' enough: he graduated from Harvard, his siblings are doctors, he doesn't play basketball and he writes literary novels.  In fact, his last novel got rejected for not being "Black enough."  As a Black man who thinks about race but also rages against having to talk about it, Monk gets so frustrated that he decides to poke fun of those who uncritically consume what has been sold to them as  "Black culture." He uses a pen name to write an outlandish "Black" book of his own - a story about "thug life" called "My Pafology."  But plot twist: the book becomes wildly popular - and Monk ends up profiting from the stereotypes he so despises. The story has so many layers, and in this last episode of Season 6, Vinita breaks it down with  two scholars who are well versed in Percival Everett's work - and the use of Black stereotypes in pop culture. Vershawn Ashanti Young is the director of Black studies  at the University of Waterloo. And Anthony Stewart is a professor of English at Bucknell University.

In this episode which we're running in full, host Gemma Ware speaks with Doseline Kiguru, a research associate in cultural and literary production in Africa at the University of Bristol in the UK, who has co-published research on the history of choral music and the role it plays in Kenyan national political culture. The episode originally aired on Dec. 11. 

Kenya is marking 60 years since its independence from British colonial rule on December 12, 1963. Each year, the country celebrates the occasion with a national holiday, Jamhuri Day. And for much of the past 60 years, patriotic choral music has been a regular feature of those celebrations. In this episode, Gemma and Doseline explore how much one song can tell you about the politics of a new nation -- and who controls what gets remembered and what gets forgotten. 

You can listen to or follow TC Weekly on Apple Podcasts, Spotify YouTube or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

Further reading:

• All episodes of TC Weekly

Further Research:

Kenya's 'patriotic' choral music has been used to embed a skewed version of history

Kenya at 60: the shameful truth about British colonial abuse and how it was covered up

You may have noticed that food bank lines have grown exponentially this year.  In Toronto alone, the number of people who use food banks has doubled since last year and nationwide, the numbers using food banks have jumped by 32 percent from last year and 78 per cent since 2019.  And those who are lining up for food defy the stereotypes: many, for example, are employed full-time. In other words, we are in the middle of a major food insecurity crisis.  And as we head into this holiday season - traditionally a time for giving and sharing and gathering around food - there is no better time to talk about this and help us understand what we as individuals can do to help. According to the latest Statistics Canada data, almost one in five households experiences food insecurity. Single-mother households are especially affected, as are some racialized homes. Black and Indigenous people face the highest rates of food insecurity, with over 46 per cent of Black children and 40 per cent of Indigenous children living in households that don’t have a reliable source of food.

But for years, advocates have been saying that more food banks is not the answer.  So what is?  In today's episode, Vinita sits down with Elaine Power, a Professor in Health Studies at Queen’s University whose research focuses on issues related to poverty, class, food and health.  She is also the coauthor of  "The Case for Basic Income: Freedom, Security, Justice." Prof. Power says reducing food insecurity requires our political and business leaders to address the root causes – including the ability of household incomes to meet basic needs.  Some of those solutions won't happen overnight, so she also has tips for individuals looking to make a difference now.

The idea for today's episode started with local Toronto kids, who were reporting experiencing sexist, homophobic and racist attitudes in the classroom, especially  from the boys. The research shows they are not alone; the rise in far right ideologies globally has deeply affected school-age students. Many experts point to Andrew Tate, the far-right social media influencer as one of the culprits.  Teachers say he has a big presence in the classroom. On top of that, there's been an exponential rise in antisemitism and Islamophobia in Canada that have also impacted the classroom. Why are boys especially attracted to  these hateful ideologies? As we near December 6, the National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, Vinita speaks to two experts who have been thinking a lot about this question. Teresa Fowler is an assistant professor in the faculty of Education at Concordia University of Edmonton whose research focuses on critical white masculinities. Lance McCready is an associate professor in the Department of Leadership, Higher and Adult Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto.  His research explores education, health and the wellbeing of Black men, boys and queer youth, especially in urban communities and schools. 

When a lot of us think about psychedelics, we think about magic mushrooms - and hallucinatory drug trips.  But the concept of psychedelics as a tool in therapy is  making its way into the mainstream. Online stores have popped up selling psilocybin capsules promising to boost focus. And on a more official front, the Canadian Senate recently recommended  fast-tracking research into how psychedelics can help veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).  But research also suggests psychedelics - including psilocybin ("magic mushrooms") and MDMA - can help heal racial trauma. In today's episode, Vinita speaks to clinical psychologist and University of Ottawa psychology professor Monnica Williams, about how psychedelic-assisted therapy can help with those dealing with this type of trauma, which usually encompasses ongoing experiences of what Williams calls "insults to your person." But it doesn't end there: With racial trauma, Williams says, therapists are also looking at events beyond an individual's lifetime such as "historical trauma, that may have happened decades or even centuries ago, that is still associated with the person's cultural group."  And while psychedelics show incredible promise in treating this type of trauma, many challenges remain. Part of it has to do with legalization and the lack of clinical trials. Another part has to do with the terrible track record institutions have when it comes to communities of colour and drugs. There is a long and ugly history of using Black and racialized bodies without consent for medical experimentation, including drug testing. And we can't ignore the racial roots of the war on drugs and the devastating impact it had - and continues to have - on Black and racialized communities.  Williams tackles these hurdles in her work.  And in this episode, she shares her thoughts about how we can open up the healing properties of psychedelics to racialized people  in need in a way that works with them, rather than against them.

As violence continues to erupt in Gaza, and more than 200 hostages taken by Hamas on Oct. 7 remain missing, many of us are seeking to better understand the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has been raging for decades.

