Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements

These remarks were presented as part of our April 2015 General Membership Meeting.

Teresa Place, FSA President

As many of you know, we now acknowledge that this event takes place on the unceded territories of the Coast Salish peoples. We have received a few inquiries recently about why we do this so today we’ve invited one of our members, and an FSA board member and staff in Aboriginal Services – Derik Joseph – to speak to you a bit about the importance of this practice. Following Derik we will welcome Alf Dumont, an Elder in Aboriginal Services to do an opening welcome for us.

Derik Joseph

Hello. My name is Derik Joseph and I am an Advisor with BCIT Aboriginal Services as well as a Director-at-Large with the FSA. I am member of Tl’azt’en First Nation, from Northern BC. As many of you know, we have begun opening our meetings and events with an acknowledgment that we are guests on the traditional territories of the Coast Salish people. Along with this acknowledgement we have also invited a members of the Indigenous community, through BCIT’s Aboriginal Services and the FSA, to provide insight on cultural protocol, and a welcome at each general meeting.

Two of the FSA’s core values are solidarity and social justice. We acknowledge this by recognizing that our work takes place on land that has a history which is long and deep. The FSA believes that this practice is important because it acknowledges that this respect for First Nations communities has been ignored for far too long. If you’d like to talk more about this we encourage you to reach out to us at the FSA or to your colleagues in BCIT Aboriginal Services. The welcome that Alf will provide today to our great faculty and staff, shows respect to both the land itself and indigenous peoples and to cultural knowledge.

Thank you.