Land Acknowledgement.

Where we operate.

Pain Ontario operates across many traditional territories. This includes the lands of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, and the Mississaugas of the Credit, in what is now called Toronto, where our registered office is located. It also includes the territories of the Cree, Oji-Cree, Anishinaabe, Algonquin, Onondaga, Mohawk, Potawatomi, Delaware, Lenape, Mississauga, Métis, and Inuit peoples across what is now called Ontario.

We honour the treaty and non-treaty relationships that continue to shape these territories, including the Dish With One Spoon Wampum, the Two Row Wampum, the Williams Treaties, the Robinson Treaties, Treaty 9, and Treaty 3. Many of us live and work on lands covered by these agreements.

What this means for our work.

Colonialism is not in the past. It continues to shape who receives timely pain care in Ontario and who does not. Indigenous peoples experience higher rates of chronic pain than the general population, alongside worse pain treatment, under-prescribing of appropriate medications, and systemic dismissal by pain care providers.

These are not accidents of geography. They are the continuing effects of colonial policy, the Indian Act, residential schools, the Sixties Scoop, underfunded on-reserve health systems, jurisdictional disputes that leave people stranded between federal and provincial care, and the everyday racism Indigenous peoples face when they seek help for pain.

A land acknowledgement is not enough. It is a commitment to notice, and a starting point for the work.

Our commitments.

• We name colonialism, racism, and Indigenous-specific health inequities explicitly in our advocacy, our research partnerships, and our public communications.
• We do not speak for Indigenous communities. We listen to, follow, and fund Indigenous-led pain research, education, and advocacy.
• We practise and uphold OCAP principles (Ownership, Control, Access, and Possession) in any work that involves First Nations data or knowledge.
• We support Indigenous data sovereignty more broadly, including for Métis and Inuit peoples.
• We decline projects that would extract knowledge from Indigenous communities without reciprocity or benefit.
• We hire and contract Indigenous peers, clinicians, researchers, and artists, and we pay them fairly for their expertise.
• We continue to learn. This page will change as we learn more and as we are corrected.

How to learn the territories you live and work on.

If you would like to learn more about the territories you live on and the treaties that shape them, Native Land Digital, Whose Land, and the Yellowhead Institute publish ongoing resources. These are starting points, not substitutes for local relationships.

How to hold us accountable.

If you see a gap between what we have written here and how we work, please tell us. Write to info@painontario.ca and mark it “Land Acknowledgement Accountability.” We will read it, sit with it, and stay accountable.