We are honoured to welcome you. 

Take a moment right now to allow yourself to fully arrive. Allow the dust to settle in your mind. Bring your attention to your body, your breath, this present moment. You have arrived!  

Welcome. 

Thank you for bringing your ancestors with you; we welcome them also. 

We welcome your sacred connections to the lands on which you were conceived, the lands  that hosted your births, and the lands of your ancestors. The lands that we are standing upon 

and all the life that came before us.  

We would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on Indigenous land that has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples from the beginning. 

For those of us who are settlers, we're grateful for the opportunity to meet here and we thank all the generations of  people who have taken care of this land - for thousands of years. 

Long before today, as we gather here, there have been Indigenous Peoples who have been the stewards of this place. 

In particular, we acknowledge the traditional territory of the Neutral, the Haudenosaunee (Ho-dee-no-sho-ne) and the Anishinaabe (Anish-in-ah-bay) peoples. We recognize and deeply appreciate their historic relationship with this place.

We also recognize the Métis, Inuit, and other Indigenous peoples, for shaping and strengthening this community in particular, and our province and country as a whole.  

For those of us who are settlers, this recognition of the contributions and historic importance of Indigenous peoples must also be clearly and overtly connected to our collective commitment to make the promise and the challenge of Truth and Reconciliation real in our communities.