Activities of the LRSC

2020-2025 Activities

Land Education Incubator: Collaborators and a team of researchers at the University of Toronto developed curriculum and materials for developing land education programs for youth and communities. This two-year project was funded by the Spencer Foundation, and was intended to (1) provide workshops and resources to the collaborators creating their own land education programs, (2) create conditions for knowledge exchange between Indigenous and non-Indigenous land education organizations, and (3) create a web-based toolkit for future land education programs.

The Land Education Dreambook: The web-based toolkit, created through the process of the Land Education Incubator, took the form of the Land Education Dreambook. It is a set of guided activities to help collectives and Indigenous community organizations to imagine and plan land education programs for youth. It includes sections such as Land Relations and Land Education, Working with Young People, Understanding Your Role as Facilitator, Designing a Youth Program as well as additional activities that can be used with young people in the programs.

Returning Indigenous Land: Three of the collaborators - Sogorea Te’, Métis In Space, and the Underground Center - have recently had land returned to them: Métis In Space through a Landraiser to purchase land; Sogorea Te’ through a municipal decree; and the Underground Center through land donations and 99-year leases. To learn about different approaches to Indigenous land return, this project involved site visits, interviews and focus groups with stakeholders in the land return projects, and collaborator meetings. This four-year study was funded by the SSHRC Insight Grant and seeks to encourage further land-return initiatives.

Community Archive: As part of this project, all five organizations in the Land Relationships Super Collective are working with researchers in the Tkaronto CIRCLE lab and librarian Desmond Wong to create a new digital community archive on land relationships. This archive, built on the Omeka platform, will include audio-visual and text materials from the many years of activity of each organization, with emphasis on how each organization has approached recovering land.

Youth in Relation to Returned Land: Sogorea Te’ developed a land education program for Indigenous, Black, and racialized youth living on Ohlone lands (Oakland). The curriculum for the afterschool and summer programs included land and water-based learning activities, participatory visual activities, histories of Indigenous people in California, Ohlone language activities, and history of community organizing in the San Francisco Bay Area. This project was funded by the William T. Grant Foundation.

2017-2019 Activities

Collaborators participated in intentional site visits to gain feedback and support on specific problems or campaigns

Retreat gatherings to regenerate, commiserate, build theory and relationships

Developed technical support for specific campaigns or endeavors (e.g. land trusts)

2016-2017 Activities

Graduate assistants collected existing recordings, videos, interviews and articles about collaborators' efforts to share with each other on a closed website

Collaborators created recordings for other members in the Super Collective – short messages to the world about everyday work, concerns, triumphant moments, stubborn questions, and big imaginings