Keynote: Symptoms and systems of the status quo

October 13, 2021

9:00AM - 10:15AM

Keynote speaker: Janelle Lapointe

This year the climate crisis has been impossible to ignore. In British Columbia, record-breaking temperatures contributed to a devastating wildfire season and 500 heat-related deaths. In the Prairies, an unprecedented drought destroyed crops and threatened livelihoods. In northern Labrador, spring ice hit its lowest level in 50 years. 
 
And the climate crisis isn’t the only symptom of our failing systems—The unprecedented COVID-19 global pandemic, headlines filled with stories of police violence followed by mass protests around the world, disturbing news of mass graves uncovered at Residential Schools across the country. The symptoms of the status quo are impossible to ignore, so we can no longer ignore the systems that shape it.
 
Janelle Lapointe, a youth Afro-Indigenous climate justice and Indigenous rights organizer, shares her analysis of the root causes of the climate crisis, and the inextricable link between the injustices we are witnessing today. Through personal storytelling and systems thinking, Symptoms and systems of the status quo empowers us to see our stake in Indigenous sovereignty and anti-racism and embrace our collective power to secure a just, safe and equitable world for future generations.
 

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