The Ontario Secondary School Teachers’ Federation, District 21 Teachers’/Occasional Teachers’ Bargaining Unit, who has an office and holds our meetings on the traditional territories of the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabeg sends our solidarity to the Six Nations land defenders at 1492 Landback Lane.
As education workers we teach many Haudenosaunee students in our classes (including many of whom are from Six Nations), and other First Nations, Metis, or Inuit nations. While those of us who are settlers cannot fully comprehend the history of oppression and violence that colonialism has wrought on these territories, we can stand as allies and say that every government who has ignored these issues has been complicit in their criminality.
We will commit to echoing this belief with members of the Canadian government at the municipal, provincial and federal levels.
We know that while there is much that makes us unique, being workers and part of a working class is something that we share across nations. We believe in a basic mantra in our labour movement: an injury to one is an injury to all.
Our comrades at 1492 Landback Lane, and those supporting the land defenders at other sites, have our commitment that we will act as allies in working to stop the centuries-old and ongoing injuries resulting from colonialism and white supremacy.
To ignore our fellow workers' struggles from any nation would make us complicit. We wish to affirm our rejection of that complicity if it has been there in the past, and work together, when needed, to provide solidarity in the future.