I live and work on unceded Indigenous territory. The city in which I live, colonially referred to as Montréal, is known as Tiohtià:ke in Kanien’kéha and as Mooniyang in Anishinaabemowin. This river island, perched in the middle of the Saint Lawrence on the northern part of Turtle Island, has long been a gathering place for many Indigenous nations, including the Kanien’kehá:ka and the Anishinaabeg. The Kanien’kehá:ka, “Keepers of the Eastern Door”, are the stewards of these lands and waters. For this reason, I use this place’s Kanien’kéha name.

I am affiliated with Dalhousie University, which operates on the unceded and ancestral territories of the Mi’kmaw, Wolastoqey, and Peskotomuhkati Peoples. These sovereign Nations hold inherent rights as the original stewards of these lands and waters. The Peace and Friendship Treaties did not cede land, and Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 affirms the rights they set out. Honouring those obligations remains a political and legal responsibility for settler governments and for those of us who live and work under their authority.

Rooted in over 52 land-based settlements across the part of Mi’kma’ki colonially referred to as Nova Scotia, African Nova Scotian communities have sustained a legacy of resistance to anti-Blackness and systemic violence for over 400 years. As a Black researcher who is not African Nova Scotian, I am not exempt from this history. I arrive with my own position within these racial structures and recognize the power dynamics at play in my interactions with these communities. I am also a guest on Mi’kma’ki, and while my Blackness complicates my relationship to settler-colonialism, it does not place me outside settler relations to Indigenous land. 

As a registered social worker, I have an obligation to name the violence inherent in my own profession. Social work has functioned as a colonial instrument. It has played a significant role in the Sixties Scoop, the ongoing child welfare removals of Indigenous children from their families, alongside the horrific violence of the residential school system. Child welfare systems across so-called Canada still disproportionately target Indigenous and Black children. My individual recognition of this is insufficient: my training came directly from the institutions and systems that are complicit in this violence. I remain a member of professional regulatory bodies that, to this day, have not adequately accounted for the scale and scope of this violence. 

Decolonization is not a metaphor. My commitments, grounded in abolitionist and anticolonial practices, are attentive to Indigenous and Black queer and trans life and rooted in mutual aid and accountability. I affirm the need to return land, resources, and power to Indigenous stewardship, and I express my solidarity with Indigenous and Black communities across Turtle Island who continue to resist colonial violence in all its forms.