Part 3: Navigating Change with Empathy: A Conversation with Dr. Ingrid Waldron

This episode is hosted by Dr. Anna Gunz, with guest Dr. Ingrid Waldron (Part 3) 

Episode Summary:  

• Dr. Waldron emphasizes the power of education in tackling systemic racism,
  describing how, during her work on the environmental racism bill, she realized that many people lacked a full understanding of systemic racism, especially in the context of Canada's healthcare system, which is based on a Western worldview.
• Empathy and compassion are compared, particularly in terms of understanding the lived experiences of others. Dr. Waldron shares her belief that people with privilege may struggle to fully comprehend the challenges faced by marginalized communities. However, empathy and tolerance are crucial in helping these individuals understand issues such as racism or disability.
• Dr. Gunz reflects on her experiences in a rural, predominantly white community, where there may be some resistance to changes regarding racial diversity. She shares stories of subtle forms of racism and the ways in which people in her community may inadvertently hold onto outdated beliefs due to a lack of exposure or education.
• Dr. Waldron expresses optimism and hope, with progress being possible even after setbacks. 

Recording Date: 2024-11-22

Episode Production & Management Team:  

Jakob Wilk, Emma Cornell, Abby Walker, Olivia D'Andrea Brooks, Emily Douglas, Danielle Pineda 

Show Artwork:   

Laney Beaulieu 

Transcript

Anna Gunz
context and at the same time, that needs funding because that's not so. So there's these these pieces as well. And I think that spiritual piece is so de-emphasized or it's either seen to people as very important or dismissive when that's fundamental to our species. For, you know, thousands of years and, and whether people, people have spiritual beliefs, even if they don't necessarily I think from a, an atheistic perspective, you could still argue that some people may have spiritual beliefs.

Anna Gunz
So yeah, that's that's interesting. I maybe this is not a or a grounding question, but I think one of the, the concerns I have, as we sort of see our political climate change, we see, what's happened, in terms of partitioning people, from a political view and this othering that then brings in, political ideologies and policies that are working against what often people naturally want without recognizing it.

Anna Gunz
And I the same similar trends, and events without the words white supremacy aren't coming out enough, right, in terms of some of the political streams and where white supremacy is sort of taking root when even if people don't necessarily recognize it. And it's certainly I think a lot of people are worried, in Canada as well, about given our political system and what might happen, you know, what, what, how, how do you sort of look forward or how do we ensure that this work that needs to happen in terms of policy continues?

Anna Gunz
And and what's the sort of way that. To involve people and have conversations with people to help them lean in and supportive when there's so much anger and rhetoric and divisiveness?

Ingrid Waldron
You know, the solution is always education. To me. It sounds boring, but it is. And one of the reasons I say that is because when the bill was going through Parliament, this environmental racism bill, I know that was hard for some people to digest, that there was any aspect of racism and where a landfill or a pipeline is placed, it seemed so malevolent.

Ingrid Waldron
And when I listened to the archive videos of politicians talking about environmental racism and negating it, I realized that education was needed. But not just education on environmental racism. Education in Canada around systemic racism. People don't fully understand it. People understand overt forms of racism. They understand when you say white supremacy, the way I understand it is, and maybe not the way some people understand it, they immediately go to the KKK,

Ingrid Waldron
right?

Ingrid Waldron
And what they have to understand is there's white supremacy within our health system.

Ingrid Waldron
is, is that our health system is premised on Western ways of knowing. It's premised on a Western worldview that is a form of white supremacy. We don't have to go to the KKK, right? People don't understand. I think, systemic issues in Canada enough.

Ingrid Waldron
And I realize that the politicians and the politicians who are saying a particular politician who said there's no racism in Canada, well, she said there's no racism in Quebec because apparently Quebec is special, is special. Well, she said there's no racism in Quebec. And I said to myself, boy, there's a lot of education that needs to be done in Parliament.

Ingrid Waldron
I don't know if it's done. They asked me to be a witness. This was December of 2020, and I said, you know what the, I'm not gonna talk about environmental racism in my five minutes, it was about a witness to to defend the bill or whatnot, and they asked me for to do it for five minutes.

