LANA HISCOCK

This land acknowledgement is necessary because the the history of Canada as a country was, and is, oppressive. Our region comprises what is known as the "Haldimand tract", a parcel of land surrounding the Grand River, six miles on either side, that was "given" to the Indigenous Haudenosaunee people via treaty in 1784 by those who thought they "owned" the land through violence and oppression of the Native people. This land was colonised, immorally and unjustly, by oppression of our fellow humans through destruction and devaluation of their way of life. Systems of oppression were put in place over many years and these systems have benefitted people like myself while disadvantaging Indigenous people. These systems mean that Indigenous people end up comprising 0.5 percent of the population of Toronto, but end being 15% of the city's homeless population; that 0.78 percent of the general population in cities will experience homelessness, while nearly seven percent of Aboriginal city dwellers will at some point be homeless; it means that Indigenous students face many hardships and barriers to their education, leading to, and compounded by, poor high school graduation rates; the United Nations has called the living conditions in many Native communities "abhorrent"; the residential school system operated by the Canadian government literally ripped children from their parents, abused, and in many cases murdered them and buried them in unmarked graves which are still being found to this day. The systems of oppression we have created must be torn down; a large part of doing that is to return oversight of the land that was not ours to take nor give away.