New Beginnings acknowledges that this land on which we gather is the traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg people of the Three Fires Confederacy (Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi). Because of our region’s unique location along the Detroit River, many groups have called this area home, including Haudenosaunee, Attawandaron (Neutral), and Huron (Wyandot) peoples. Today, many Indigenous People and Metis across Turtle Island still call this area home.

Indigenous Peoples are caretakers of Mother Earth and realize and respect her gifts of water, air, and fire. First Nations Peoples have a special relationship with the earth and all living things in it (Assembly of First Nations). In our role as service providers to vulnerable and at-risk children, youth, adults, and families, New Beginnings feels a profound kinship with our country’s Indigenous Peoples as the original caretakers of the Earth and all of its inhabitants. New Beginnings wishes to express its ever-deepening commitment to understanding and rectifying settler’s abhorrent impact on Indigenous Peoples and our ensuing unremitting dedication to Truth and Reconciliation.

We cannot speak meaningfully about reconciliation without also avowing the truth that it was enslaved Africans, brought here en masse, who built these cities that we call “ours”. Today, we work, live, and love in cities built with stolen labour on stolen ground.

It is with sadness, but with great respect, that New Beginnings acknowledges that any expression of gratitude to First Nations’ people for the land and its resources of which we continue to claim for our use is inadequate, notwithstanding, we are grateful for its continued use and pledge to be unceasingly mindful of our inherent responsibility as occupiers of their beautiful land.