Ingrid Waldron
And I said, you know what? I'm going to speak about systemic racism. I'm not going to speak about environmental racism. So I spent I went back to my, my, my notes and my articles for my PhD when I was reading a lot about racism and systemic racism. I just wanted to make sure I had everything clear. And I spent my five minutes as a witness talking about systemic racism because I said, this woman from Quebec and other people in Parliament who don't think there's systemic racism in Canada or in Quebec, they need to understand systemic racism more than they need to understand race, environmental racism.

Ingrid Waldron
If they can get the systemic piece, the systemic racism piece, then they will get environmental racism. So that's just an example of of what I think is needed. I think we're entering very hostile times, certainly, certainly in the United States. It's scary. And that often influences what happens in Canada. And with the elections coming up in Canada, I don't know what's going to happen.

Ingrid Waldron
But to me, it's education all around, the education that I give to students in universities. The education and community spaces, opportunities for people to talk, people not attacking each other just because they don't understand, you know, I mean, the way I conduct my classes, I'm not attacking my mostly white students. I'm getting them to understand there's a way to teach people to inform them without blame and without making them feel guilty.

Ingrid Waldron
And for me, talking about the issues at a systemic level and how they originate over time, how they change over time is key to getting people to understand the subtleties. I guess, of racism. So that's where my focus is. And I think the more and more I get skilled at doing that as a professor, the more I get pushback from students.

Ingrid Waldron
When I started teaching, and I think I was still talking about systemic level, and I never blamed anyone. I never got into the blame game. But, you know, I think it was nursing students. Yeah, they had a hard time with my my course. I got tons of pushback. My director of the School of Nursing at Dalhousie got complaints about me, didn't understand why I was hired.

Ingrid Waldron
It was a terrible time for me. This was back in

Ingrid Waldron
and I became depressed. And I said to myself, am I in the right profession? I can't take this anymore. I got literally depressed, and I'm not somebody who's depressed because I got such nasty comments and students wanting me to be fired in the school of nursing. And over time, I've learned how to teach health profession students, I guess better students in health.

Ingrid Waldron
And, I think it's just a matter of getting more skilled at that conversation so people don't feel guilty or blamed or particularly white people,

Anna Gunz
Okay.

Ingrid Waldron
particularly in this environment. Right. But I think the key is education, as we continue to educate and talk and have conversations. But when I'm bullying people and attacking people

Anna Gunz
Yeah. And I.

Ingrid Waldron
who I'm not, I'm not as I, I have a lot of empathy.

Ingrid Waldron
I'm not like some of my, you know, black colleagues or friends who have no tolerance for white people who don't get it. I do have tolerance, because I think that if you are a white person, you are navigating your world as a knight, as a as a white person, as somebody, and you have blind spots to some of these things.

Ingrid Waldron
I don't think it's all coming out of, animosity and malevolence like some of my colleagues do. Because I put myself in the position of somebody, who's disabled, for example, I'm somebody without a disability. Can I fully understand their experiences? And when I teach, I do teach on disability. It's my responsibility. But can I fully understand that?

Ingrid Waldron
Because I'm navigating my world as a person who has ability, who can walk, who has, who doesn't have a cognitive disability, who doesn't have physical disability, any disability of any kind. And I navigate my world with that privilege. I have a privilege despite the fact that I'm a black female. So I think I think everyone needs to be a little bit more tolerant.

Ingrid Waldron
And everybody, including black people, also need to see where they will privilege, and that actually helps them to teach better. So yeah, I'm not somebody who sees ignorance, as purposeful in some individuals or as a way to, to be malevolent or to hurt and harm people. I understand that it's very difficult when you're in a position of privilege with respect to race, with respect to disability, etc. that is sometimes very difficult for you to understand other people's lived experiences because you're navigating your world every day in a particular way.

Ingrid Waldron
Unless you are forced encounter somebody who will accept privilege, as I might encounter somebody with a physical disability walking down the street, coming towards me, that it makes me think about that and think about the disadvantages that they may experience on a day to day basis, which I sometimes don't even think about unless I've encountered it, because I'm going about my day.

Ingrid Waldron
So, I also think that people who are teaching this information, including black professors, need to be a little bit more tolerant and empathic, and that will come across as they are teaching, and people will want to receive that information. Students who are mostly white because they are mostly white, it's students at McMaster that we're teaching. They will want to receive that information and digest it, based on how it's

Anna Gunz
Yeah, I the difference between empathy versus compassion. And, you know, I think the the example of a disability as well, because people who have disabilities, their experience of their own disability depends on their community. And, you know, the structures in place that either enable or, you know, that that may make it a disability when it's not in another place.