Some of us assume that the violence between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians — a majority of whom are Muslim — is a religious conflict, but a closer look at the history of the last century reveals that the root of the tension between the two communities is more complicated than that.

At its root, it’s  a conflict between two communities that claim the right to the same land. And for millions of Palestinians, it’s about displacement from the land.

Land has so much meaning. It’s more than territory: land represents home, your ancestral connection and culture – but also the opportunity to be productive with the land; to feed yourself and your country.

One of the things that colonizers are famous for is the idea of terra nullius – that the land is empty of people before they come to occupy it.

In the case of Palestine, the Jewish settlers in 1948, and the British before that, viewed the desert as empty and as something they needed to “make bloom.”

But the land was already blooming. There is a long history of Palestinian connection to the land, including through agricultural systems and a rich food culture that is often overlooked by colonial powers.

Our guests on this week's podcast have been working on a film about the importance of preserving Palestinian agriculture and food in exile.

Elizabeth Vibert is a professor of colonial history at University of Victoria. She has been doing oral history research to examine historical and contemporary causes of food crises in various settings including Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

Salam Guenette is the consulting producer and cultural and language translator for their documentary project. She holds a master's degree in history.

Earlier this week, nearly five dozen people appeared in a courthouse outside Atlanta, Georgia to answer criminal racketeering charges brought against them by the state. The charges are related to protests against a planned paramilitary police and fire services training facility nicknamed Cop City. Georgia prosecutors have called the demonstrators “militant anarchists.” But many of those charged say they were simply attending a rally or a concert in support of the Stop Cop City movement.  The protesters, their lawyers and their supporter say the government is using heavy-handed tactics to silence the movement -- and worry about the type of precedent this might set for our right to protest. Kamau Franklin, one of the leaders of the Stop Cop City movement and a lawyer himself, and Zohra Ahmed, a professor of law at the University of Georgia, join Vinita to talk about the situation, and why so many people are watching it.

When the Buffy Sainte-Marie news broke last week, people were stunned.  A CBC investigation was accusing the legendary singer-songwriter of lying about her Indigenous roots.  Sainte-Marie had already come out on social media and said she had been claimed by the Piapot Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan - something the Piapot First Nation confirmed. And from earlier conversations about “pretendians” - those faking an Indigenous identity  -  it was clear kinship ties were maybe even more important than genealogy when it comes to establishing Indigeneity. In today’s episode, Lori Campbell, Associate Vice President of Indigenous Engagement at the University of Regina, speaks to Vinita about how this story rolled out, and why it matters to everyone following it.

Read Lori Campbell's story in The Conversation Canada:
Revelations about Buffy Sainte-Marie’s ancestry are having a devastating impact on Indigenous communities across Canada:
https://theconversation.com/revelations-about-buffy-sainte-maries-ancestry-are-having-a-devastating-impact-on-indigenous-communities-across-canada-216602

Episode show notes:
https://theconversation.com/how-journalists-tell-buffy-sainte-maries-story-matters-explained-by-a-60s-scoop-survivor-216805

Land has so much meaning. It’s more than territory; it represents home, your ancestral connection and culture — but also the means to feed yourself and your country.

One of the things that colonizers are famous for is the idea of terra nullius – that the land is empty of people before they come to occupy it.

In the case of Palestine, the Jewish settlers in 1948, and the British before that, viewed the desert as empty — something they needed to “make bloom.”

But the land was already blooming. There is a long history of Palestinian connection to the land, including through agricultural systems and a rich food culture that is often overlooked by colonial powers.

Our guests on this week’s episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient have been working on a film about the importance of preserving Palestinian agriculture and food in exile.

Elizabeth Vibert is a professor of colonial history at University of Victoria. She has been doing oral history research to examine historical and contemporary causes of food crises in various settings, including Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

Salam Guenette is the consulting producer and cultural and language translator for their documentary project. She holds a master’s degree in history.

For more resources and information about this, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of the episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

It's hard to escape the news coming out of the Middle East. It's everywhere. And it's excruciating to take it all in. First came the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel. 1,400 people were viciously attacked and murdered and at least 200 more were kidnapped and taken hostage. Then came the retaliation by the state of Israel. Almost immediately, those living in Gaza, under the leadership of Hamas, were faced with an evacuation order for more than a million people. They had their food and water supplies cut off and 6,000 bombs were dropped on them in one week. So far, more than 5,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s assault. There is so much polarization that it has become really hard to have a conversation about what is happening - and what has been happening for decades. In today's episode, Vinita speaks to two guests about how and why the conversation is getting shut down - and what we can do about it. Natalie Rothman is a  professor of historical and cultural studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough. She grew up in Israel. She has friends and relatives in the region including family members who have been taken hostage by Hamas. Norma Rantisi is a professor of geography and urban planning at Concordia University who has done work in the region. She has family in the West Bank and is a member of the Academics for Palestine Concordia, and the Palestinian-Canadian Academics and Artists Network.

Everybody knows it and almost everyone feels it: we’re in the grips of a major housing crisis. Home ownership is out of reach for so many people and for renters, units are hard to find and expensive. It seems everywhere you turn these days, there’s another rent strike. One of the factors driving this affordability crisis has been a shift away from publicly built housing toward large corporate-owned buildings. As Prof. Nemoy Lewis, from the School of Urban and Regional Planning at Toronto Metropolitan University, puts it: now “housing is treated as a commodity, rather than a human right.” He joins Vinita to discuss these corporate landlords and the disproportionate impact they are having on Black and low-income communities. He says it’s creating truly income-polarized cities – and urban centres that are increasingly accessible to only a small group of wealthy people.

