The Indigenous Lands and Decolonization document is an informational piece created for the HOPE Lab at the University of Calgary.
This piece details information on Treaty 6, Treaty 7, and Treaty 8, as well as an overview of Indigenous communities residing in these areas. The document also discusses what decolonization looks like and why it is important.
The purpose of this document is to provide incoming lab members with information on the territory we live on and our relationship to this land.
Our hope is that by providing a detailed overview of these treaties, this document will go beyond a land acknowledgement to encourage lab members to recognize their place on this territory and reflect on the legacy of colonialism. As settlers who conduct our work on traditional lands, we felt it was crucial that this land and the communities who have taken care of it were deliberately acknowledged in our lab.
Native Land played a central role in the creation of this piece as it provided a clear representation of Treaty 6, Treaty 7, and Treaty 8 territory.
As one of our primary objectives was to acknowledge the traditional lands of what is colonially known as Alberta, the interactive map provided by Native Land made it easy to locate these regions. Native Land was a unique resource in the creation of this document as it represented our personal relationships to the land.
The map specifically showed where our city is located in the larger Treaty 7 region, which informed our detailed section on the treaty, and our discussion of Moh-kins-tsis (i.e., the City of Calgary).
Moreover, we were able to list other major Albertan cities in Treaty 6, Treaty 7, and Treaty 8 territory which created a thorough overview of Alberta’s traditional lands.
Native Land greatly contributed to the success of our project by emphasizing Indigenous perspectives of this land and how settler Canadians relate to it.
LEARN MORE ABOUT HOPE LAB HERE
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