Anna Gunz
I think that's a very good point. And and then this and then this, this piece of empathy. Empathy versus compassion. And I think a lot of the, the narrative that I'm, I'm living in a and a community that is, like I've never lived in before with other people who look like me. It's a very white community, but also one, there's a lot of, you know, there's a real mix in terms of a spectrum of income and poverty and definitely in terms of education and rural community and, and so these things come up in a way that I haven't necessarily experienced where I went to school, which was in a completely different

Anna Gunz
environment. And, and I'm hearing more of the rhetoric that I, I remember hearing in the 90s, and that's just because of where we live and who we. That's great. But around, you know, if if you say this matters like a black life, well, I don't have everything that it's that verses what's that saying about me. Like, you know, or like you can say something about someone else and it's not really about you or that it's not your fault, or you still have struggles and you may have poverty, but that's not the conversation.

Anna Gunz
It's not that there is a versus or a like this. It's a separate conversation. So and it's interesting navigating these looking like I do and having these conversations and listening and and I also am well of course I'm learning how to have these conversations to bring things in, to help people understand. Like I remember around the time of George Floyd, someone I know and work with, and, we were talking about defunding the police or something.

Anna Gunz
I can't remember somewhere around this, and there was some comment around while, like you say, like racism doesn't really exist or it's something around that and I, you know, and so it's like putting in the example. Okay. Well, your son, when they were 12, did you were you afraid for them? Did you teach them that taught them to hold their self differently or, you know, were you afraid for them when they went out?

Anna Gunz
Did you tell them what they could wear or couldn't, or how to hold themselves in one place versus another? All these stories and, you know, obviously I don't have the experience of a person with color or a black person or an indigenous person that I'm learning as well. But some of these relational pieces that were just it's sort of this, oh, well, yeah, you know, that people might understand and it it's not about you and your family.

Anna Gunz
It's it's different. And this need to be it's not over that there was existing racism that that just simply wouldn't happen. And I think that I, I hope that around, you know, there was a lot of, I think consciousness raised around racism around that time and around obviously with as well with Every Child Matters and this conversation about residential schools, I think people started to really have this.

Anna Gunz
There's these comparisons and understanding at a deeper level. But then, then there's also this, this animosity that's now being built around what they've been told. People are being told to be angry and who's not supporting them. And that I think, yeah, I love your approach, which is and and at the end of the day, we just need to engage in conversation because really everything that anyone wants is all around the same pieces around passion and value and trauma is, is, is, you know, it's it's now such a childhood trauma is such a is now an explored is such a risk factor for cancer that when people have a diagnosis it's screened.

Anna Gunz
And that is an understanding that's happened over time. And it was interesting. So my mother was an epidemiologist and I was talking to her recently, and her work was around people with Aids. And and as for my arthritis and osteoarthritis, as she says, when it wasn't sexy and now it's getting more sexy, like people are now thinking of an inflammatory condition.

Anna Gunz
But there was early work. There's a paper that she wrote a few decades ago around trauma being a risk factor for osteoarthritis. And, you know, and it's I think like this piece of there's there's all of this there's racial trauma. There's there's you know, religious trop like there's trauma that has been embedded in people's families in different ways.

Anna Gunz
And I think the more that we talk about this and understand the physical health impacts as well and the mental the impacts, I hope that that also will lean into people's humanity and help them connect with each other and understand more and even then, the environment how it affects that. You know, I just think of mental health and black communities are and women and at the same time also air pollution and exposure to different toxins from different sources.

Anna Gunz
And there are a lot of different pathways that as well can affect, physical and mental health. And how do we all connect that together? It's really hard to point at causality, but if we can just at least expect that the environment affects our, how can we can we lean in around environmental justice and social justice? You know, as a I'm not obviously ever going to compare or like, I am not an expert in this area at all.

Anna Gunz
But to me, as someone who's trying to really lean in and understand and connect, I think those are trends. And also listening to the white people who look like me, who've either gone through some conversion and had an experience or epiphany or are trying to understand how they can have conversations and then, in a gentle way that they can, you know, that they can learn.

Anna Gunz
Like I remember conversations from childhood since we moved to Canada and where I lived too. It was in a part of Toronto that was, you know, it was very, there was a lot of different guess at the time. We said multicultural, but a lot of people from a lot of different places, from a lot of different races.

