Situated in amiskwaciwâskahikan, Treaty 6 territory, and Métis Nation of Alberta Region 4.

Minor Praxis Lab is based out of the University of Alberta’s North Campus in amiskwaciwâskahikan. Amiskwaciwâskahikan is a nêhiyaw (Cree) word for the city of Edmonton that means Beaver Hills House or Lodge. These lands are the ancestral territory, traditional gathering places, and current home of the nêhiyaw, Dené, Anishinaabe, Nakota Sioux, Niitsitapi, Iroquois, Inuit, and are the homeland of the Métis and Métis Nation of Alberta Region 4. The University of Alberta North Campus, including the building the lab is located (Corbett Hall), is on Papaschase Cree lands. Corbett Hall was constructed in the years following the removal of the Papaschase people from these lands. And still, these lands are part of the territory recognized under Treaty 6 – a treaty is an agreement to be in right relations. Anishinaabe scholar Aaron Mills (2017) writes, treaty is a deepening of “our shared political community” and the “means by which we orient and reorient ourselves to each other through time, to live well together and with all our relations within creation.” While our country is built on settler colonial foundations that have and continue to harm First Peoples, harms that I (Tim Barlott, Lab Director) am complicit in as a settler that benefits from colonial structures, we are all (Indigenous and non-Indigenous) invited into right relations through treaty. For me, doing my work in a good way is to value and centre Indigenous self-determination and sovereignty, critically examine the systems and structures that do harm, and pursue right relations with Indigenous peoples (and all people).

The autumn photo on this page was taken in area of the city along the kisiskâciwanisîpiy, which is nêhiyaw for ‘swift current’ and known as the North Saskatchewan River.