Our Mission:

Resist.

We live and breathe on the unceded, ancestral and occupied traditional lands of the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island. We give thanks to the Indigenous Peoples who have cared for and protected the land and the water, and we hold fast to the strength of the Peoples in the resistance of colonial violence on these sacred territories.

The Proclaiming Our Roots project is the culmination of the histories, stories and experiences of mixed Black and Indigenous Peoples on Turtle Island. This project aimed to create written, visual and narrative archives of the geographies, histories, and contemporary realities of Black-Indigenous Peoples. With over 400 years of African diasporic presence in Canada, relationships between Black and Indigenous Peoples offered a form of resistance against colonial oppression and afforded these communities an opportunity for survival.

Land Acknowledgements

We live on the unceded and traditional territories of the Indigenous Peoples (First Nations, Inuit and Metis) of Turtle Island, which includes Canada, the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. We give thanks to the Indigenous Peoples of these territories who have resisted colonial violence for centuries in serving as the stewards and protectors of this land.

Herein, we also acknowledge the realities and resistance of the displaced Indigenous peoples of the African continent who through enslavement and subjugation to colonial violence, were forced and coerced into migration and death.

We give thanks, for we are still here!

We are their descendants and we are telling our stories.

WE ARE PROCLAIMING OUR ROOTS.

We are from communities across Turtle Island, the Caribbean Islands, and the continent of Africa.