Anna Gunz
And obviously the the sophistication when we're talk about systemic racism is people's different experience. It happens at a much higher level now than it ever did before. But I think from that came a lot of privilege, but even judgment, you know, we had these racial you know, I still remember it was probably around grade six. Somewhere around there.

Anna Gunz
A boy in my class had said something and he said, Eskimo. He said that word. And everyone went, oh, you can't say that. And all. Even as you know back that in the early 1990s, everyone unstained him and he went, what? I don't know, like that's what my dad says, I don't know. And I think about that. I'm like, we didn't say there was no compassion, there was no information.

Anna Gunz
It was just, you can't say that. And did we know? Well, that's the right.

Ingrid Waldron
five. That was a normal term

Anna Gunz
Yeah.

Ingrid Waldron
school in Ottawa, we would. They would show films on Eskimos. So there was a certain point in my life when I was like, oh, that's not a good term.

Anna Gunz
Yeah.

Ingrid Waldron
was used when I was in grade school. So I think once when we need to have compassion because this, this, this other may have grown up in the same school era as I did, and that was a normal term.

Anna Gunz
Yeah. And I and I think it's as people have these conversations, I it everyone talks about the shaming and the snowflakes and the this and that. And you can't see this and that, but there's not enough dialog about why and building and empathy and capacity. And I just I think a lot of people I meet in my community just have no idea.

Anna Gunz
And and no perspective. There's, there's a, yeah, there's a development, and there's a lot of more racialized people that are moving in, and one of my daughter's friends mothers was she was chatting about it and she said, you understand that? And these families and they've all boarded up the windows at the back of their house.

Anna Gunz
And I think that's cultural. And I was like, oh, no, like, that's fear. But I, I without asking, my first instinct is fear. And she said fear. And so then we started to have a conversation about racism and maybe some of the things that I've heard in this community, also the, the reputation, this, this community has some of my friends who are racialized and moved to this area and were told specifically not to live here and, and, and and she was, oh, you know, it was this, this whole opening of conversation to maybe I'm not right, I don't know, I haven't asked those families.

Anna Gunz
So what right do I have to say? But yeah, it just I think that there's a lot of places where people haven't had conversations like this. And yeah, I continue to learn and grow, but, but there's I think a lot of people aren't malicious, they're just confused and they're having a hard times. And and how do we how do we move together?

Ingrid Waldron
You have people in your community who board up their windows.

Anna Gunz
Yeah. That's.

Ingrid Waldron
It's fair? Racism.

Anna Gunz
I, I that's that is my guess based on the narrative and you know and and I, we.

Ingrid Waldron
South Asian communities?

Anna Gunz
Yeah. A mix of South Asian and black communities as well.

Ingrid Waldron
I've just never heard that boarding up their window so they won't be seen

Anna Gunz
At the it's the and it's the back of the house. So and that's the thing is, I think of my friends who are like, this is just I, you know, I one of the they grew up in a South Asian communities, like I've spent so much time going to houses. And I was like, I've never seen that before.

Anna Gunz
And I and I, I, I would be confused like that. That's my first guess anyway. And also hearing the rhetoric, and, you know, even just the subtle things like around election times, the kind of where people are putting up signs and what kind of signs that they're putting up.

Anna Gunz
it's a very white community and it's a rural community and it's a community now. Whereas a lot of developed because it's near a big city. And so you have farmers and you have people who've always lived there, and you have people coming in and, and the dialog is around keeping the town the same.

Anna Gunz
And with the conversation around it being around the type of housing developments, like we don't need low income and subsidized housing, but at the same time, not a conversation about, well, we're not talking about the women in our community and how many people are and are using the local food bank, which is kind of an unofficial food bank, and how how much domestic violence there is.

Anna Gunz
And now, even since I've been here for eight years, I couldn't afford to buy a house in this community. So if I have a little person in this community, you can't afford to live in this community anymore. And so there's all of these conversations. It's just coming back as anger and others, and it's other people. And that's my flag.

Anna Gunz
And that's the only flag. It's all of this that's coming up and not this other piece, which is how might you feel walking into this community now? That's interesting. Actually, I do have a interesting story that I will ask my friend if I could show, but is a friend, a colleague of mine who is racialized and lives in the same town.