For decades, North American Black women have been using hair relaxers  to help them fit into mainstream workplaces and the European standards of beauty that continue to dominate them.  More recently, research has linked these relaxers to cancer and reproductive health issues - and a spate of lawsuits across the United States, and at least one in Canada, have been brought by Black women against the makers of these relaxants. Cheryl Thompson, a professor at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of "Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada's Black Beauty Culture," joins Vinita to untangle the complicated history Black women like herself have with hair relaxants - and where these lawsuits might lead.

The Republican Party in the United States has moved farther right in recent years. And as it has, you would think racialized Americans might be distancing themselves from it and its policies.

But at last week’s GOP Primary presidential debates, three of the seven people on stage were candidates of colour. Racialized citizens also have been drawn to far-right politics, including key players in the January 6th Capitol attack and recent racist attacks.

Which begs the question: Why are racialized people upholding white supremacist ideologies that work against them?

Daniel Martinez Hosang, a Professor of Ethnicity, Race and Migration and American Studies at Yale University has been exploring this question for a long time. He is the author with Joseph Lowndes of _Producers, Parasites, Patriots, Race, and the New Right Wing Politics of Precarity_. HoSang sat down with us to discuss what he calls the politics of multicultural white supremacy. 

As we approach the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we take you inside the ongoing quest to document the children who died in Canada's Indian Residential Schools system. Vinita speaks to Terri Cardinal, director of Indigenous Initiatives at MacEwan University, about the search she led to uncover the unmarked graves of those who perished at the Blue Quills Residential School in Alberta. It's deeply personal and emotional work for Terri, whose own father is a survivor of the school. Terri talks about what she found, how she felt, and what she hopes will come of it. She says the number of unmarked graves across the country is much higher than many of us could have imagined. And she says it’s important to keep shining  a light on the rising numbers, especially with so many Canadians in denial about what really happened at these schools.

Visit the Conversation Canada's website for more resources.

Here at Don’t Call Me Resilient, we’re busy prepping new episodes for you … Each week, we’ll be taking our sharply focused anti-racist lens to the news stories unfolding around us. We'll be talking to experts, activists and people living these stories … to bring you a deeply contextual view of what’s happening here in Canada … and around the world. So make sure to follow us on your podcast app. Because a new season of Don’t Call Me Resilient is coming your way Sept. 28. 

I love watching a good adventure movie, especially at the start of summer. I have some great memories of eating popcorn in the local suburban movie theatre while we watched aliens take over a spaceship and a group of kids hunt for long-lost treasure in an underground cave.

At the same time, even as a kid, I remember thinking how awful some of the racial and gender stereotypes were.  

I specifically remember watching  Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and cringing at the representations onscreen, especially, the ruthless and flat-dimensioned South Asian characters and the ridiculous idea that Indians ate monkey brains – not to mention little Short Round, Indy’s child guide and sidekick played by the young Ke Huy Quan.

With the series, filmmakers George Lucas and Steven Spielberg showcased nostalgia for the early mid-century with Indiana Jones, the humanitarian Hunter College professor turned adventurer at the centre. Indy outran all kinds of harrows to ensure the ancient artifacts he chased ended up where he thought they belonged: "in a museum."  (Another now famous line is from _Black Panther_  when Erik Killmonger asks a museum curator: "How do you think your ancestor's got these?")

Guilty pleasure or irredeemable Orientalism?  

The final Indiana Jones movie, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is coming out tomorrow, 42 years after the first movie was released.  

As the series comes to an end, we explore Indy's complicated legacy  — and his famous line: "it belongs in a museum." 

Will the Indiana Jones franchise reflect the changes in anthropology departments and the growing movements from Indigenous  and Global South communities to return stolen objects and ancestors from western museums? Will it consider that Eurocentric notions of what holds heritage has finally expanded beyond the artifact?

Will this new movie be full of highly problematic stories? Or a guilty pleasure? Or, can it be both? 

Historian Christopher Heaney has spent a lot of time thinking about this. He’s written a book about the "original" Indiana Jones and wrote "Burying Indiana Jones" for the New Yorker. He’s a professor of Latin American History at Penn State University and he joined me on Don't Call Me Resilient  — our last episode of the season, and just in time for summer blockbuster season    — to unpack everything Indiana Jones.

It seems like everyone you talk to has considered taking Ozempic, the drug originally created as a diabetes treatment, but now being used as a weight-loss method.

Ever since it arrived in Canada, it’s been in incredibly high demand.

While Ozempic may be just the next in a long line of get-thin-quick fads, the drug’s shortages have disproportionate impacts on racialized communities. So do the weight-loss goals that undergird those shortages.

Language, if we are not thinking about it, can be just a way to get from place A to B, a way to order lunch or a way to pass an exam.  
But language is much more than a way to communicate with words. This is especially true if you have had your language forcibly removed from you, like the thousands of Indigenous children who survived Canada's colonial assimilation project.

Languages hold within them philosophies, worldviews, culture and identity.

Language also has a lot to do with our relationships — how we relate to other people, to our families, to our ancestors and to the natural environment.

These are precisely the aspects of Indigenous life that the Indian Residential School system was designed to destroy.  

Last year, the United Nations acknowledged the importance of Indigenous languages by declaring the decade ahead to be the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

But long before the UN declaration, First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples have been pushing to revitalize more than 70 Indigenous languages across Canada.  

In 2019, the Indigenous Languages Act was passed by the government of Canada.

Still, progress — and redress — have been slow to come.

In this special episode of Don't Call Me Resilient, as we look ahead to National Indigenous Peoples Day, guest host, Veldon Coburn speaks with Prof. Frank Deer, Canada Research Chair and associate dean of Indigenous Education at the University of Manitoba. They tackle the issue of disappearing Indigenous languages and delve into how much more needs to be done to revitalize them and why doing so is critical.

