LAND, LANGUAGE & RELATIONSHIP

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Before offering anything here, we begin by acknowledging where we are.

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We acknowledge that Hamilton is only one name in the long life of this place. Long before the city carried the name of settler George Hamilton, these lands and waters were known, named and lived in relationship with by Indigenous peoples.

 

Hamilton Harbour itself has been recorded as Macassa, meaning “beautiful waters.” May we remember that the names on our maps carry histories, while the places beneath them have lives extending far beyond those names.

These lands are the traditional territories of the Erie, Neutral, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee and Mississaugas.

 

This place is within the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement associated with sharing and caring for the lands and waters of the Great Lakes region. These lands are also connected to the Between the Lakes Purchase of 1792 between the Crown and the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

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We honour the Indigenous peoples who have lived in relationship with these lands and waters across generations, and those who continue to live, create, teach, protect, gather, raise families and sustain their cultures here today.

And we honour the many lives and relationships that make this place what it is.

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We honour Lake Ontario and the waters that flow toward and from it. The Niagara Escarpment and the ancient stone beneath us. The soil, forests, meadows and wetlands. The trees, medicines, grasses, flowers, mosses and fungi. The birds, mammals, fish, insects and countless small lives whose names we may never know.

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We honour those who came before.

Those who are here now.

And those who will come after us.

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This place is not an empty surface upon which human history happens. It has its own ancient and continuing histories of water, stone, migration, growth, death, decomposition, adaptation and renewal. Human beings entered into relationships already unfolding here.

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Colonization profoundly disrupted many of these relationships. Indigenous peoples were displaced. Languages, ceremonies, spiritual practices and systems of knowledge were deliberately suppressed. Children were separated from families and communities. Forests were cleared, waters altered, habitats fragmented and living beings increasingly understood through systems of property, extraction and resource.

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These histories are not finished simply because time has passed.

Their effects continue through bodies, cultures, waters, soils, ecosystems and relationships.

And so acknowledgement asks something more of us than remembering history.

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It asks us to notice where we are.

To learn whose lives make our own possible.

To recognize that we have entered relationships we did not create.

And to consider how we will participate while we are here.

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WE ALSO ACKNOWLEDGE LANGUAGE

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Colonization happens not only to territories, but also through language.

Names change.

Stories are interrupted.

Words disappear or are forbidden.

New categories are imposed upon places, peoples and ways of knowing.

Eventually, the language we inherit can begin to feel like the only possible way of describing the world.

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Earth in Sky holds reverence for the power of words because language helps shape what we are able to notice.

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When land becomes property, our relationship with it can change.

When forests, water, minerals and animals become resources, we may begin to understand them primarily through what they can provide for us.

When the living world becomes nature, we can begin to imagine that human beings exist somewhere outside of it.

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Even the words Hamilton, Ontario and Canada belong to histories that are much younger than the land itself.

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May we therefore hold our language with humility.

May we remember that the names we know are not always the first names.

May we remain curious about the assumptions carried within our words.

May languages that were silenced be spoken.

May stories that survived be carried forward by the peoples to whom they belong.

May we listen when people tell us the names by which they know themselves, their ancestors and their lands.

And may we remember that no single language can contain the entirety of a living world.

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WE ACKNOWLEDGE A WIDER HUMAN HISTORY

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Colonization has taken many forms across the Earth.

People throughout the world carry histories of invasion, empire, displacement, forced migration, assimilation, religious suppression, slavery, extraction, resistance and survival.

These histories are not the same, and they should not be collapsed into one another.

The particular histories and continuing sovereignty of Indigenous peoples on these lands deserve particular recognition here.

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At the same time, we acknowledge that many people arrive in this place carrying their own complicated relationships with ancestry, migration, homeland, language and belonging.

Some know where their ancestors lived.

Some have been separated from that knowledge.

Some inherited the language of their ancestors.

Some inherited the language of those who colonized them.

Some carry several histories at once.

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May this complexity deepen our compassion for one another rather than erase our differences.

May we learn where we come from.

May we learn where we are.

And may we become more conscious of the relationships we are creating for those who will come after us.

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WE HONOUR THE LIVING PLACE

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Earth in Sky is informed by an animist understanding that human beings exist within a larger living world. We do not claim Indigenous teachings that are not ours to claim. Indigenous knowledge belongs to the peoples and Nations from which it comes. Animist traditions have also arisen in many places and cultures throughout human history, each shaped by particular relationships with land, ancestors, beings and place.

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From within our own practice, we offer reverence to the life surrounding us here.

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We honour the waters of Lake Ontario, whose movement reaches far beyond the shoreline we can see.

We honour the Niagara Escarpment, whose ancient stone shapes the body of this city.

We honour the soil beneath pavement and buildings.

We honour the trees that continue growing between roads and houses.

We honour the birds, insects, mammals, fungi, plants and countless lives with whom this city is shared.

We honour the rain and snow.

We honour the changing seasons.

We honour the food that arrives here from soils and waters elsewhere.

We honour the bodies of our ancestors that returned to Earth before us.

And we remember that our own bodies will someday return as well.

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Nothing we touch exists entirely by itself.

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Everything is possible because of relationships extending far beyond what we can see.

May we remember this.

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OUR COMMITMENT

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Earth in Sky exists here as a guest, neighbour and participant.

We understand stewardship not as managing the Earth from above, but as learning how to participate responsibly within relationships that already sustain us.

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May we take what we need with gratitude.

May we notice where things come from.

May we protect what gives life.

May we repair what we are able to repair.

May we support Indigenous peoples in protecting their lands, waters, languages, cultures and sovereignty.

May we resist treating living beings only as commodities.

May we learn the names of our neighbours, human and otherwise.

May we leave something nourishing for those who come next.

May we listen more carefully to the places where we live.

May we remain teachable.

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And when we discover that we have caused harm or misunderstood our relationship, may we have the humility to change.

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A land acknowledgement cannot accomplish any of this for us.

Words can point toward relationship.

Living must make the relationship real.

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So before we gather, create, move, receive care, make ritual, drink tea or imagine other worlds within Earth in Sky, we remember the world that is already holding us.

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We remember where our feet are.

We remember that we arrived here through countless lives and histories.

We remember that others will arrive after us.

And for the brief time that this place holds us,

may we learn to hold it with reverence in return.