Anna Gunz
And during the election, the head of the PPC party was doing call like, you know, going house to house with a pamphlet. So she walks up to his house and he open the door and she said, oh. And she kind of looked back and she said, I'm sorry, can I speak to the homeowner? And his daughter comes up and he's like, well, you're looking at the homeowner and this is the homeowner daughter.

Anna Gunz
And she goes, oh, I'm sorry. I think I bought the wrong house and sort of walks away and didn't speak to him. And he's like, yeah, I know that I'm racialized, but I still might have like, at least leave your pamphlet for me. I mean, maybe there's something in here for me, but, it was. Yeah, that's the, you know, the community and some of the experiences that, the people we just don't talk enough about.

Anna Gunz
But. Yeah, very. It's a very interesting time and place, but,

Ingrid Waldron
the, though. This is a rural, mostly white community, and and newcomers are coming in. Yeah, people are, because that's what's happening now in Canada, sadly. You know, it's that across the country, this I think I think, I think South Asians are particularly being targeted because I think their immigration numbers are the highest right now.

Ingrid Waldron
But,

Anna Gunz
And families aren't. Or they're not even newcomers. They're just mixed. They're, you know, they're they're Canadian, like families. Not all. And that they don't necessarily, they're just racialized Canadians who. Who bought a house and, and that happened. So, yeah, it's interesting. It was there was another woman at work who's one of the cleaners, who I remember somewhere I bumped into her and said something around systemic racism or something like that, like it was just like a so and she said, oh, so interesting.

Anna Gunz
So you say that. And so she was a she's a white woman who grew up who, worked and lived in this part of the city that very white and used to work in the factory and, you know, learn to talk a certain way and had all of these perceptions. And then as her daughter grew up and started going in high school and she started to question her sexual identity, and so she or she would call her mom on it, say, mom, you can't say that.

Anna Gunz
You can't say that, and then even hurt her. You know, some things around, probably race and religion around people. And her daughter would say, no, you can't say that. And she's like, okay. And she you reflected on it saying like, okay. Yeah, okay. And and she sort of started to crush it. She didn't understand it. And then she started to work, at the hospital with us.

Anna Gunz
And I work in the ICU, the pediatric ICU, just like, and I started to work here and I saw people. Everyone's the same. We all had the same problems because I mean, even our staff who who do do the turns over the room and the cleaning, you know, you know what's happening even without any details for these families and, and the humor and the situations.

Anna Gunz
And they may talk to someone and, you know, families may talk to them. And she's just like, I just want like, we're all people. It's all the same. And so she was talking about her sort of concept of the world and, and races and sort of shifting and changing. And then she, her partner is now and I think Ruby and mad.

Anna Gunz
And so, you know how she integrated that in his family. And she's like my whole perceptions change. This is like now I go back to the factory and I talk to them about why and leaning in and she's like, I just had no idea. And I just it was this accidental conversation that was so rich. And she spoke so really about her awakening and changing because she grew up poor with nothing and no education and working in this factory.

Anna Gunz
And that's how people talk. So when she wasn't exposed to anything else. Right. And I, you know, being, you know, at a time where in school that's what people said. And then probably went to a school where there was a lot of white people, given the I know the demographics and how they've changed with time. So yeah, I do I do see hope and change in these dialogs, as you said.

Anna Gunz
And I mean, what do I know? I'm not an expert, but it's very interesting for me to. Yeah, to learn as well about the process and, and how many people.

Ingrid Waldron
a lot of my projects are centered around workshops. You know what I mean? The ones I'm doing. It's not about, say, race was about racism. The black people, you know, I don't need to educate them on that. But we talk about how climate, for example, is can be racist, the climate policies. But I like workshops, probably for discussions on racism because it kind of brings people together.

Ingrid Waldron
You're in a group where you start to develop relationships with people, and as long as you have a very skilled facilitator, it doesn't need to to to deteriorate into anger and screaming. But you're building relationships. You're getting to know people in a workshop that lasts for about four hours, maybe on a particular day. And there's maybe transparency and but it does require like a facilitator that's really, really skills.

Ingrid Waldron
But for me it's like these workshops and talking and education is the way to go, really

Anna Gunz
You.

Ingrid Waldron
things, but also recognizing that we can break it down for everyone and people are going to also continue with their beliefs because those beliefs are strong, because they've grown up with those beliefs and the and they want to hold on to it.

