We are thankful to be welcome on these lands in friendship. The lands we are situated on are covered by the Williams Treaties and are the traditional territory of the Mississaugas, a branch of the greater Anishinaabeg Nation, including Algonquin, Ojibway, Odawa and Pottawatomi. These lands remain home to many Indigenous nations and peoples.

We acknowledge this land out of respect for the Indigenous nations who have cared for Turtle Island, also called North America, from before the arrival of settler peoples until this day. Most importantly, we acknowledge that the history of these lands has been tainted by poor treatment and a lack of friendship with the First Nations who call them home.

This history is something we are all affected by because we are all treaty people in Canada. We all have a shared history to reflect on, and each of us is affected by this history in different ways. Our past defines our present, but if we move forward as friends and allies, then it does not have to define our future.

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Jen Rinaldi, PhD

IDRR Social Scientist
Associate Professor, Legal Studies
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities
Ontario Tech University
ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0545-3941
jen.rinaldi@ontariotechu.ca

Dr. Jen Rinaldi is an Associate Professor in Legal Studies in the FSSH at Ontario Tech University. Her research focuses on how non-normative bodies are read, marked, and produced in and through socio-legal discourse. She is committed to communities and embodiments that claim the following identifiers: cripped (or disabled, and especially persons deemed intellectually disabled), mad (persons positioned against and within mental health regimes), fat (bodies framed as obese and discriminated against in the interest of public health), queer and trans (persons who identify as members of LGBTQ+ communities). She is a dedicated member of the Recounting Huronia research collective. This work earned the collective a Community Living Ontario James Montgomerie Community Award in recognition of leadership and innovation in furthering Community Living goals. Rinaldi has co-written a book titled Institutional Violence and Disability: Punishing Conditions (Routledge, 2019). She was also the founder and lead coordinator of the Huronia Survivors Speakers Bureau, which enabled intellectually disabled institutional survivors to tell their stories to audiences across Canada. Currently, Dr. Rinaldi is focused on research and activism related to deinstitutionalization, prison and police abolition, and migrant justice.

View Jen Rinaldi's Faculty of Social Science and Humanities profile page.