Winnipeg’s summit on racism draws criticism

Winnipeg Mayor Brian Bowman’s National Summit on Racial Inclusion, an event planned in response to a Maclean’s cover story that dubbed Winnipeg Canada’s most racist city, launched Thursday.

The event, held in partnership between the City of Winnipeg and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, runs Sept. 17 and 18 at the museum. Plans for the ONE summit include local, national, and international panelists and speakers.

ONE was created in response to the Maclean’s cover story, which claimed that prejudice and violence against Aboriginals in Winnipeg made the city Canada’s most racist. Bowman, the city’s first Aboriginal mayor, pledged to hold a summit on the issue after the article’s publication.

“Ignorance, hatred, intolerance, racism exists everywhere. Winnipeg has a responsibility right now to turn this ship around and change the way we all relate: Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, Canadians alike, from coast to coast to coast,” Mayor Bowman said in a press conference shortly after the Maclean’s article ran in January.

Planned events for ONE include workshops focusing on themes of recognizing racism, promoting healthy race relations, and moving towards reconciliation, along with panel discussions. This week’s summit features a variety of prestigious participants, including Atlantic civil-rights activist Dr. Gerald Durley, Giller-winner author Joseph Boyden, and Nigerian-born comedian and speaker Aisha Alfa.

Locals involved include Ry Moran, director of the National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, and Alix Jean-Paul, an educator and community development worker in Winnipeg. But there has been criticism that the summit isn’t inclusive enough of the local community - those most affected by racism in the city.

Our Summit was planned by volunteers in the city’s north end with the aim of highlighting the ways racism impacts Winnipegers every day, and to discuss tangible goals for improving life in the city. “The decision to hold the summit sparked as a result of Bowman’s summit at the Museum of Human Rights not being as inclusive as it could have been,” summit co-organizer Hazim Ismail told Yahoo Canada News.

The free event will be held Thursday evening at 6 p.m. at Oodena Celebration Circle at the Forks. “I’d even say that the community has been more excited for this event than the mayor’s because there is no attendance cap and no price tag,” says Ismail, an international student from Malaysia who involved on behalf of No One Is Illegal-Winnipeg Treaty One Territory.

Tickets for the ONE summit, priced at $50 for adults or $25 for students, have sold out. Mayor Bowman told CBC’s Information Radio that some of the events were cost-free, and others will be live streamed online.

Criticisms of his official event aside, Bowman said he welcomed Our Summit and others to the wider conversation. “We shouldn’t be afraid to have those discussions in multiple forms, and no single summit or conference or individual or group of people have a monopoly on good ideas,“ he told CBC. "It’s through listening and engagement that we’re actually going to move forward together.”

Winnipeg residents can learn more about working against racism in the city at an event on Sept. 25, Ismail said. A Village Without Borders: A Conversation With Harsha Walia will be an activist workshop focusing on shaping practical action plans, he says.