Ingrid Waldron
And there's nothing that some of us can do about that. We can't do anything about that.

Anna Gunz
Yeah. And. Or maybe protects them in some way. Because you know that. That's because of the. You know, how do we support our emotional, mental health and physical health in a colonial society? Like, that's just not a conversation. So this way of thinking protects them and allows them to sort of direct their emotions in a certain way so they don't internalize them.

Anna Gunz
Deciding to deal with your trauma or grief or look at and move forward from a that's a lot like that takes a lot of courage. And, and not everyone might be in the spaces that either recognizes it or understands it. And like I agree, I think there's there's so many people and even for myself, like someone telling the story, I ship my perspectives and beliefs so many times in my life that it's just amazing how one story or one connection from completely changed perspective and everything has really come from a white perspective for so long.

Anna Gunz
Or, you know, in racialized communities, it's like what has been allowed to be transmitted.

Ingrid Waldron
We see why

Anna Gunz
So.

Ingrid Waldron
People don't see that. You know, when we say a white perspective for white people, it's just a perspective. So that's even that trying to get them to see. Well, it's a white euro Western perspective because it's normalized and it's the yardstick. It's just a perspective. So even that takes a lot of effort to get white people to unravel that.

Ingrid Waldron
As you see, it's not not it's not necessarily the norm. It's the white norm. There are other people but their norms. You see what I'm saying?

Anna Gunz
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

Ingrid Waldron
that's actually what I try to do with health, to get my students to understand that it's not normative and that this is not the yardstick. There are multiple other views that other cultures hold, but we prize Western philosophy.

Ingrid Waldron
We prize Western ideologies. But there are other ones.

Ingrid Waldron
But but when you say a white, you're a Western perspective. People just think it's a perspective. There's nothing white or you're a Western about it. So to get them to critique that, to unpack that, that's to me the first task. And then they want to understand the health system and all our systems are premised on white supremacy, but they also have to understand what white supremacy means.

Ingrid Waldron
It's not the KKK, it's just that ideology, institutions, knowledge, is built on your Western philosophy, and that is supremacy, because it means that we value white knowledge more than other knowledge. That's supremacy. Right? So I think a lot of people just kind of go to old KKK and malevolence, and all our systems are white supremacist system.

Anna Gunz
And it's being tapped in and pushed now.

Ingrid Waldron
normalized. And it's the yardstick, right? It's the yardstick. But there are people like indigenous people who have different philosophies that are very different, not worse,

Anna Gunz
I'm just different. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. Absolutely. I think I find it interesting even for people, you know, we don't even realize the shift. And I think of like if you watch and I'm now with my kids sometimes we watch TV shows from the 90s that I've watched. I mean, my husband, what does someone, what, even 10 or 20 years ago sometimes, you know, you can see how language and conversations changed or even just how you for me, I think, you know, as a white person, if you just look at the cast of how white, how strikingly and that's not something I ever noticed growing up.

Anna Gunz
But now I look at it and I'm like that, what a. And I think, what a, what a a so I'm not saying blind side but blind spot. What a blind spot. You know, growing up, even my friends who are racialized, you know, we don't like, question it so much or, or maybe they did and and vocalize it.

Anna Gunz
It was right at this stage. Yeah.

Ingrid Waldron
I didn't I didn't see those things until I became educated on race.

Anna Gunz
Yeah.

Ingrid Waldron
those shows with you on. Not see anything wrong with an all white cast. I wouldn't have, one of the best compliments I remember getting from my student was after she took my structural determinants of health course.

Ingrid Waldron
She said, Doctor Waldron, thank you for this course. I now watch TV and I read the news differently.

Anna Gunz
Oh, wow. But.

Ingrid Waldron
want. My students, you know, so what you just said in terms of now, you will look at those 90 shows in a different way. Yes. That to me, if my courses can do that, that's important. So when she says I read the newspapers differently now I watch television differently.

Ingrid Waldron
Now is basically what you're saying. She sees things differently now after being educated about race and other diversity issues. So that's why I think like education is key. Whether or not people change radically, I don't know. But if they are able to read the newspapers and to watch TV and to understand the world differently because they've been educated, then that's to me the beginning.

