Land Acknowledgement

Across Turtle Island and this land we now call Canada, CAIS-ACSI members live and work on treaty territories and unceded lands of diverse Indigenous Peoples. We acknowledge our responsibilities to honour those who were here before us and recognize that these lands have been sites of meeting and exchange for the First Peoples for thousands of years. We respect and are grateful for the long history of Indigenous stewardship of the lands and waters and acknowledge the urgency of working together to address ecological devastation today.

CAIS members are on their own personal paths of reconciliation, however, as an Association we have more work to do to dismantle colonial structures and practices within our disciplinary and professional communities.

We commit to learning and teaching about past and ongoing injustices perpetuated against Indigenous Peoples including in the name of information science through biased information classification, collections, unequal levels of access to information and information services, discriminatory recruitment and hiring practices, and by neglecting to include Indigenous perspectives, practices, pedagogies, and methodologies in our teaching and research.

Further, we commit to uplifting Indigenous voices in our association and to working in solidarity with Indigenous colleagues and communities to support Indigenous rights to information, data sovereignty, preservation of Indigenous languages and cultural heritage, and more equitable library and information services and structures.