Our Projects

Advocacy

Since its inception in 2017, CHBC has worked alongside our own Black, Indigenous & People of Color (BIPOC) communities to transform the societal conditions in which we exist. Many of our communities are here because we have been displaced. Still, we have survived and thrived because of our ancestors, the medicine we share with each other, and the collective strength we continue to build.

Mission: To advocate for equitable policies & systems by collaborating effectively, building leadership, and serving as conduits for our communities.

CHBC believes that:

• Our work must center the needs of those who are most impacted by injustice.
• Everyone in our communities have essential skills, stories, and presence to contribute.
• We are the experts in our communities and know best what is needed to create and implement policies, programs and initiatives that fulfill our community’s dreams.
• Our connection to the land and each other should drive personal and community development efforts.
• Power exists at the tables communities build and not within the existing racist, colonized structures that are currently reflected by the institutions that attempt to govern our lives.

Policy Initiatives

The CHBC has been working towards improved health outcomes for the communities represented, since 2017. Our focus areas have been mental health and health priorities, which we have determined using Community Based Participatory Research.

Holistic means we view health priorities from a decolonizing and anti-racist lens. Health is not the absence of disease. It is our highest aspirations for our whole selves, taking into account the mental, spiritual, and social health of our families and communities. 

Each of the systems we interact with must be recreated by and for those most impacted by injustice in order to have healthy and strong communities. These systems include, but not limited to: education, health, economic, transportation, food, governance, legal, and housing.

Decolonizing Research

Our Elders have passed on important ancestral knowledge that helps us continue to grow and stay rooted. All of the research conducted by CHBC applies decolonizing and anti-racist methods in order to shift health care systems and policy and better serve our communities. 

We focus on illustrating the breadth and depth of knowledge that can be gathered when different ways of knowing are acknowledged and valued by centering voices that have historically been silenced.

Self-proclaimed “liberal” and “equitable” institutions that believe they serve our communities have a traumatic impact and are a new form of colonialism. We become  commodities of the very health systems that claim to serve us. 

Because of this, our researchers remain intentionally accountable to community relationships and actions that result in relevant, respectful, and non-oppressive outcomes. Our work is a form of anti-colonial resistance.