This week's episode was produced in collaboration with IndigiNews and their publisher, Eden Fineday. 

On June 22, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will make his first official state visit to the United States. And if his visits to Australia last month, to Canada in 2015 and to Texas in 2019 are any indication, he’ll be given a rockstar welcome.

U.S. President Joe Biden has already joked that he wants Modi’s autograph because so many people want to see the Indian PM while he’s in the United States.

Of course, Modi has his critics too, who point to the populist leader’s far-right policies and human rights abuses.

Yet, as the prime minister of the world’s largest democracy, Modi remains one of the world’s most popular leaders - not just at home, but among the tens of millions who make up the global South Asian diaspora.

Last week, perhaps in an acknowledgement of the power of the South Asian diaspora on Indian elections, the former leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, also visited the United States.

In the latest episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we are asking how important is that diaspora? With India having one of the highest remittance rates in the world, how much does overseas support contribute to Modi’s popularity and success? And what kind of an impact could a progressive element of that diaspora have on Indian politics?

Anjali Arondekar joins the podcast to sift through all this. She is a professor of feminist studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is also the founding co-director of the university’s Center for South Asian Studies which hosted a discussion last week with Rajiv Gandhi.

Narendra Modi’s First State Visit to the US Has Both National and Global Implications (The Wire)

The Modi Question (BBC) A Defeat for Modi’s Party in South India Heartens His Rivals

Indian politician boasts about getting Muslims killed – on camera (Al Jazeera)

The Network of Hindu Nationalists Behind Modi’s Diaspora Diplomacy in the U.S. (The Intercept)

Read more: India's new citizenship act legalizes a Hindu nation

Read more: Trump and Modi: birds of the same feather, but with different world views

Read more: Just who is Narendra Modi, India's man of the moment?

Read more: How the conservative right hijacks religion

Read more: Narendra Modi has won the largest election in the world. What will this mean for India?

You can listen to or follow Don’t Call Me Resilient on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts.

We’d love to hear from you, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and use #DontCallMeResilient.

Thank you to Sanjay Ruparelia, Jarislowsky Democracy Chair at TMU and Kalpana Jain, Senior Religion Editor at TCUS who contributed to this episode.

Every year thousands of migrants come to work in Canada. From harvesting the food in our stores to caring for the elderly, these workers form a vital part of the economy. Yet despite being critical, they often face harsh conditions, isolation, abuse, injury and even death as a result of immigration policies designed to leave them powerless.

Documentary filmmaker and OCAD University professor Min Sook Lee has been documenting the voices of migrant farm workers in Canada for two decades. What she has to say about the treatment of these workers during COVID-19 shatters any remaining myths about “Canada the Good.” How do we treat the workers who put food on our tables?

For more resources and information about this, go here: SHOW NOTES

A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

This year we’ve seen an aggressive push to implement anti-trans legislation across the United States. There are currently more than 400 active anti-trans bills across the country.

Some legislation denies gender-affirming care to youth – and criminalizes those health-care providers that attempt to do so. Other bills block trans students from participating in sports and still others have banned books with trans content.

These bills have at least two things in common. They all aim to make being trans harder in an already hostile society and they are being spearheaded by the far-right.

Where does anti-trans sentiment come from?

The enforcement of a gender binary likely has much to do with the preservation of white power. And, violence against trans people continues as a result.

What do things look like in Canada? Are we a safe haven or are we following some of the same trends?

Recently, a petition signed by almost 160,000 people asked the Canadian government to extend asylum to trans and gender non-conforming people from nations in the West, previously considered safe.

To get a better understanding of trans histories in Canada, we are joined by Syrus Marcus Ware, a scholar, artist, activist and assistant professor in the Faculty of Humanities and School of the Arts at McMaster University. He is a co-curator of Blockorama/Blackness Yes! and a co-editor of the best-selling Until We Are Free: Reflections on Black Lives Matter in Canada.

We discuss the history of anti-trans and queer actions in Canada. We also speak about backlash and ways to move forward.

In this episode, author and CUNY professor Ava Chin, a 5th generation Chinese New Yorker, discusses her new book, Mott Street: A Chinese American Family’s Story of Exclusion and Homecoming.

The book artfully explores themes of exclusion as it relates to all Chinese Americans, plus personally for Chin with her father, a "crown prince" of Chinatown that she didn't meet until adulthood. Chin reveals personal family stories against the backdrop of the U.S. eugenics movement and draws a connecting line between the current rise in violence against Asians in North America and anti-immigration laws more than 100 years old.

Chin also showcases the resilience, love lives and dreams of Chinese immigrants as well as their resistance to the attitudes and laws of the era.

In our conversation, Chin said:

> This story goes back to a period in time, in the era of reconstruction, when the country, when the young country was asking itself, who is an American and who is not, who is one of us? And the decisions that they made back then in the 19th century set us on a course as a nation towards viewing all Asians as being foreign and suspicious. And so the great aim of this book is to shed light on Asian American stories and place Asian Americans into our proper space into the larger American story.

The May long weekend is the unofficial start of summer. And for those of you with home gardens or access to community space, this is the weekend to dust off your gardening tools and visit the garden centre for the growing season ahead.

As we approach the start of gardening season, it’s good time to ask some questions about its origins.

Whether you plan to get marigolds, plant a vegetable garden or create a pollinator patch — all gardens have complicated roots.

In fact, the practice of gardening is deeply tied to colonialism — from the formation of botany as a science, to the spread of seeds, species and knowledge.

Some of the most recognizable plants today, such as tulips, are the result of early colonial conquests. Originally found growing wild in the valleys where current China and Tibet meet Afghanistan and Russia, tulips were first cultivated in Istanbul as early as 1055.

