Territorial acknowledgments are an homage and a sign of respect towards the various FNMI cultures. It attests to their past and perennial existence.

Starting the day or gathering with a Territorial Acknowledgment not only starts conversations about land, land rights, human rights, genocide, enclosure of the lands, land ownership, relationships with and to land, etc., but also provides an opportunity to learn new perspectives which view the world as more interdependent rather than individualistic, which is a very current North American and minority world view.  

Both consciously and subconsciously, acknowledging land is also a gateway to reflection, critical and creative thinking and the development of the practice of gratitude and appreciation. 

Starting the day or a gathering with purposeful mention of the sharing of land and resources emphasizes togetherness and interconnectedness, rather than individuality and helps create either an underlying or a poignant feeling of community.  

I'd like to expand the territorial acknowledgment to the fauna and flora and waters who have made these areas their homes for millennia, and came before people. Humans are not "owners" of the land and nature, but rather stewards. We are a part of nature, not apart from nature, and only responsible actions, including allowing nature to heal and to replenish, will allow for our shared and reliant existence on Earth.

My name it Tamara Bolotenko, a settler with Ukrainian roots (also Russian, Ashkenazi Jewish, Turkish and other). I identify as she/her.

Amongst many other things, I am a teacher and I currently work as the Vice Principal of Citizenship for grades 6 and 7 at an independent school. My main responsibility is to create programs that help develop the whole child (clubs, societies, community engagement opportunities, social justice initiatives) and socially responsible and respectful citizens.

I was taught through a Eurocentric lens in school. In the French Immersion system, I was told that I was being taught the minority perspectives of the French (now Québécois, Acadiens, Franco-Ontariens, etc.). The history and geography courses focused of Eurocentric experiences in Canada. I was taught that Jacques Cartier "found" Canada. I remember looking the drawings of interactions among the French and English and various FNMI tribes and thinking that the Europeans looks distinguished, educated and civilized while the First Nations peoples looked uneducated and primitive. I don't recall specifically if we were taught this but I do recall that there were titters in the class at loincloths and the teachers never seized the opportunity to teach us any sort of cultural proficiency. When learning about the Haida people in grade 6, the unit focused on Emily Carr and the lens through which she saw the people and culture. 

Much of the hidden curriculum focuses not only on what is said or taught, but rather on what is left out. Missing perspectives from many different FNMI groups (rather than just "Indians"); European-drawn territorial boundaries; Sir John A MacDonald's photo in my high school in Ottawa; token drawings or artwork which depict the old way of life of FNMI people and freezes them in time; the celebration of FN peoples who helped the English or the French conquer the other (depending in which part of Canada one lives in); etc. 

The Eurocentric perspective was a Western Eurocentric view. The history books had nothing about the Ukrainian internment in Canada, which I had learned about at Ukrainian school in grade 10. Nothing was taught of the ship full of almost 1,000 German Jews that William Lyon Mackenzie King sent back to be killed in the gas chambers. His statue stands on Parliament Hill. 

And of course, nothing was taught of the Wampum Belt Treaty, the Indian Act, the Residential School System, the Sixties School, Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Girls, etc. To this day, many people do not know that Eastern Europeans, homosexuals, academics, Muslims, Roma peoples and many others were also on Hitler’s hit list and perished in gas chambers, concentration camps and work camps. There is no space for their stories in history.

This website was born out of a year of studying three AQ courses entitled First Nations, Métis and Inuit Peoples: Understanding Traditional Teachings, Histories, Current Issues and Cultures. through which I not only unlearned and relearned the history that was never taught to me through the French Immersion system in 90s Ottawa, but also explored issues affected First Nations, Métis and Inuit (FNMI) Peoples, including different Indigenous worldviews, Indigenous ways of knowing and pedagogies, the importance of language, nation-to-nation governance and the various forms of colonization and subjugation, which continue to this day.

The purpose of this website is to share my learnings and resources that I have either created or come across during my learning journey. I am not an expert. 

My motivations for enrolling in the first course circled around my love of learning about different languages, cultures and peoples and my belief that we can only understand one another if we learn to empathize and to show compassion for others. That starts with dismantling stereotypes and the “otherness” of others through learning about and with them.

I never dreamed that my learning journey would take me down the path of personal discovery, reevaluation of values and re-centering of myself. It has also prompted me to start my own journey with reconciliation, not because I am guilty of what happened in the past, but because I will be guilty of what happens in the future if I do nothing.

Learning about different ways of knowing and knowledge systems has permitted me to see how deeply colonized our Ontario education system is, and how little space there is for Indigenous and minority experiences, narratives, values, perspectives and existence. When children do not see their culture and cultural values and ways of learning in the curriculum, their self-esteem suffers. No child can feel safe or included or valued if their culture is not.

As such, I am currently working to decolonize the education system at my school by asking difficult questions, creating safe spaces and Indigenizing the curriculum through the addition of a Territorial acknowledgment on the morning announcements at at gatherings, assemblies on topics relating to FNMI issues and a student Calls to Action club. 

These are small actions when one takes into account the grandiosity of what needs to be done in order to fully decolonize education, which is a total dismantling and rebirth, but they are a start, and they are what one person can do. Imagine what many could accomplish together!