The connection between land, food and child well-being will be at the centre of an online talk hosted Tuesday, Jan. 12 by the Decolonization Working Group of Brock’s President’s Advisory Committee on Human Rights, Equity, and Decolonization (PACHRED).

Held from noon to 1 p.m. on Lifesize, the event aims to continue the group’s discussion about the equitable treatment of Indigenous Peoples, with a specific focus on anti-racism and Indigenous children. It Is one in a series of talks to be hosted by the group this year.

The panel will be introduced by Liette Vasseur, Professor of Biological Sciences and UNESCO Chair in Community Sustainability: from local to global.

Vasseur’s remarks will be followed by mother-daughter duo Kitty R. Lynn and Adrianne Lickers Xavier, who were the driving force behind the Our Sustenance Program at Six Nations. The program addressed food security by growing food in a community garden and transmitting knowledge about growing food to the community, particularly through work with children. The program has now come to an end, but Lynn has continued many of its elements through Health Services at Six Nations, while Xavier is the Chair of Indigenous Studies at McMaster University.

The Jan. 12 virtual gathering follows previous events held on Sept. 30 to commemorate Orange Shirt Day, where the community is asked to remember the horrors of residential schools and the trauma still present in today’s society, as well as an Oct. 30 event that continued to focus on Orange Shirt Day and began a discussion about Brock’s participation in the Spirit Bear Ambearrister Program co-ordinated by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society.

The Ambearrister program will guide Brock and the wider community through six steps that seek to make a difference for all First Nations, Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit children in Canada while also striving to honour the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) 94 Calls to Action.

To learn more or sign up for the event, please contact Decolonization Working Group Co-chair Lyn Trudeau at ltrudeau@brocku.ca or Co-chair Robyn Bourgeois.