We are non-Indigenous, queer identified settlers living in Toronto/Tkaronto, located on the territory of many Indigenous peoples including the Haudenosaunee, Huron-Wendat, Seneca, Petun, Metis and the Anishinabeg Nation, including the Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation.

The land and waters in Tkaronto are subject to the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant; a pre-colonial agreement between Haudenosaunee & Ojibwe allied nations to share & care for the natural resources around the Great Lakes. The colonial contracts unjustly enacted on this land and multiple First Nations include Treaty 13 with the Mississaugas of the Credit.

We continue to learn about the importance of doing and actioning land acknowledgements as settlers, with the complexity of land acknowledgment that is not reparations, and holding space for the very different ways we have experienced being settlers in our lifetimes and in our ancestors’ lifetimes.

For us as a settler organization on stolen land, actioning land acknowledgements personally and organizationally include building knowledge, unlearning, doing repair work, advocacy and solidarity work, mobilizing and distributing resources that have been unjustly accumulated through capitalism and white supremacy, and through building meaningful relationships.