Open Doors Legal Services operates on lands that were never empty, lands which have been the home of many nations for millennia including the Anishinaabek, Wendat and Haudenosaunee. Land that some histories have told us were occupied through mutual agreement, land that was in reality occupied through deception, dispossession, forced displacement and genocide. Land that, according to international law, was considered empty because it had no master because the relationship to land was never conceptualized in terms of ownership or domination.
Land is so much more than the biologically sustaining foundation on which we build and live our lives. Land is about relationships, kinship, identity, who belongs and who is valued. It is about memory and connection, tradition and evolution. For many, the question “where are you really from?” echoes the painful legacy of forced displacement and migration, reminding us that for many, home is a complex and often contested concept. That for many, you are always foreign, always other.

Let us remember that the theft of colonialism extends beyond the land to peoples, cultures, histories and kin. That this theft was also a rewriting of those peoples, cultures, histories and kin so that the ways we relate to land, to ourselves and to the other have been fundamentally altered. That much of what we have come to view as normative was constructed to oppress and dehumanize. That the language that facilitates our ability to communicate often perpetuates power dynamics rooted in colonial histories and presents of domination, inequality and erasure. And that history, like language, is never neutral and always authored.

Let us not forget that the institutions in and through which we seek to question and challenge colonial logics are themselves invested in maintaining and perpetuating land dispossession, here and elsewhere. That colonialism is not a relic of the past but an ever-present condition of our lives.

As we express gratitude for the opportunity to live and learn on this land, let us also acknowledge the histories of displacement that have shaped and determined the presence of many who now call this place home. That gratitude often coexists with a deep understanding of the painful realities that have paved the way for these grateful experiences. Let that gratitude not be a destination but the point of departure for thinking about our responsibilities not only to this land and its peoples, but to our own becoming projects. As we speak of human rights, let us not forget our human responsibilities to not only lay claim to recognition but to recognize.

Finally, let us remember that Indigenous histories are also histories of the world. African and Black histories are also histories of the world. LGBTQ histories are also histories of the world, Latinx histories are histories of the world, lest we forget.