Acknowledgement & Commitments
Connecting Across
Diversity & Difference
Respecting the many spectrums of identity and difference, I encounter each person as beautifully unique and recognize that, as a species and across species, our diversity and differences contribute to our collective strength & resilience and to a healthy ecosystem.
I also understand that if any one of us is oppressed, none of us are truly free. In line with this, I strive to be the best anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-homophobe & transphobe, anti-speciesist, anti-ageist, anti-ableist, feminist, environmentalist, and radical therapist that I can be.
Embracing Humility
In this work, I embrace humility and acknowledge that there is much I have yet to learn. I am open to learn, willing to change and ready to grow.
Beyond Acknowledgement
My attempt at and expansion on a Land Acknowledgement...
I, Annette Mira McLellan, am a settler through immigration, second generation living on these lands if not stolen, and if not unceded, then disrespectfully and with deadly consequences taken under false pretense from the Indigenous, first peoples, of these lands known as turtle island, colonized and renamed as Canada/North America.
I grew up on the lands of the Chippewa, polluted and abused to this day, a living legacy of colonization and a devastating example of environmental racism. It is still a beautiful place though sadly now known as Chemical Valley. From here I spent days, months, years living, learning and adventuring on the lands of the Anishinaabeg: Ojibwa, Odawa, Potawatami, Chippewa, Mississauga, Algonquin, and Delaware communities. I now call Mi’kma’ki home, the ancestral and unceded lands of the Mi’kmaw people.
Beyond, more than, other than humans also lived here before colonization. I acknowledge the many beings who have left, been hunted to extinction or otherwise been disappeared from these lands as well as those who continue to survive in the waters and forests that remain; making due in the altered, often polluted and decimated, landscapes of this place and all places colonized and uprooted. I acknowledge those animals brought here, bred here and kept caged here in atrocious conditions to feed the colonial mission.
I acknowledge the plants that grow and surround me: the trees, especially the eastern hemlock, the fungi, lichen and moss, the shrubs and grasses and flowers. The earth, rock and dirt, the michoryzal and root networks under my feet . The sky above me with the sun, stars, clouds, moon. The waters - the rivers and lakes and the ocean - that flow alongside me.
I acknowledge and I am grateful to the first peoples, the animals, & plants that belong to the lands & waters that I now call home. To Mi’kma’ki the ancestral and unceded lands of the Mi’kmaw people. To the Pijinuiskaq and Apsamkuk rivers that I walk alongside. I express this acknowledgement and gratitude. not as appropriation but as appreciation, rooted in my own ancestry’s (Polish - Pagan/Rodzimowierstwo & Scottish - Celtic) respect for the lands, waters, and more than human beings.
Beyond acknowledgement, I also embrace a commitment to respect and stand with the first peoples, plants and beings of the lands I live, learn, and adventure on/with. I commit to make decisions with all in mind. To tread lightly. To give back. I do this in many ways and with everyday choices and actions I take. (See Eco/Ethics for more specific Commitments on behalf of Interflections as a business).