Land Acknowledgement & Reconciliation
- by Holly Burton
land & reconciliation
WIMDI is a community founded on and largely operated out of the land of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) nations. We acknowledge and thank these nations for hosting us and our gatherings. However, we also recognize that simply thanking and acknowledging these nations and this land is insufficient.
Land represents more than just the ground under our feet, our offices, our supermarkets, or our houses. It is the source of everything we use to live: food, cotton for our clothes, copper to conduct electricity, fossil fuels and water we harness to give us power. Land represents the basic building block of wealth in our society. And through colonial seizure of land, that wealth has been stolen and unfairly redistributed to settlers like many of us in the WIMDI community.
We believe that the seizure and occupation of these lands was unethical, violent, and deeply unjust and that the same colonial injustice and harm exist and are actively reinforced in the present day.
It is essential that WIMDI as an organization, and all of us as individuals, work to find concrete ways to stop the harm, reconcile, and redistribute stolen wealth. Although speaking the truth about the land is important, our collective reconciliation needs to go beyond words and acknowledgement. Here are some plans we have in place to make our activism concrete:
Redistribution of Collective Financial Privilege
Although we know this is not the case for everyone in the WIMDI community, many of our WIMDI members work in highly-compensated industries and have financial privilege. Many of us also have financial privilege that is created by or directly tied to colonial injustice (eg: those of us who own homes on Indigenous land).
We are implementing policies at WIMDI events that will allow us to redistribute some of our collective financial privilege to support Indigenous women. We'll be designating our two largest yearly events in May and October as paid events where 100% of the ticket sales are donated to local non-profits that support Indigenous women.
We recognize that not all of our WIMDI members are in stable financial positions and that many rely on free tickets. We are passionate about keeping WIMDI accessible to everyone, regardless of financial position. Other than these two special events, all of our events will continue to be free, with an option to donate available for those who want it. We will also maintain a "free" ticket category at our paid events for those who need them, and a "pay what you'd like" option for those who would like to donate less (or more) than the standard ticket price. We encourage any member with financial stability to choose a paid ticket and participate in our reconciliation efforts.
We are currently collecting donations for the Pacific Association of First Nations Women's Scholarship Fund for Indigenous Women & Girls. You can donate at any time here.
Land Acknowledgements at WIMDI Events
We begin all WIMDI events with land acknowledgements that speak the truth about the unceded land we operate on to educate our community and to show gratitude to the nations that host us and our gatherings. We will also encourage our speakers to share acknowledgement for the land they live and work on.
Alongside our land acknowledgements and our bi-annual events benefitting local non-profits, at all of our free events, we commit to providing those in our community an (optional) opportunity to donate and support a local Indigenous non-profit -- in any dollar amount that suits their financial situation.
FAQ
Got questions about WIMDI's reconciliation and land acknowledgement policies and practices? We've got answers! Check 'em out below:
When we were working on designing our land acknowledgement, we were clear that we wanted to go beyond words and take more concrete actions to begin to address our collective colonial past and present. Using our voices to support Indigenous rights and title of their unceded land is an important type of activism, but we knew we could do more.
One of the core functions of colonialism -- and land seizure in particular -- is the systematic theft of wealth from Indigenous nations.
Although we know this is not the case for everyone in the WIMDI community, many of our WIMDI members work in highly-compensated industries and have financial privilege. Many of us also have financial privilege that is created by or directly tied to colonial injustice (eg: those of us who own homes on Indigenous land).
We feel strongly that one of the best forms of activism is to put cash directly in folks' hands, especially when part of the problem you are combating is reduced access to capital and wealth.
This is a great question! Why not make all of them paid, right?
We actually initially considered doing this option and we went back and forth and evaluated it in great detail before we made our decision to designate only our two largest events as paid for donation to a non-profit.
Ultimately, there were some drawbacks to the “all events are paid events” option:
First of all, paid events – even if there are free tickets available – might be a barrier to some attending (eg: if they didn’t realize free tickets were available because of the way Eventbrite & Meetup display ticket pricing). This would mean fewer people have access to our content, but also that the WIMDIs who do attend get to interact with fewer of their amazing peers in our meetings. Yuck! Secondly, we knew that we’d need to have lower ticket prices (eg: $5-10) if we were going to charge for every event. We did the math and realized that, when we considered how it would affect attendance at our bi-weekly events, we’d actually be able to donate more money to Indigenous non-profits if we charged a higher ticket price for our two largest events instead and made a focused effort on promoting them effectively.
Finally, paid events create more admin overhead for our volunteers (eg: all the back-end accounting required to donate the money), which is much more significant when it’s for 24 events a year instead of two. We wanted to preserve that volunteer time and effort for everything else we do at WIMDI.