Our Digital Stage partnership includes both Indigenous-led and non-Indigenous organisations that reside on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of First Nations, Métis and Inuit Peoples across the country. 

We acknowledge that some of us in the partnership are settlers who live as uninvited visitors on these lands. We honour the caretakers, respect their protocols, and learn from those who are healing the land. It is our work as settlers to confront and challenge the legacy of colonization embedded within our technologies, structures, and ways of thinking. 

Every company in the Digital Stage partnership carries with them a relationship to this land and to its violent history of colonization. Specific land acknowledgements from each company are featured on their show pages. 

As a partnership, we commit to listening and uplifting Indigenous stories, and to putting people and relationships first. We continue to learn how to work collaboratively, guided by mutual respect and care. 

As we use digital technologies, we maintain a relationship to the lands and waterways that are gathering places for many Indigenous peoples since time immemorial. Take a moment to locate yourself on the Native Land map, and learn about the territories, languages, and treaties in your region. 

We want to share with you three questions that we returned to at the beginning of each of our partner meetings, to build a collective living land acknowledgement that engaged our memories, senses, and imaginations.

We invite you to reflect upon the land that you are on, and how it can and will change over time. 

Consider:  

Here there was…

Here there is…

Here there will be…

Thank you to artist and community organizer Nikki Shaffeeullah for sharing this prompt with us.

Resources and Action: 

National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Reports

Truth and Reconciliation Commision of Canada’s 94 Calls to Action

Cash Back is about restitution from the perspective of stolen wealth. 

Indigenous Performing Arts Alliance

Indigenous plays bookstore on Canadian Play Outlet from Playwrights Canada Press

Read imagineNATIVE’s On Screen Protocols & Pathways: A Media Production Guide to Working with First Nations, Metis and Inuit Communities, Cultures, Concepts and Stories;

Indigenous Ally Toolkit – Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network