18 October 2023

TRU Statement on Academic Freedom and Anti-Colonialism

The Technoscience Research Unit (TRU) affirms the rights of students, colleagues, and community members to freely speak and analyze current and past events in Palestine and Israel, drawing from their own expertise and experience with colonialism, racism, displacement, and war.

We do so as an Indigenous-led space in the university, which centers  the relationships between colonialism, science, and Indigenous self-determination towards justice. We further do so as a place dedicated to bringing community researchers and academics together in collaboration. The TRU’s Indigenous Environmental Data Justice lab is itself inspired by and through the support of Palestinian artists, technologists, and scholars at Visualizing Palestine who taught us how to use data to visually represent colonial violence. 

TRU’s research work and practices emphasize the building of solidarities across uneven geometries of injustice.

Our solidarity work is guided by our own tapwe (truth in Michif), our positionalities, Indigenous values, and Anishinaabe Seven Grandfather Teachings, including gwekwaadziwin (honesty), aakwa’ode’ewin (bravery), mnaadendimowin (respect), and zaagidwin (love). In working collaboratively, we have learned more about our responsibilities to think seven generations into the future. These are the legal pillars that inform us on our position.

We  oppose genocide, ethnic cleansing, racism, and colonialism in all its forms.

Hence, the TRU unequivocally affirms our solidarity with Palestinian people within Palestine and the global diaspora in their ongoing resistance against settler colonialism and apartheid.