Land, Water, and Digital Acknowledgement

This website exists within a constellation of servers hosted by Vercel, their physical infrastructure embedded in lands and waters across the globe. While data flows invisibly, it is never placeless. It draws power from territories, resources, and labor, many of which remain unceded. I acknowledge the complex materiality of this digital space and the ongoing impacts of colonial systems that exploit both land and data.

I write these words from Toronto/Tkaronto, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat peoples. This city is bound by Dish With One Spoon treaty lands, an agreement to share and protect the land and waters.

I primarily teach at the University of Waterloo, on the Haldimand Tract: 950,000 acres promised to the Six Nations of the Grand River in 1784, spanning six miles on either side of the Grand River. This territory is stewarded by the Neutral, Anishinaabeg, and Haudenosaunee peoples, whose sovereignty was never relinquished.

In acknowledging the land and water as living relations, I am learning to trace the threads between digital infrastructures, urban spaces, and Indigenous sovereignty—how server farms drain watersheds, how cities built on buried rivers repeat the logic of extraction. I am grateful for those whose territory we reside on and remind ourselves of our connections and responsibilities to care for the land and water, and to respect each other who live on the land and water.

To engage with the work of Indigenous scholars, activists, and land defenders, here are resources for learning and action:Whose Land,  Native Land Digital,  UWaterloo Territorial Acknowledgement.