Later, after they were hybridized and commodified by the Dutch, they became highly coveted status symbols because of their gorgeous, but fleeting, blooms. 

Exploratory botanical voyages by colonial European powers were integral to the expansion of empire. These trips fueled the big business of collecting global plant samples and also led to the emergence of botany as a scientific discipline.

Botanical gardens played a key role, serving as the laboratories where plant specimens were organized, ordered and named. “Scientific objectivity” asserted a Eurocentric point of view, disrupting and displacing Indigenous Knowledge and ecological practices.

The movement and transfer of plants around the world went hand in hand with the transportation of people to provide a labour force, through slavery and indentured servitude.

The plantation system cleared out local ecosystems and replaced traditional farming methods with growing cash crops — like sugar-cane, tea and cotton. These were products meant for European curiosities, markets and profit and not for the local populations.

This colonial system of organizing agriculture laid the groundwork for categorizing people in a similar way, establishing a social hierarchy which dehumanized non-Europeans, helping justify slavery and Indigenous genocide, and eventually leading to racial categories.

This history has shaped our current relationships to the land, and our gardens. It also informs beliefs about land ownership and access; who has a right to enjoy the land, versus who is expected to be working on it. Who has the literal and figurative space and freedom to garden?

But the soil is shifting. There is a growing shift away from the colonial status symbol of the lawn and manicured gardens, in favour of pollinator-friendly native plants.

There is also a growing understanding that centuries-old Indigenous land-based knowledge and practices — like controlled burns — can help manage wildfires, and foster a more resilient landscape.

With concerns about our climate crisis growing, one of the possible avenues for creating more sustainable cities may very well lie in our gardens.

Could we have an impact simply by thinking a little differently about the seeds we sow and the "weeds" we pull?

Mother’s Day is just a few days away. It can be a complicated day. For some, it could mean a bouquet of flowers or a breakfast in bed. For others, it can mean mourning the loss of a loved one or dealing with a haunted past. And still — for others — like the 66 per cent of incarcerated women in prison who are mothers, it can mean something else entirely.

Despite a reduction in crime in the last 20 years in Canada, many women attempting to make ends meet for their families end up colliding with the prison system.  

In Canada, women’s prisons are filling up. In fact, the fastest-growing prison population in Canada is racialized women. More than one in three women in federal custody are Indigenous. And the percentage of South Asian women and African Canadian women in custody is also disproportionately high.

One of the reasons the women’s prison population is rising is poverty.

Amidst a financial downturn and ballooning economic inequality, criminalizing attempts at survival is staggering. And the effects on families is devastating.  

Adding to this is the complexity that 87 percent of all women in federal prisons in Canada have experienced physical or sexual abuse and many also live with mental health issues.

On this episode of Don't Call Me Resilient, we are joined by Rai Reece, a sociologist at Toronto Metropolitan University who researches prisons and feminist criminology. Lorraine Pinnock also joins us. She is the Ontario Coordinator for the Walls to Bridges program which helps women with education when transitioning out of the system. It’s a transition she has made herself. In 2011, Lorraine was incarcerated at the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener. She has two children.

This article was originally published with the headline “More than 60 per cent of incarcerated women are mothers”.

The UN’s recent resolution to recognize Nakba Day on May 15, to mark the anniversary of the expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in 1948, helps to acknowledge past traumas but does the resolution have other implications?

On this week’s episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we meet up with M. Muhannad Ayyash, professor of sociology at Mount Royal University in Calgary to help unpack some of the meanings behind this resolution.

Seventy-five years ago, starting on May 15, Palestinians were driven off their lands. This event is what Palestinians have come to refer to as the Nakba.

In Arabic, Nakba means Catastrophe.

At that time, approximately 750,000 people were violently forced from their homes. In the decades after, tens of thousands of others were murdered and displaced. And millions of Palestinians became refugees.

Recently, the United Nations passed a resolution to finally acknowledge that day of catastrophe.

The Palestinian UN envoy, Riyad Mansour, said the significance of the UN resolution lies in the General Assembly’s acknowledgement of the historical “injustice that befell the Palestinian people.”

Why has the UN resolved to acknowledge this history now? Could it be tied to the recent surge in violence in the region?

Does the recognition impact anything? Does it change how the conflict is viewed by western powers, like Canada and the United States who actually voted against the UN resolution?

You can listen to or follow Don’t Call Me Resilient on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts. We’d love to hear from you, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and use #DontCallMeResilient.

“When will the settler colonial siege of the Gaza Strip end?” by M. Muhannad Ayyash (Al-Jazeera)

“Palestinians have no choice but to continue the struggle” by Noura Erakat (The Washington Post)

“The Deir Yassin massacre: Why it still matters 75 years later” (Al-Jazeera)

“From Turtle Island to Gaza” by David A. Groulx (Athabasca University Press)

“A Jewish Case for Palestinian Refugee Return” by Peter Beinart (The Guardian)

Although King Charles will have a low-key ceremony on his coronation day this May 6, the Crown Jewels will still figure prominently. An exploration of the story of the jewels tells a tale of brutal exploitation, rape and the original looting. Join us on Don't Call Me Resilient to follow the jewels.  

Much of what was called the British Empire was built from stolen riches - globally - and also from India.

In fact, India was such an abundant contributor to the Crown that at the time of its occupation of South Asia, Britain called India the Jewel in its Crown.  

India was called this because of its location — easy access to the silk route, but mostly because of its vast human and natural resources: things like cotton, and tea and of course its abundance of jewels.

Literally, the brightest jewel in Britain’s Crown is the Koh-i-Noor diamond.  

