Re-thinking waste: mapping racial geographies of violence on the colonial landscape

There is a perception in Canada that Nova Scotia has had a long and unique history with racism, and that the province has been more reticent than other provinces to address the structural implications of that history in Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities. The failure to acknowledge the unique histories and experiences of Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities as historically disadvantaged communities enables Nova Scotia Department of Environment to continue to ignore the ways in which its policy actions disproportionately impact these communities. In this article, I lay out the limits of the current environmental justice narrative in Nova Scotia by highlighting the ways in which race has been decentered within that narrative. However, I also contend that an unwavering focus on race and other substantive structural issues must be accompanied by an analysis of the marginalized intersectionality of Indigenous and Black bodies and how this informs their spatial location, exposing them to varying levels of environmental risk. The article also calls attention to the transformative human agency of Mi'kmaw and African Nova Scotian communities by illuminating their rich and varied legacy of activism against environmental racism historically and in the present day.