IPSG at Park People Summit

Monarch Butterfly collaborator, Lumy Fuentes C. of Canada Nos Une leads a session.

Pollinators carry pollen from one plant to another, a process essential for plant reproduction. Most of the pollen transferred by insects and hummingbirds is done so unknowingly. The particles of pollen stick to their bodies and get carried and dropped off to a different place creating harmony within the ecosystem.

Ayesha Afzai, youth blogger, Seeds of Diversity

The Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Group was honoured this past Saturday to represent what can be done on a busy, urban street corner to surface Indigenous presence, both human and non-human, within a rewilded micro-ecosystem. A recipient of Park People grants to fund programming since 2022, and now a recipient of TD Bank Group funding, Park People’s founding sponsor, the IPSG shared who we are and what we do with Summit participants from across Toronto and as far away as Ecuador.

Planned for June 14, the Summit gave us the opportunity to kick off Pollinator Week in a big way, supported by our Monarch Butterfly collaborator, Lumy Fuentes C. of Canada Nos Une. June 16 to 22nd is celebrated across Canada and internationally as a time to raise the alarm about declining pollinator health and what we can do to protect them and the habitat they need to recover.

Keynote speaker, Ange Loft (Kahnawa:ke Kanien’keha:ka Territory), reflected on her work as Project Lead on the Talking Treaties Project (2015-2022) in Tsi Tkaron:to and on other collaborations, asking and answering “what needs to be in the public sphere to allow me to feel that I’m on Indigenous Territory?” Unpacking designs on pottery fragments and the connections they reveal between people and place, she went back repeatedly to coming to an understanding of the specificities of Land, Waterways, and layered histories where one is.

At our community table in the Daniels Spectrum Atrium, we held intimate conversations and monarch crafting circles to help participants experience something of our commitment to Right Relations, beginning with getting one’s hands dirty in a place degraded by colonial extractivism and European garden aesthetics. Like other tables and the afternoon’s panelists, we offered a specific example of greenspaces put to more inclusive community uses.

Table animators Vanessa Barnes, Robin Buyers, Lumy Fuentes C., and Cath Lofsky as well as IPSG Summit participants Caroline Cosco and Linda Fowler-Wojciechowski carried away many insights shared by those present that will add to the harmony of the ecosystem and the community we are creating. We hope that some of our insights—rooted as best we can in the wisdom of Elder-in-Residence Catherine Brooks and other Knowledge Keepers—were carried away and will be dropped off to other people and places.

By Robin Buyers for the Indigenous Peoples Solidarity Group