The Institute for Community Sustainability (ICS) was imagined, created, and built in the context of living, working, and benefiting from the historical and ongoing settler occupation of Indigenous lands on Turtle Island – specifically the land currently known as “London, Ontario”.
We acknowledge that this land is the traditional territory of the following peoples: the Anishinaabeg (which include the Ojibwe or Chippewa Nation), the Haudenosaunee (also known as the Iroquois, which include the Oneida Nation), the Lenape (also known as the Delaware, which include the Munsee-Delaware), the Attawandaron (also known as the Neutral), and the Wendat (also known as the Huron).
Today, the three Indigenous Nations that are neighbours to London are the Chippewas of the Thames First Nation, Oneida Nation of the Thames and the Munsee-Delaware Nation, who all continue to live as sovereign Nations with individual and unique languages, cultures and customs. London is also home to a large urban indigenous population. Looking further, there are 11 First Nations communities in Southwestern Ontario and over 120 communities in the Province as a whole.
This land continues to be home to diverse Indigenous people (First Nations, Métis and Inuit) whom we recognize as the traditional and contemporary stewards, and fierce defenders of this land, the water, the trees, and the air.
These peoples are the original environmental activists, whose models of resistance are reflected in our own activism.
We acknowledge that, as well as the use of treaties, not always fairly honoured, some land was stolen outright, and that the lives, cultures, languages, and traditions of many Indigenous peoples were destroyed, intentionally or unintentionally, by the arrival of European colonists.
As immigrants and as ancestors of these European colonists, we take responsibility for making reparations and dismantling systems of oppression in service of justice and Indigenous sovereignty. In ICS operations and beyond, we commit to building relationships of trust, love, accountability, respect, and solidarity with the Indigenous peoples and lands of Turtle Island.
Resources
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