Anna Gunz
Yeah. And the power of art. You know, I think a lot of what I felt about myself as a girl and as a woman. And what I wanted to say was completely. You know, it was formed by watching full House. And then when I watched it with my kids, I'm like, even my son was like, what is this like?

Anna Gunz
Why was you, you know, and and I was like, great, good for you. You know, they, they, you know, we watched it with different eyes, with the norms of just. Right. And so I think the importance of how, yeah, art and things that people tap into, how powerful it can be, for shaping perspectives and yeah, just including just to be able to see yourself in something which I think as a white person is a privilege that, you know, I didn't realize I had at all.

Anna Gunz
And in terms of representation and because we have that privilege, because most of the time, yes, being female, there's a lot of things that I didn't see female doing or in a way that I would want to do that, because I saw them as being female, but having a lot of really masculine traits or, or like behaviors to be exist as a woman in that role.

Anna Gunz
And so I never felt like I could do that. But beyond that, you know, being a white person, there was so much privilege in terms of role modeling that, that I didn't even realize until, I when I was very little, I watched this show called neighbors, which was an Australian soap opera, and Kylie Minogue played a, mechanic.

Anna Gunz
And I loved her, and I wanted to be a mechanic. Now, I subsequently forgot that, and my whole life I felt like a complete failure because I'm not a mechanic. And when I was 16 and had the opportunity to do auto shop in school, I was too intimidated because I was the only girl. And then I was immediately ashamed because I, like, still regret not taking that.

Anna Gunz
And I can't fix the car and I feel like a failure. And it wasn't till I was watching her like 45th or 50th birthday slide. Or maybe it was her 40th birthday slide and I saw this picture of her as a mechanic and I went, oh, that's why. And I thought for me as a white woman, I'm thinking of my kids.

Anna Gunz
That was my example of representation. And it didn't even occur to me because I've been so seeing white women in so many roles that I wouldn't even think about, but, yeah, my friends, my girlfriends had not necessarily had that experience. Right. Because they were. And that's what my friends who are racialized will talk about. Right? Like they never one of my girlfriends talk about never having a teacher that look like them, you know, never, ever.

Anna Gunz
And, yeah. And and then as an adult, reflecting backwards on how that, how that affected her when she didn't necessarily realize that at the time, yeah. Anyway, I, I really I realized, oh my gosh, it's 4:00. Thank you so much for joining me. I will see what comes in and out of this. But before I go, I do want I before I hit stop.

Anna Gunz
I do want to ask you one question that we ask everyone. And so the one question I want to ask before you go is what gives you hope?

Ingrid Waldron
What gives me hope around environmental issues?

Anna Gunz
So I think just even if I'm looking at a woman who's been incredibly successful and you have all these intersectional identities, and you work with communities who, you know, face so many systemic barriers, environmental racism, and you're facing these systems and we see all these systems around us that are fully starting to shift and these undercurrents that are very, you know, like climate change and our political climates.

Anna Gunz
How do you move forward and how do you maintain your hope that allows you to do all these things? What is it that.

Ingrid Waldron
people have asked me that

Ingrid Waldron
always say I'm a naturally hopeful person. I see the glass half full. I'm not negative, and I don't. And I've work with colleagues who are. It's very difficult to work with them because we see the world differently. I don't see negativity. I feel that every time I have a chance to wake up, that God has allowed me to wake up every morning, that there's another chance.

Ingrid Waldron
That's truly how I feel. It sounds very Pollyanna, but it's truly how I feel. I wake up happy every morning, so some people are grumpy because it's a new day and because I've been allowed to wake up. And as long as I'm allowed to wake up and other people like me who want to see a change are able to wake up every day, there's hope.

Ingrid Waldron
Look at the bill that passed into law. I wouldn't say I wasn't hopeful, but I thought it would happen. But I didn't think it would happen in my lifetime. So because it's been a long journey. I mean, we started the bill when I was in Nova Scotia back in 2015, the Nova Scotia bill. So it's not for me.

Ingrid Waldron
It's not just the federal bill, but it's a Nova Scotia bill that never passed. Right? So it's been a long journey for me. And there was a I was at a point where I said, okay, well, this is not going to happen while I'm alive, but some environmental activists or

Ingrid Waldron
is going to ensure that this bill passes into law or the bill passed.

Ingrid Waldron
So I could have felt I could have felt like I should have given up because it felt like a long road. But I never feel that wa