Future Ancestors Services

As we continue in our lives and work after the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, reflecting on our identities and access to lands and waters is an important site for ethical changemaking and contributions in pursuit of ‘reconciliation.’

We can build our capacities- our skills- in critical self-reflection through deepening our awareness of our own and others’ identities and worldviews. This post offers this by highlights critical insights that acknowledge the value and tensions of the binary associated with the term 'settler' - of being Indigenous to the land, or not.

As you move forward, consider the following reflection questions, and identify where you can and should be bringing these discussions to your spaces and relationships.

✳️ In what ways have the lands and waters on which you've lived informed your identities?

✳️ What happens when that land is taken away, or, when people are taken away from them?

8 September 2022

“Knowledge overconfidence is associated with anti-consensus views on controversial scientific issues” was published in Science Advances in July 2022, and holds some practical implications for science communicators and policymakers.

The lead author of the study says,
“I am interested in the public’s understanding of science because it is hugely important for societal and environmental wellbeing... When people act in ways that go against good science, people get sick, lose their homes, lose money, are displaced, or even die (as is the case with COVID, natural disasters, etc.).

The better we can understand why people hold attitudes that run counter to scientific consensus, the better scientists or policymakers can design interventions to help people.”

You can access the full articles and studies via the links provided in the sources page.

The driving force behind settler colonial efforts in what is currently Canada and the USA have historically and contemporarily been resource extraction. Indigenous relationships to Earth have and continue to pose a significant threat to this extraction.

The threat of Indigenous relationships to Earth has extended to Indigenous peoples stolen from their Indigenous lands, too: escaped Indigenous people who were brought to stolen Indigenous lands via the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade proved to also be a significant threat to resource extraction and labour exploitation.

Let's see why Indigenous relationships to Earth are threatening to settler colonial states.

Y’all know we LOVE protecting our peace with an out-of-office email. Now, first thing's first: if we have relatively steady employment that doesn't require us to put our physical health at risk by being on the frontlines or in high-contact work places, we carry a degree of privilege amid COVID-19 working conditions.

We can acknowledge this privilege, and also acknowledge that many of us are experiencing collective trauma, unprecedented challenges to our mental and/or physical health, and increased awareness of exploitation and discrimination in our work places.

This post has a series of templates we use to communicate our boundaries and our efforts to decolonize how we relate to time (see previous post).

Feel free to let this inspire your OOO email, and don’t forget to drop a hyperlinked citation to www.futureancestors.ca 📲

CW: Mention of residential schools. Pope Francis recently concluded a tour across what is currently Canada in which he apologized for the Indian Residential School system. The tour was met with responses as diverse as Indigenous experiences, histories, and teachings.

On his flight back to Rome, the Pope made an acknowledgment that the IRS system was genocide. Danielle H. Morrison was contacted by Aljazeera English for an interview.

This post captures Danielle’s () brilliant perspectives and interview with , in which she contextualizes this acknowledgment in international law.

Catch the interview in ’s IG profile and in our stories.

Building on our previous post, .ijeoma.opara discusses how tone policing is often targeted at Black women and girls, and how it causes harm.

✳️ We’ve shared excerpts from Dr. Opara’s full Twitter thread, to access full the thread go to t.ly/sUXf, and follow her, @/ijeomaoo on Twitter and .ijeoma.opara on Instagram.

✳️ Dr. Opara is based in New York, USA, and is an Assistant Professor at Yale University. Visit ijeomaopara.com to learn more about her work, and to learn more about tone-policing or gendered racism, email [email protected] to book a training.

See our previous post for more on tone policing! Alt text has been added to each slide.