It is considered one of the world’s largest and most valued diamonds and it usually sits on top of the Crown of Queen Mary.

It has a controversial history  — namely that it was “surrendered” to the British by an Indian 10-year-old boy whose mother had been imprisoned and whose father had recently died. It’s likely for that reason, that it won’t be on display at the coronation. But plenty of other jewels will be part of the ceremony. 

There is the five-pound gold St. Edward’s Crown that Charles will be officially crowned with, the Sovereign's Sceptre, which has the Great Star of Africa diamond in it and the Imperial State Crown, which is set with almost 3,000 diamonds - including another Star of Africa.

Joining me to explore the history and meaning behind these jewels is Annie St. John-Stark, assistant professor of British history at Thompson Rivers University. Also here today is: Sharanjit Kaur Sandhra, sessional instructor of history at both the University of the Fraser Valley and the University of British Columbia. Her recently completed PhD reimagines museums as spaces of belonging.  

Both historians on today's episode believe change is possible with a redress: of how the histories of the Crown Jewels are told and also how wealth is redistributed.  

And actually, if recent polls are to be believed, although many will be out celebrating (any excuse for a party, right?) the pomp of the coronation along with its display of the Crown Jewels does not reflect the attitudes of modern Britain. The most recent poll available indicates only 32 per cent of Britons believe the Empire is something to be proud of  — that is down almost 25 per cent from a 2014 poll. That means, attitudes are changing quickly.  

Will the Royal Family catch up?

Beef premiered on Netflix this month to rave reviews and quickly became the top watched series on Netflix in the U.S. In Canada, it took the No. 2 spot.

Beef is a dark comedy series created by Lee Sung Jin. It follows two L.A. strangers, courageously played by Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, who get into a road rage incident — and end up in an escalating feud.

The show is a beautiful meditation on life and survival and highlights universal issues of alienation and loneliness as well as class and race and gender. Critics have praised Beef for its performances and also for its revolutionary representation of Asian Americans.

But over the weekend, a Twitter storm erupted after a podcast episode featuring supporting actor David Choe resurfaced. In the 2014 podcast, Choe vividly relays a sexual assault story where he is the perpetrator. Choe has apologized since and has also said the story was made up.

This week on Don’t Call Me Resilient, we explore the advances Beef has made in television. As the controversy continues to swirl, we also explore the limits of those advancements and ask whether the brilliance of Beef will be overshadowed by Choe’s controversial history.

Joining us to discuss this is Michelle Cho, an assistant professor of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto, specializing in Korean film, media and popular culture. Also with us is Bianca Mabute-Louie, a PhD student in Sociology at Rice University in Houston with a background in Asian American studies and racial justice work.

[Beef showcases] “a really compelling portrayal of Asian American women’s experience of female rage and the nuances of living in a world, in a society that expects a certain type of docility and a placid surface” — Michelle Cho, assistant professor of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

Fast fashion is that ever-changing need to have the latest beautiful thing at a bargain price - that club-ready piece of clothing, that status symbol shoe, or that must-have top you just found at the mall.

But that cheap statement piece comes at a price. The fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world, after the oil and gas sector. It’s also famously unfair to its workers, the majority of whom are women. Although there has been a lot of talk about female empowerment, the reality is that most women who toil on the factory floor remain in poverty for most of their lives.

Ten years ago this month, much attention turned to the global garment industry when a group of garment factories collapsed at Rana Plaza near Dhaka, Bangladesh. The accident, called a “mass industrial homicide" by unions in Bangladesh, killed 1,124 people and injured at least 2,500 more.

Most of the people who went to work that day were young women, almost all were supporting families with their wages and all were at the bottom of the global production chain.

This week on _Don't Call Me Resilient_, we look back at the Rana Plaza disaster to explore how much — or how little  — has changed for garment worker conditions since.

The industry has a "murderous disregard for human life." That’s how this episode's guest, Minh-Ha Pham, puts it. She is an associate professor in media studies at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and the author of Why We Can’t Have Nice Things.

Also joining us is Dina Siddiqi, a feminist anthropologist and an expert on labour in Bangladeshi garment factories. She is an associate professor at New York University.

Last week, the Vatican finally distanced itself from the Doctrine of Discovery — a hundreds of years old decree that justified land theft and enslavement of people who were not Christian.

In this episode of 'Don't Call Me Resilient,' political and Indigenous studies scholar Veldon Coburn explains why the Vatican's repudiation of the Doctrine is a huge symbolic victory. We also examine what this repudiation may mean for members of Indigenous Nations, what prompted this renouncement, and what still needs to happen.

Coburn said:

>“For an Indigenous person like myself, it's profound because after four, five hundred years, since the first Papal Bull was issued, I didn't think I’d see it. Even though it may not have great material influence over my relationship with the colonial state, I do know that it's very difficult to get the church to change positions on things because, I mean, you had to twist their arm for a long time to get them to see that the sun was at the centre of the solar system and not the Earth.”

Coburn explained how the Doctrine became the ideological justification for settler colonialism and enslavement in the Americas, Africa and much of the former colonies as well as the basis of a legal framework that continues to operate and support land dispossession today.

For example, Coburn brings up a 2005 court case involving the Oneida Nation. He said:

>“I know people cherished Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but she wrote the decision for the courts in 2005… It was kind of a cruel decision too. It's like, we stole your land.  We get it. You're not getting it back. And then she explicitly cites the doctrine of discovery [denying] Indigenous title to the Oneida Nation in New York State.”

We also get into the difference between western ideas about land and Indigenous Knowledge. And how ownership and commodification were central to this decree.

