Land Acknowledgement
Birth Mark acknowledges that we operate on the traditional territory of many nations including the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and Wendat peoples. We acknowledge these nations and any others who care for the land; acknowledged and unacknowledged, recorded and unrecorded, as the past, present and future caretakers of this land.
We seek to live in respect, peace and right relations with them as we live and work upon their traditional territory.
At Birth Mark we make a collective commitment to keep truth and reconciliation real in our communities and in particular to bring justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, 2Spirit, and Transgender across the country.
We also want to acknowledge the context in which we work, where we navigate, bear witness to, and risk upholding oppressive systems each day. We know that social and reproductive justice are impossible without including Indigenous voices and prioritizing access to Indigenous-led and culturally safe reproductive healthcare.
We acknowledge that forced sterilization, forced abortion, forced travel to unknown regions for basic healthcare, risk of child apprehension, and violence from health service providers are not issues of the past.
We commit to seeking and uplifting Indigenous voices to better understand the unique and intersecting barriers they face when accessing reproductive healthcare and we ask you to join us in doing so.
Below are some resources in the chat that can serve as a starting place to learn more and join us in this commitment. Before proceeding please note that these resources discuss and detail obstetric and colonial violence, genocide, and eugenics. Please consider this when deciding how and when to engage with them.
Episode 74 of the podcast Media Indigena: Starvation, Experimentation, Segregation, Trauma: Indigenous Health History - https://mediaindigena.libsyn.com/ep-74-starvation-experimentation-segregation-trauma-indigenous-health-history
The Obstetric Justice Project Facebook post: information and resources on human rights violations against Indigenous women, trans, and 2-Spirit people - https://www.facebook.com/ObstetricJustice/posts/938845846606054
Native Youth Sexual Health Network: Environmental Violence & Reproductive Justice
https://www.nativeyouthsexualhealth.com/environmental-violence-reproductive-justice
Abortion Access and Indigenous Peoples in Canada https://www.actioncanadashr.org/resources/factsheets-guidelines/2021-05-21-abortion-access-and-indigenous-peoples-canada?fbclid=IwAR3yqe45W9KwqSm3PrOryzAXjqj8iqWhVrCRhCvOamAqCZSGjuvq8Hxz4NI