LAND Acknowledgment

We acknowledge that Parc-Extension is situated on unceded First Nations land, called tio’ti’a|ke in the Kanienʼkehá꞉ka (Mohawk) language. We highlight the struggles for self-determination of Indigenous peoples that continue today on this land, and confirm our commitment to supporting their struggles in our work.

For more information, we invite you to visit https://native-land.ca

We also understand that Parc-Ex’s residents are predominantly from historically marginalized and racialized groups, whose own stories are situated within long histories of colonialism and global capitalism. Gentrification is in many ways a continuation of a colonial process of dispossession and colonization. As debates around the use and access to urban land intensify, we recognize that gentrification rests on a variety of colonial features, such as the promotion of private property and market discipline as alleged “civilizing” mechanisms, the capitalist appropriation of collective land and resources and the simultaneous abandonment of, and imposition of coercive force on, those deemed dispensable by market actors and public authorities, in this case displaced and left behind residents. Considering this, we seek to foreground decolonial frameworks, research methodologies, and action, by acknowledging the enduring impact of structural violence and discrimination on the lives of historically marginalized groups, by adopting an explicitly anti-authoritarian perspective on knowledge production and sharing, and by setting community empowerment and well-being as the normative horizon of our various research initiatives.