Land Acknowledgement

We recognize that our work in the Oakwood Vaughan community takes place on the stolen land of Indigenous peoples through historic and continued colonization.

We are on the lands of the Haudenosaunee, the Anishinaabe, the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit River. We are under the authority of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum, a treaty that bound the Anishinaabe, Mississaugas, and Haudenosaunee to share and protect the land.

The clearing of the land for settlement has involved an ongoing genocide of Indigenous peoples, which was, in part, carried out through Indian Agents, the Pass System, residential schools, underhousing and incarceration. The newcomers did not honour the Dish with One Spoon. Where other nations honoured their relationship with the land, settlers saw land as property, as resource, as something to be extracted. We understand tenant exploitation and gentrification are symptoms of commodified land and housing, and we recognize private property as a colonial value.