June Letter from Addressing Injustices
Written by the Addressing Injustices team
Last May, George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis by police officers, sparking another wave of the Black Lives Matter protests and demonstrations. Demonstrations and protests from Black Lives Matter are not new. In 2016, BLM stopped the Toronto Pride parade, only re-starting after Pride Toronto executive director Mathieu Chantelois signed a document agreeing to the group's demands. BLM Toronto released a list of demands, including a commitment to increase representation among Pride Toronto staff, and to prioritize the hiring of black transgender women and Indigenous people, as well as the removal of police officers from walking in the parade. Police violence is not new in Toronto or Canada, and the waves of demands felt in Minneapolis have rippled and unsettled a long dormant white and colonial institution.
In May 2021, the bodies of 215 children were found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978. As more residential schools are searched and the numbers swing upwards, we are reminded that "shameful chapter of our country's history" as stated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, is actually a painful and violent present.
June is Pride Month. It is also National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21st. As the academic year rolls to an end the team at Addressing Injustices (AI) wanted to write about the work we’ve done this past year to deepen and strengthen our commitment to 2SLGBTQIA+ communities by addressing the ongoing pervasiveness and privileging of whiteness, colonialism and anti-Blackness in education. We share our personal stories, identities and actions we’ve taken as a way to to unearth the harm still present in our work, in schools and in academia. This is part of our ongoing commitment and orientation towards individually and collectively taking action towards more socially just futures.