Coburn explained how the original decree declared Indigenous territories ready to be claimed because, under western Christian philosophies, land was to be used to generate profit. Coburn said:

>"They viewed our 'non-usage' of the whole territory as wasting God's gifts. So these were to be exploited … in market exchange for the creation of wealth.”

While the Church's role in land theft was quickly taken up by new political entities, the lingering effects of the Doctrine are still evident in current legislative practices.

Christian and European supremacist ideas are evident in the decree: Indigenous peoples and their existence on land was not sufficient evidence of proper governance. These ideas continue to function as a rationale for ongoing colonial practices.  

For followers of the church, Coburn said, the Vatican's official repudiation may work to alleviate the moral stain of colonial plunder. It may also serve as an admittance of culpability.

Mostly, Coburn suggests, the repudiation is a symbolic gesture offered alongside many others.  

>“...as we've seen with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau … the symbolic has moved ahead quite quickly [while] the material aspects of our lived existence still linger in a state that's more resembling of the worst times of colonial assertions of sovereignty over it. So it really hasn't changed. They're still holding onto our land and saying, well, we said we're sorry. What more can we do? There's a lot more… the rightful return, restorative justice means: land back.”

In this episode, migration expert Christina Clark-Kazak explains the devastating consequences of last week's meeting between United States President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The meeting resulted in significant changes to a cross-border agreement and has already impacted the lives of thousands of asylum seekers attempting to make a life in Canada.

We explore what these changes will mean for those people searching for a safe home who are now being turned away from Canada. We also discuss the racialization of Canada's immigration policies.

Christina Clark-Kazak, an Associate Professor in the School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa urges Canadians to think critically about who we accept as refugees, and who we turn away. She said:

"It's important for us, as Canadians, to have this discussion and think very carefully about why certain categories of people coming from certain areas are welcomed with open arms and other people, we're effectively just slamming the door in their faces."

##  Claiming asylum in Canada

What the new amendment basically does is close any irregular border crossings for asylum seekers hoping to cross the U.S.-Canada border.

One of these irregular border crossings is at Roxham Road. Roxham Road is a rural road in upstate New York that crosses the border with the province of Québec. And last year, around 40,000 people arrived at this unofficial border crossing, hoping to find their way into new lives in Canada.

To look at it by numbers, this new amendment to the irregular U.S.-Canada land crossing is in sharp contrast to Canada's limitless welcome to Ukrainian refugees (there is no cap set on the number of migrants from Ukraine to Canada). Last year, 130,000 Ukrainian refugees arrived in Canada by air. In 2015-2016, Canada welcomed 25,000 Syrians. Approximately 40,000 people crossed at Roxham Road in 2022. 

## Confusion and devastation at Roxham Road

Before the Safe Third Country Agreement, which was signed in 2002, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the U.S., both countries could reject asylum seekers at official border crossings. But there was a small loophole that provided a slim window for people desperately looking for a way into Canada. People who crossed at unofficial border crossings could still claim asylum.

With this new amendment, that slim window gets even smaller. Migrants can now be turned away at unofficial border crossings as well. The change took effect suddenly on Saturday, causing all kinds of confusion and trauma.

But issues at play at Roxham Road are larger than any one single border crossing. They are intimately connected to global politics including economic inequities, resource extraction, imperialism, colonialism and exploitation.

For many people, turning back is not an option. As Clark-Kazak said:

"People will be now crossing at places that are not so visible, that are in the forest, in places that are further from an official border post. And so they'll need to know how to navigate that. So they will be turning to smugglers. We know this because this happens on the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico all the time."

Even with changes to the Safe Third Country Agreement, this journey is a risk that thousands will continue to take.

In this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient, we take a look at the ongoing struggle for land rights and some of the women on the front lines of that battle. These women are the land defenders fighting to protect land against invasive development. Both our guests have stood up to armed forces to protect land.

Their work is about protecting the environment. But it is much more than that: it is fundamentally about survival and about the right to live openly on what is stolen land.

Ellen Gabriel has been resisting land encroachment for 31 years. She was at the centre of the 1990 Kanehsatake resistance, (known as the Oka crisis), a 78-day standoff to protect ancestral Kanien’kéha:ka (Mohawk) land in Québec.

It was a moment in history that many say helped wake them up to Indigenous issues.

Anne Spice is a professor of geography and history at Toronto Metroppolitan University. Anne, who is Tlingit from Kwanlin Dun First Nation, was recently on the front lines in the defence of Wet'suwet'en land. After she was arrested on Wet'suwet'en territory last year, a viral video showed the RCMP pointing a gun at the land defenders.

Anne can be heard shouting, we are unarmed and we are peaceful.

These are the moments that capture our collective attention. But Ellen and Anne’s work goes well beyond what the cameras show.

For more resources and information about this, go here: SHOW NOTES
A full transcript of this episode can be found here: TRANSCRIPT

A lot of us turn to comedians we know and love to help us laugh at ourselves, our communities or the overwhelm of politics. Just look at the beautiful accolades received by Trevor Noah this month as he bade goodbye to his Daily Show audiences.

Noah and other comedians like Roy Wood Jr., Mindy Kaling, Ali Wong, Chris Rock, and Hasan Minhaj put race and other sensitive issues at the centre of their comedy. This gives us - the audience - reason to laugh, whether the jokes are directed towards us or not. It’s a way to release some of the tensions around some serious issues.

As comedy evolves, where is the line between a lighthearted joke and deep-rooted racism? And how far is too far?

In this episode, we get into it with Faiza Hirji, Associate Professor of Communication Studies and Media Arts at McMaster University and award-winning stand-up comedian Andrea Jin. They look at how comedy can be an easier way to talk about difficult issues, and at how we can find a way to laugh with each other  — rather than at each other. 

