Scholar, activist and child welfare advocate Cindy Blackstock figures academia needs to hire “a lot more people who are willing to get into trouble.”
“Academia and activism should co-exist,” says Dr. Blackstock, a professor in McGill University’s school of social work. “Academic freedom provides us with a space to stand in the wings of discrimination in a way that’s not available to other people.”
No stranger to trouble, one could argue Dr. Blackstock goes looking for it. Nationally and internationally renowned for her advocacy work for the rights of Indigenous children, she is also the co-founder and executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.
In 2007, the Caring Society, led by Dr. Blackstock, and the Assembly of First Nations jointly filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission against the federal government for underfunding welfare services for First Nations children living on reserve. In 2016, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal agreed with the complainants, later ordering the government to offer compensation to the affected children and their families.
“Let’s do something and express ourselves in ways people can actually understand. And listen to the lived experience, get behind the community.”
While a final settlement is still being negotiated, the landmark decision should result in First Nations children and their families collectively receiving billions of dollars. The case also helped to bring considerable attention to the discrimination embedded in the government’s failure to provide adequate health care, education and other services for on-reserve Indigenous children.
“We’re in a very privileged space to do this kind of activism,” Dr. Blackstock points out. She urges academics to move away from the “usual, antiquated notions of knowledge-transfer,” such as presenting a poster or giving a talk at a conference. She says that work is important, but it’s not enough.
“Don’t just publish another paper; eighty-five per cent of journal articles don’t get read,” she estimates. “Let’s do something and express ourselves in ways people can actually understand. And listen to the lived experience, get behind the community.”
A member of the Gitxsan First Nation in British Columbia, Dr. Blackstock says her approach to academia has been “very atypical” from a young age.
As a child, she says her family moved all over northern B.C., following the fire seasons and her father’s job with the forestry service. She says she was determined to go to university mostly because “no one thought I could.”
“As a little girl, I heard about this place called university and really wanted to go to the University of British Columbia. It was nothing more material than that,” she recalls. “After that, in my three post-graduate degrees, I wasn’t taking them to be something. I was doing them to learn more.”
Dr. Blackstock did go to UBC, where she earned a bachelor of arts degree. Two master’s degrees followed – one in management from McGill University and another in jurisprudence in children’s law and policy from Chicago’s Loyola University – then a PhD in social work from the University of Toronto.
She says she never worried about tenure or promotion, or about “populating my CV,” and sees her academic work as “a tool in the public service to do my duty to First Nations children. It’s not the end in itself.” In fact, she signed up for the master’s in jurisprudence to better understand the intricacies of the human rights case she helped to launch. And in her research today, Dr. Blackstock continues to explore Indigenous theory as well as the identification and remediation of structural inequalities affecting First Nations children, youth and families.
Recent accolades and appointments
As the gold medal winner of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council’s 2022 Impact Awards – the highest honour the research council bestows – Dr. Blackstock acknowledges that SSHRC funding has been “absolutely key” in allowing her to work across numerous disciplines.
“I didn’t go into one discipline all the way to the top,” she notes. “I appreciate there are some merits to doing that, but I wish there were more of us jumping all over the place.”
However, she also feels there should be more funding available for the application of social sciences and humanities research. “We owe a duty to the public to implement the evidence we produce,” she says.
“One of the key elements of our case against the Government of Canada regarding First Nations kids is you look back over 100 years there’s been clear, credible documentation of the unequal public service funding from the federal government to First Nations kids and the resulting deaths and harms to children,” she says. This research that Dr. Blackstock and her colleagues gathered, in part with the support of SSHRC funding, eventually became evidence that the Caring Society brought against the government during the human rights case.
Also in 2022, Dr. Blackstock was named inaugural chancellor to NOSM University, Canada’s first independent medical university. Dr. Blackstock’s moral courage, tenacity and integrity embodies the university’s values and its unique social accountability mandate, says Sarita Verma, NOSM’s president, vice-chancellor, dean and CEO.
“I can’t think of a better person for us,” she adds. “If you look at her work with the Caring Society, if you look at her advocacy and legal actions, that’s the kind of thinking we hope she will inspire. She’s a woman who gets things done.”
Dr. Blackstock says her appointment to NOSM, a school that was designed to primarily serve the Indigenous, francophone, rural and remote communities of northern Ontario, “is really about ensuring that I do my small part to support physicians working in northern communities so that people have access to health care.”
