Land Acknowledgement

Contributing authors in this book span four countries in North America:  Canada, Mexico, Guatemala and the United States.  In each of those countries, the many nations of Indigenous people have been subjected to colonization and continue to resist colonizing systems and violence such as femicide.  To each of these nations and their people, we acknowledge the devastation to the land you and your ancestors live upon, and the destruction of your language, culture, spirituality and families.  We seek to join our acknowledgements, our respect for one another, our mourning and our resistance, to make each of us stronger in our work.

From Treaty 4 land upon which this book originated and much of the work has been done, we specifically acknowledge that treaties were made between the Canadian government^[1] and the nêhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda nations, and that we live on the homeland of the Métis/Michif Nation. Today, these lands continue to be the shared Territory of many diverse peoples from near and far. The nêhiyawak originally referred to Regina as oskana kā-asastēki which literally means “The place where bones are piled up.” This is why Regina’s nickname is “Pile O’Bones” and this is the origin of the name of our university’s current location in Wascana Park.