The psychology behind laughing at jokes can be traced back many years. While Hobbes and Plato suggested that making fun helps us feel superior, Kant thought about it more as a cognitive shift from a serious situation into playful territory. More recently, psychologist Daniela S. Hugelshofer showed how humour acts as a buffer against hopelessness and depression.

According to marketing psychologist Peter McGraw, who runs the Humor Research Lab at the University of Colorado Boulder, the “Benign Violation theory” needs to be satisfied for us to find something funny. That is, for a joke to be funny, there needs to be a social or cultural violation and it must be benign.

You can listen to or follow Don’t Call Me Resilient on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts. We’d love to hear from you, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and use #DontCallMeResilient.

Read more: Goodbye Apu -- here's what you meant to us

Read more: Mindy Kaling's 'Never Have I Ever' makes me feel hopeful about representation, gender and race

Read more: Psychology behind the unfunny consequences of jokes that denigrate

Read more: Roseanne Barr: saying 'it's a joke' is no defence for racism

Read more: 'I wanna be white!' Can we change race?

Read more: Stand-up comics should concentrate on being funny: so don't take offence if they are

Read more: Deadly Funny -- a new brand of Australian comedy

Read more: What's so funny about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander humour?

Don’t Call Me Resilient is produced in partnership with the Journalism Innovation Lab at the University of British Columbia and with a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

It was 15 years ago: police officers flooded C. W. Jefferys Collegiate in northwest Toronto. Outside, hundreds of anxious parents stood waiting for answers. The news that police delivered – as we now know –  was tragic.

Fifteen-year-old Jordan Manners had been killed. It was the first time anyone had been fatally shot inside a Toronto school. Jordan’s death stunned his community and the nation. And for many, it punctured the illusion of safety in Canadian schools.

Since then, we’ve seen a slew of reports and funds directed at anti-violence projects… But youth violence hasn’t let up in Toronto, Canada’s largest city.

In fact, it’s getting worse.

In the Toronto District School Board, the number of physical assaults has risen by 174 per cent between 2014 and 2019 and the number of incidents involving the use of a weapon by a student has risen by 60 per cent.

This year, on Valentine’s Day, a student was fatally shot inside a Toronto high school and in October, another shooting happened outside a school.

Why is gun violence increasing? And can we slow it down?

Devon Jones has spent the past 15 years tackling these very questions. He is a teacher and well-recognized youth worker in the Jane and Finch community - where Jordan Manners was killed. It has been described as Toronto’s most dangerous area to be a kid.

Devon has seen many students who have lost their lives to violence over the years, including Manners. But he has also saved many lives through programs offered by YAAACE - an organization he founded in 2007 that focuses on basketball and academics. He’s a busy man, who had just rushed from dealing with a youth emergency before talking to us from school.

One of the former volunteers of Jones's organization is Ardavan Eizadirad. Eizadirad is now the executive director of YAAACE. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University who has written about the root causes of gun violence.

Join us on  Don’t Call Me Resilient as we speak to both Jones and Eizadirad about the rising rates of gun violence in Canada and the role community organizations play in the solution.

Follow and Listen

You can listen to or follow Don’t Call Me Resilient on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts. We’d love to hear from you, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and use #DontCallMeResilient.

Sources

• Two School Shootings, 15 Years Apart by Inori Roy
• Student fatally shot inside Toronto high school
• Shooting outside Toronto high school leaves 1 dead, 1 teen injured
• Prevalence and Impact of Harassment and Violence against Educators in Canada by Darcy A. Santor,Chris Bruckert & Kyle McBride
• The death of Jordan Manners tore apart his school. How C.W. Jefferys was resurrected. the Toronto Star by Andrea Gordon
• How American gun deaths and gun laws compare to Canada's
• Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE)

Articles in the Conversation

Read the companion article to this episode of Don’t Call Me Resilient: To resolve youth violence, Canada must move beyond policing and prison, by Ardavan Eizadirad.

• Canada shouldn’t be smug about gun violence — it’s a growing problem here, too
• Gun violence can be reduced with a strategy focused on deterrence
• Canada once sold the idea that guns turned boys into men
• Thugs’ is a race-code word that fuels anti-Black racism
• Toronto mass shooting: How the city is coping a month later
• Calls for stronger handgun laws in Canada have deep roots
• Proposed Canadian gun bill will create U.S.-style patchwork of firearms laws

We’ve all heard the buzzwords: Equity, diversity, inclusion.

For some, these terms evoke social change but for others, they conjure empty promises on a glossy corporate brochure or a workplace’s ineffective policy statement at the bottom of a job listing.

In 2020, when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, worldwide protests against anti-Black police brutality and racism prompted corporations across the world to rush to address anti-Black racism with statements of solidarity and, in many cases, affirmations of their commitment to anti-racism in the workplace.

But University of Toronto Professor Sonia Kang says that without action plans to back up those ideas, those statements can actually lead to greater blocks to success for racialized employees and job seekers.

Join us and listen to Don't Call Me Resilient as we speak with Prof. Kang to discuss tokenism and how institutions uphold institutional racism. Kang is a Canada Research Chair in Identity, Diversity and Inclusion and host of the podcast For the Love of Work.

From performative allyship in the workplace to resume whitening practices in job applications to the grey area between being a diversity hire or the first racialized employee, explore the many facets of tokenism and how we can challenge and reshape the institutional practices that keep racialized employees from succeeding in the workplace.

You can listen to or follow Don’t Call Me Resilient on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your favourite podcasts. We’d love to hear from you, including any ideas for future episodes. Join The Conversation on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok and use #DontCallMeResilient.

The unedited version of the transcript is available here.