When we were taking on the responsibility of planning IILF in Tkaronto two years ago, we dreamed about this place and the space that we would cultivate. Where we are, Toando, the Carrying Place, has been a meeting place since time immemorial and these Lands and Waters have cradled Indigenous people who have in turn cared for and loved those same Lands and Waters. Our theme, the Dish with One Spoon and Our Dish, has been an important teaching, a wampum and a call for us to share and care for these Lands and Waters together. The creation of the Dish with One Spoon was both a peace treaty and an assertion of friendship and Sovereignty between the Anishinaabeg and the Haudenosaunee Nations. Our Dish is an affirmation of the long-standing responsibilities of these Nations to share governance and care for the Lands and Waters on which the International Indigenous Librarians’ Forum has taken place. We wanted to extend this teaching to you, our kin and colleagues, to sit with these Knowledges, to enjoy the Great Lakes Basin and the bounty that this place carries.
So many of the Canadian Institutions and organizations really came out to show their support for this forum. A special chi miigwech to our Miikinaak level sponsors NIKLA the National Indigenous Knowledge and Language Alliance, York University Libraries, the University of Fraser Valley, the University of Manitoba, CRKN: the Canadian Research, Knowledge Network, The Canadian National Railway, The City of Toronto, and especially the Univerity of Toronto Libraries for not only sponsoring but providing space and rolling with our last minute requests, as well as hosting last nights event.
We would like to thank the National Steering Committee, for all that they have done contributed. A special thanks to Christian Isbister for leading the adjudication committee, and to Kayla Larson, Bethany Peterkin and Lynda- Lou Classens for serving on the committee. Lynda-Lou also sent the co-chairs regular encouraging emails, which really meant a lot. Thank you to Shirley Delorme Russel and Ashley Edwards for organizing the transportation information, Claire Settee for managing the social media and Feather Maracle for advising us on all things Haudenosaunee and helping set up the SLACK channel. We are grateful also to Camille Callison for her invaluable expertise as a long time organizer and attendee of IILF and for all of her advice on running the Forum.
Over the course of this Forum, we hope that you have had the opportunity to learn, to be inspired and to visit. In gathering, we have the opportunity to gift and be gifted the Knowledge bundles that constitute our practice and our being as Indigenous Knowledge workers. We have heard incredible conversations, activated our calls to action and transformed our work by nature of being together. We hope that you will carry this abundance back home with you, bringing what you have learned back to your communities, your Nations and your people. As a global grassroots gathering, IILF holds a special place that moulds to the people, the kinship and the Knowledges that contain its meeting. We are grateful to have been granted the responsibility of holding this meeting here. Tsi: Tkaronto, where the trees meet the waters, has been a place of bounty. The City that currently stands here has been a place of activism and placemaking since its inception. Toronto remains an important space for Black and Indigenous people to meet, conspire and plot to dismantle the systems that keep us from our rightful places to care for these Lands as we have always done. IILF is proof that colonization neither defines these Lands or our peoples, we do.
As Indigenous Knowledge workers, we have a greater responsibility than other library and cultural heritage workers. We know that ethical care work is a community obligation and a responsibility. Being in space together makes carrying this work lighter, more joyful and more beautiful. On behalf of the local and steering committee for IILF Toronto, we want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts for bringing all of you to this Forum. You are the only reason that visiting can exist and you are the heart of this Forum. Thank you for trusting us with the responsibility of hosting and we hope that you have enjoyed your time here in the Lands protected by the Dish with One Spoon and those that hold this covenant as sovereign peoples. As we sign off, we hope that you will hold each other, this time and these Lands in your heart. Miigwech.
IILF 2025 