Below is a land acknowledgment for Ottawa, Canada. It is important to note that Canada’s Indigenous Peoples are diverse and should be respected as such, and so this acknowledgment only reflects the land of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. If you have any comments or suggestions, please do contact us. We would love the opportunity to learn.

If you are a member of the cellular agriculture community, we strongly suggest taking the time to write your own land acknowledgment, if only to learn about the history of the land you live on and think about how that relates to your life. Here are some resources for how to write a land acknowledgment.

We also hope that you take the initiative to educate yourself about Indigenous Food Sovereignty. We suggest starting with Gather, Food Secure Canada, and Indigenous Food Systems Network.

We are coming from Ottawa, the unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation - the People of the Kitchessipi - who are the original sovereigns of this land and have been since time immemorial.

The well-being of Indigenous communities are deeply connected to respect for the rights of nature. This relationship is informed by their unique knowledge systems which view the world as an interdependent unity of beings with their environment. Integral to the knowledge taught by Indigenous Elders are teachings for balanced relationships with creation—behavior necessary for survival and to ensure sustainability for future generations. To the Anishinaabe, Mother Earth is both the physical manifestation and embodiment of creation, and the Great Spirit Manitou who created it.

To quote Black Elk, an Oglala Sioux holy man, “everything the power of the world does is done in a circle. The sky is round and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball and so are all the stars. Birds make their nests in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing”. As in a circle, reciprocity is an important part of a relationship to the land. We have a responsibility to care for the land in return for what the land provides for us. A lack of so doing creates disharmony and imbalance.

For the Anishinaabe Nation, food and the cultivation of it is an essential expression of this relationship. However, the cultural genocide Canada inflicted on Indigenous peoples that continues to this day has often used food as a devastating weapon. By denying children attending residential schools access to traditional meals and knowledge of their foodways, Canada attempted to eradicate their cultures. By restricting access to food on traditional land, Canada forcibly displaced Indigenous communities of the territories they have inhabited for innumerable generations.

As an industry, cellular agriculture is founded on the methods and needs of western science. However, we need to adopt a two-eyed seeing approach - a method that integrates western and Indigenous ideas in order to have a more complete picture of the world, yet still a humbly imperfect one. Due to our specific focus on food, we especially have the responsibility of doing so in order to help decolonize our food system. Food is not only about sustenance - the environment and culture have a synergy that Indigenous peoples have historically understood but settler society, as a collective, is just coming to know.

As settlers, we benefit from the oppressive history rife with genocide and exploitation this nation we now call Canada is the product of. This makes our lives easier in ways we recognize but in innumerable ways we have the privilege of being ignorant of. We are grateful to the Indigenous communities who continue to be willing to collaborate, to share knowledge and practises and are ultimately patient and generous with a country that has not historically been the same with them. We would like to recognize the reciprocal relationship Indigenous communities nurture with this land, past, present and future.

Credit: Adapted from Peter Globensky and Beverly Sabourin