Addressing Anti-Indigenous Racism in Organizational Practice

Standing with Leslie Spillett and Hilda Anderson-Pyrz, two respected Indigenous leaders and champions whose work continues to strengthen communities, advance justice, and inspire meaningful action.

Anti-Indigenous racism is not only about individual prejudice. It is also built into policies, procedures, service systems, workplace culture, funding structures, documentation, supervision, leadership decisions, and the way Indigenous people are treated when they seek support.

This issue affects many sectors, including health care, social services, education, justice, shelters, child and family services, non-profit organizations, government-funded programs, universities, community agencies, and provincial service systems.

Organizations cannot address anti-Indigenous racism with good intentions alone. They need practical changes in how they work, how they make decisions, how they support staff, and how they serve Indigenous people, families, and communities.

This has been a central part of my keynote and breakout work, including my October 2025 work with the Manitoba Association of Women’s Shelters. The focus was not only on shelters. The larger issue was how provincial services, organizations, frontline systems, and government-funded programs can move beyond awareness and begin changing practice.

Understanding the Problem

Anti-Indigenous racism is connected to colonialism, residential schools, child welfare systems, policing, health care discrimination, poverty, land dispossession, gender-based violence, and the ongoing impacts of systems that have harmed Indigenous families and communities for generations.

For organizations, this means the work cannot stop at a land acknowledgement, a one-time training, or a diversity statement.

Those things may be starting points, but they are not enough. The deeper question is:

How does anti-Indigenous racism show up in the everyday work of the organization?

It may show up in intake forms, risk assessments, case notes, crisis response, referral processes, workplace culture, leadership decisions, board governance, hiring practices, supervision, safety planning, or how staff respond when Indigenous people are angry, grieving, afraid, using substances, in crisis, or asking for help.

It may also show up in the way Indigenous workers are treated inside organizations. Many Indigenous staff carry extra emotional, cultural, and educational labour while also navigating racism, tokenism, lateral pressure, and workplace silence.

That is why anti-Indigenous racism is not only a training topic. It is an organizational practice issue.

Moving Beyond Awareness

Many organizations now understand that they need cultural safety, reconciliation, and anti-racism training. That is important. But awareness does not automatically change practice. Staff can learn the history and still return to the same policies. Boards can approve land acknowledgements and still avoid accountability. Organizations can use reconciliation language while continuing practices that create harm. The real work begins when organizations ask what needs to change in day-to-day practice.

That includes questions such as:

• Do Indigenous people feel safe accessing this service?

• Are Indigenous clients, families, youth, women, Two-Spirit people, and community members believed and respected?

• Do staff understand the connection between colonial harm, trauma, grief, substance use, family violence, poverty, child welfare involvement, and systems mistrust?

• Do policies allow flexibility, dignity, and relationship-based practice?

• Are Indigenous workers supported, protected, and listened to?

• Does leadership respond when harm is named?

• Are frontline workers given practical tools, not just theory?

• Are boards and senior leaders involved in the change process?

• Is the organization willing to change practice, or only language?

These questions are not about shaming workers. Many frontline workers are already carrying heavy responsibilities with limited time, limited funding, and limited support.

The purpose is to create responsibility and direction.

Where Organizations Need to Look

Anti-Indigenous racism can show up in both obvious and subtle ways.

It can appear when Indigenous people are labelled as difficult, non-compliant, aggressive, unreliable, unsafe, or hard to serve without looking at the conditions they are navigating.

• It can appear when grief is treated as pathology, when poverty is judged, when survival strategies are punished, or when people are expected to trust systems that have harmed their families for generations.

• It can appear when Indigenous women are not believed, when families are over-surveilled, when youth are criminalized, when people who use substances are shamed, or when organizations rely on Indigenous staff to do all the cultural labour without authority or protection.

This is why training must connect directly to real service delivery. The learning has to connect to the front desk, the intake process, the shelter floor, the hospital room, the university classroom, the board table, the staff meeting, the crisis call, the policy manual, and the supervision conversation. If it does not change practice, it remains performative.

Leadership Responsibility

Anti-Indigenous racism cannot be addressed only by frontline workers.

Leadership and boards have a responsibility to examine the systems they oversee. Staff training matters, but it is not enough if policies remain harmful, decision-making remains disconnected, and Indigenous staff or clients are not protected when they name harm.

Leadership needs to ask:

1. What are we responsible for changing?

2. What policies create barriers?

3. How do we support staff to practice differently?

4. How do we respond when Indigenous people name harm?

5. How do we build accountable relationships with Indigenous communities, organizations, and service providers?

6. How do we measure change beyond attendance at training?

For boards, executives, managers, and directors, this work is connected to ethics, governance, risk, workplace safety, service quality, and community trust. Cultural safety is not a side project. It is part of organizational responsibility.

Practical Change in Frontline Practice

Organizations need more than theory. They need tools that staff can actually use.

That may include:

• Clearer intake practices.

• More respectful documentation.

• Stronger safety planning.

• Better referral pathways.

• Improved supervision and debriefing.

• Policies that recognize trauma, grief, poverty, racism, and systems mistrust.

• Support for Indigenous staff.

• Training on harm reduction, family violence, grief, residential school impacts, and anti-Indigenous racism.

• Leadership involvement in accountability.

• Relationships with Indigenous communities, organizations, and service providers.

• Opportunities for staff to reflect honestly without becoming defensive or shutting down.

The goal is not to make workers afraid to speak. The goal is to help people become more responsible, more skilled, and more grounded in their practice.

Mainstream Organizations Have Work to Do

Mainstream and provincial organizations often serve Indigenous people every day, even when they do not see themselves as Indigenous-serving organizations.

Universities, shelters, hospitals, justice-related services, child and family service systems, non-profits, community agencies, and government-funded programs all need to understand their role.

If Indigenous people are walking through the door, calling the crisis line, sitting in the classroom, accessing the shelter, receiving health care, navigating court, asking for family support, or seeking safety, then anti-Indigenous racism is relevant to the organization’s work.

This is not optional learning.

It is part of doing the work properly.

From Good Intentions to Accountable Action

Good intentions do not erase harm. Organizations need the courage to look at how their systems operate and the discipline to make practical changes. This does not happen in one workshop. A strong keynote or training session can open the door, create shared language, and help people understand where to begin. But the deeper work requires follow-through.

That means leadership must stay involved. Staff need support. Policies need review. Relationships need care. Feedback needs to be taken seriously. Indigenous workers need protection and respect. Communities need to be engaged in meaningful ways.

Anti-Indigenous racism is not addressed by saying the right words.

It is addressed by changing the conditions that allow harm to continue.

Medicine in Our Hands

Through Lisa Currier Consulting, this work connects to the Medicine in Our Hands approach. Medicine in Our Hands is grounded in the belief that communities and organizations already carry knowledge, responsibility, and the ability to change. The work is to strengthen what is already there, build practical tools, and support people to move from awareness into action.

Addressing anti-Indigenous racism requires honesty, leadership, relationship, and practice change.

It requires organizations to ask:

1. What are we willing to learn?

2. What are we willing to take responsibility for?

3. What are we willing to change?

That is where the real work begins.