Our Context

The world changed in 2020. First, the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus brought most of the planet to a halt in the spring. Then, in May, the Minneapolis Police Department killed George Floyd, a Black man. This sparked a global wave of protests that brought Black Lives Matter and anti-racism issues to the forefront in a way that had never been seen before. The work of Shift Lab 2.0, including this report, took place during these events and was directly affected by both of them. For example, the Anti-Racism Subscription Box was launched two weeks after Floyd’s death. Subscriptions skyrocketed from the 30 we anticipated to more than 1,000, with another 500 people signed up on the waiting list.

But rather than opportunistically scrambling to meet this newfound attention to fight racism, the Shift Lab continued its work— researching, developing, and testing the prototypes it has designed to combat racism and wake up the “Sleepy Middle” in the Treaty 6/Canadian context. As a result, our processes, perspectives, and conclusions may not satisfy everyone in the expanding anti-racism space. However, we hope you will read this report and strive to understand the work to combat racism that a diverse group of community leaders undertook from 2017 to 2020.