Unlearn Together: Strengthen our Muscles to Disrupt White Supremacy and Indigenous-Specific Racism in Population and Public Health

Overview

Delivery method

Online

Duration

Audience

All HC and PHAC Employees

Description

Life-saving solutions to health inequities resulting from negative structural determinants of health experienced by Indigenous Peoples have been provided in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, the Truth & Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action, and the Missing & Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ Calls for Justice. These include clear calls to train health professionals, including those working in population and public health (UNDRIP 15; TRC 18, 22, 23, 57; MMIWG 2SLGBTQQIA+ 2.6, 7.6, 15.2). Population and public health has unmet responsibilities to Truth and Reconciliation.

In 2022, the BC Office of the Provincial Health Officer created a 17-month “Unlearning Club” for staff and leadership. Unlearning Club is a 17-month structured space for dialogue and self-directed unlearning on Indigenous rights, anti-racism, anti-white supremacy, and cultural safety, using materials created by IBPOC experts. Now, the Pan-Canadian Public Health Network and PHAC secretariat are participating in the first national Unlearning Club.

Join us to get a taste of Unlearning Club! We are a duo working together from two different vantage points: One is a BC First Nations physician and public health leader and the other is a white epidemiologist and mixed methods researcher. Dr. Danièle Behn Smith is Eh Cho Dene from Fort Nelson First Nation in the Northern part of British Columbia on her father’s side, and Métis from the Red River Valley on her mother’s side. She lives on Lekwungen Territory and serves as BC’s Deputy Provincial Health Officer for Indigenous Health. Dr. Kate Jongbloed is a White Occupier with immigrant parents living on Musqueam Territory. She is a Senior Scientist at the BC Centre for Disease Control and Adjunct Professor at University of Victoria, with a track record documenting and responding to impacts of settler colonialism and Indigenous-specific racism on health and wellness. Jorden Hendry is Tsimshian from Lax’kwalaams and is a PhD candidate at the University of British Columbia. All three serve as hosts for the PHN Unlearning Club.