Land, Education, and Responsibility
Student Rights & Education is based in London, Ontario, along Deshkan Ziibi, the river commonly known as the Thames. These are the traditional lands of the Anishinaabek, Haudenosaunee, Lūnaapéewak and Attawandaron peoples. This area is connected with longstanding treaty relationships, including the Dish with One Spoon Covenant Wampum and the London Township and Sombra Treaties of 1796.
These lands were places of community, learning, governance and relationship long before the institutions now called schools were established here. Indigenous Peoples continue to live, teach, lead, raise families and care for the lands and waters of this region. An acknowledgement that speaks only about the past would fail to recognize that continuing presence.
Education is part of why this history must be named clearly. Across Canada, schooling was used as an instrument of colonial policy. Residential schools forcibly removed First Nations, Inuit and Métis children from their families and communities, denied children access to their languages and cultures, and caused harms that continue across generations.
This history carries a particular responsibility for anyone whose work focuses on children, schools and student rights.
Student Rights & Education is grounded in the belief that children are rights-bearing people and that schools exist to serve students. That belief requires us to examine whose knowledge schools have centred, whose voices have been excluded, how adult authority has been used, and whether educational structures protect each child’s identity, dignity, safety and right to be heard.
For this work, acknowledgement must be connected to practice. We have a responsibility to keep learning the local histories and treaty relationships of the land where we live and work, to challenge inaccurate or incomplete teaching about Indigenous Peoples, and to avoid treating Indigenous knowledge as a lesson for one day of the school year. We must also recognize the limits of our own knowledge, use resources created by Indigenous Peoples, seek guidance rather than speak on behalf of communities, and compensate Indigenous educators and contributors when we ask for their expertise.
This statement is not presented as evidence that the work is complete. It is a public commitment to continued learning, more accurate education and greater accountability in how Student Rights & Education discusses rights, identity, voice and the responsibilities schools hold toward every child.