However, she also wants to see more emphasis at Canadian universities on teaching students about advocacy: how to do it and how to continue doing it throughout their careers.
“So often we get students in social work and law who say they are doing advocacy, but we don’t train them, and we don’t teach them about the courage it takes to do it,” she says. “Where the academic milieu does young academics a disservice is [that] young academics are so focussed on filling up their CV to get tenure and promotion, they’re doing all kinds of stuff that doesn’t really knit together.”
An excellent article! Thank you Becky for interviewing Dr. Blackstock. I’ve often wondered why academics haven’t done more (in terms of activism) to get out of their ivory towers and back to the earth where they can affect change. Lots to learn here!
Fantastic article – excellent bit of journalism highlighting a vital point. Loved reading all the comments also-as a current PhD student myself (1st year) and activist I find some of the comments surprising. I only began a PhD BECAUSE of my activism and commitment to research- I 100% with the incredible Dr Cindy- enough thesis’ (do you know how many papers ar eout there and some have said there are not enough or it is needed?) There are many young PhD students working on decolonization movements within institutions through their work, through activism , through Uni groups, with peers…speaking for the UK (I study in Scotland) there is change being instigated by us ‘young ones’ and not afriad to stiry things up!!
Although I agree wholeheartedly with Dr. Blackstock’s desire to bring research and activism together, the article doesn’t show much awareness of the class dynamics of higher education. It is one thing to encourage stable senior professors to make their research more accessible and relevant through activism, but it would be a problem if young scholars took this advice to heart and privileged activism over traditional scholarship in ways that compromised their research portfolios. The latter could have significant career consequences for young scholars in the highly competitive environment of applying for grant applications and research funding. Of course, it is incumbent upon those in power to change the standards by which research is judged (including valuing the public and activist work that Dr. Blackstock helpfully encourages), but it is important to note that the burden of this change should be on the upper economic class of established researchers and tenured professors, and should not be carried by students or early career researchers. The last line of the article describes how young academics are eager to fill their cvs, and of course they are! Unless and until larger structural changes occur, we should not advise young scholars to shift away from publishing academic articles because that is often the only way they can demonstrate their value in the capitalist environment of higher education. If young scholars have the capacity to do so, then the shift Dr. Blackstock describes is great, but I worry that the intense work of starting an academic career regrettably restricts activism because of the competition-fueled demand it places on young scholars…
You said it. Too much pressure and competition for young scholars. We need more activism within universities to change this.
I take your point but I understood the argument to be that there is merit in eschewing the tradition metrics because in pursuing them we risk comprising the real reasons and motivations for doing good research in the first place. It’s hard to do, but so important to use our academic freedom even as pretenure young scholars. I think you are right with respects to precariously employed colleagues but those of us privileged with tenure track positions need to actively subvert the metrics and get into trouble as Dr. Blackstock explains. There’s not much point to our profession if we don’t.
Thank you Dr. Blacstock and her supporters for their incredible work at supporting Indigenous children and their communities. I hope more reporters, journalists, social workers, teachers and politicians will bring the many inequalities that the Indigenous People of Canada have suffered at our privileged hands.
Shame on us as well as our current and past governments for their deliberate and incredibly damaging actions that sought to ignore the needs of
children in all Indigenous communities in Canada. Let history remember these atrocities as it was not just a small oversight. It was a monumental and deliberate one.
History must now sing all praises to Dr. Blackstone and her supporters who have brought justice for all Indigenous communities in Canada.
I so agree Dr Blackstock and am advocating acting in the work we are doing through HEERO.ca – would love to share thoughts to act on. You have inspired me greatly and I want to thank you. Child welfare needs a lot of courage. As you said in a different paper moral courage. I am so with you. We know many things we can do right now. In practice. It’s time to Act. No more talking, studying and writing about. Act.
I agree very much with Dr. Blackstock’s views, and indeed share her motivations for going to university, i.e., better praxis. In my experience, however, very few university faculties want to hire activist scholars. On the contrary, activism is viewed as something that discredits scholarship; it is certainly not rewarded by the institution. This situation has only grown worse under our current corporate-style management and its auditing of academic work.
This has been my experience as well…I made a decision to put my pen down to have the time and energy to move my feet…and give up my dream of a full-time academic position…I hope others will have more choices in the future…or now! So, while letting my ego wane and living with roommates, I am grateful to be co-learning with youth, parents, and Elders in an Indigenous community ….