ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK: AN INDIGENOUS PERSPECTIVE ON RECENT EFFORTS TO FIGHT CLIMATE CHANGE.

AuthorLittlechild, Danika

Journal of International Affairs (JIA): You were part of the Canadian Commission for UNESCO for over a decade. What positive or negative things did you notice during that time?

Danika Littlechild (DL): When I began working all those years ago with the Canadian Commission, there was almost no diversity. By diversity I mean youth, women, Indigenous people, people of color, and people with different kinds of abilities. At that time in Canada, diversity was not apparent in national and international institutions. Even today, we are still trying to ensure diversity and create appropriate spaces for diversity to exist within our institutions.

However, what was great at the Commission was that the professions represented were diverse. There were journalists, educators, archivists, scientists, and so on. Because of this, I believe people were naturally predisposed to embrace additional diversity within the organization. And over the years that I was involved with the Canadian Commission, more and more diversity was brought into the rooms we gathered in. Additionally, I was part of an early cohort of youth and people of color. As a result, we were able to ensure that the people who came after us had a safer space to enter into. It was more than having a seat at the table; it was that the table changed structure so people could be there in all of their difference.

I think that is a testament to the leadership in the organization over all those years. Leadership has been supportive of bringing in new, important, and peripheralized voices while giving these voices the right platforms. For example, in 2017, we were given an amazing education by one of our trans youth members who attended our national gathering. He had to educate us about the challenges that he faced to attend our meeting. He talked about getting his translation device, because all of our meetings are bilingual, and being refused his device because his ID didn't appear to match. This prompted a change in how the organization operated, because from then on, for all national gatherings, we looked at our process and the companies we worked with.

Our work on diversity and inclusion has put us at the forefront of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The United Nations (UN) itself has been fairly slow to the game in terms of integration of rights and perspectives of Indigenous peoples, partly because they have always taken the perspective that treating everybody equally brings everybody along. I do not think that is accurate at all. This is the age-old dialogue of equity versus equality--what's an equal opportunity versus an equitable opportunity?

In general, the integration of Indigenous voices has been a bit slower than general diversification. I think for so long people thought that Indigenized perspectives could be slotted in with "diversity." I had to explain how the Indigenous experience is so unique and really quite different from diversity writ large. In Canada, we have a Multiculturalism Act and we would never, as Indigenous peoples, consider that piece of legislation applicable to us. Because our governing laws are related to Treaties, agreements, and other...

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