Welcome!

• She:kon [Say go: Mohawk word for hello]
• Aanii [A knee: Algonquin word for hello]
• Boozhoo [Boo ju: Ojibway word for hello]
• Waychaya [Wa chay ya: Cree word for hello]
• Kwey Kwey [Kway Kway: Oji-Cree word for hello]
• Tawnshi [Tawn she: Métis word for hello]
• Hello
• Bonjour

Opening Words and Land Acknowledgement

WordCamp Canada acknowledges that Ottawa, as it is called now, is built on un-ceded and un-surrendered Algonquin Anishinaabe territory. The Peoples of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation have lived on this territory for millennia. Their culture and presence have nurtured and continue to nurture this Land.

We honour the Peoples of the Algonquin Anishnaabe Nation. We honour all First Nations, Inuit, Métis and all Indigenous Peoples and their valuable past and present contributions to this Land known as Turtle Island.

We are committed to listening to Indigenous voices and open to learning from Indigenous ways of knowing, doing and being that may not be our familiar ways.

We hope that, through this WordCamp, we may encourage important conversations within the WordPress community about the value of Indigenous perspectives and that result in practical initiatives to support Indigenous communities in engaging with WordPress.

I offer these words in the spirit of this gathering. Let us bring our good minds and hearts together as one, to honour and celebrate these traditional lands as a gathering place of the Original Peoples and their Ancestors who were entrusted to care for Mother Earth since time immemorial. It is with deep humility that we acknowledge and offer our gratitude for their contributions to this community, having respect for all as we share this space now and travel side-by-side into the future

As we gather for this first Canadian National WordCamp, may we enter it from our various individual journeys so that for these two days we may walk together.

We share a brief practice developed by Aronhia:nens Derek Montour for Canada’s National Defence Advisory Panel on Systemic Racism and Discrimination, a much shortened version of the Haudenosaunee Ohenten Kariwatekwen the “words spoken before all others”:

we turn our minds in gratitude “towards Mother Earth and her beautiful dress, towards the oceans, seas and rivers and all the creatures who live within them, towards vegetation and land-loving creatures as well as those who fly in the sky, and towards the Four Winds, our Elder Brother the Sun, our Grandfathers the thunder beings, our Grandmother Moon, and our Creator, however imagined.”