Commissioner Karin Van Droffelaar acknowledged that tonight’s meeting is being held on the traditional, ancestral, unceded territory of the Mohawk First Nations on which we are learning, working, and organizing today. I think that it is important to acknowledge the land because growing up as an immigrant here, I had never heard the traditional names of the territories or understood the importance of this acknowledgment until I had the pleasure of teaching and learning from the Indigenous students in my classes. We respect the continued connections with the past, present, and future in our ongoing relationships with Indigenous peoples within our community and strive to find ways to learn from each other and care for this land that we now share.
