Land Acknowledgement

Justice for Queen and Close coalition members gather and organize on the traditional territories of the Wendat and Petun First Nations, the Seneca, and most recently the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. 

We gather at this site remembering the devastating impacts of the white settler colonialism that enabled Imperial Oil to 'purchase' this land in 1920 for one dollar ($1) and for Skale Developments to acquire this land in 2016 for $1.9 million dollars. We remember the devastating impacts of environmental racism at brownfield redevelopment sites, where developers capitalize off of a lack of remediation and, in this case, a big oil company leverages their long-term contamination on the site to make a huge profit. 

We gather remembering those who have been forcibly enslaved and brought here against their will through the North Atlantic Slave Trade. We gather to make more visible the injustices of private property and the for-profit development sector that depends on social, economic, and political violence against Black, Indigenous, people of colour, women, trans non-binary, two-spirited, disabled, psychiatric survivors, and low-income communities to centralize wealth to the most privileged and well-off. 

We gather in deep gratitude for this opportunity to show up in meaningful ways to build a shared dignified community in which we can each fight against these dehumanization processes, practices, and systems in our own ways as a collective.