NEWS

With profound sadness, the Executives, Commissioners, and Staff at the Society of Graduate Students (SOGS) at Western University offer condolences to the Indigenous families and communities impacted by the confirmation of an unmarked mass grave on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. The children found were the future of the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc First Nation as well as other First Nations.  The deaths of these children are a devastating loss for Indigenous families and communities across the lands currently referred to as British Columbia.  

We acknowledge the remains of the two hundred and fifteen Indigenous children found on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School represent the devastating but desired outcome of Canadian policy.  The Kamloops Indian Residential School was one of over 100 Indian Residential Schools in operation from the 1830’s until 1996.  The Indian Residential School system was designed to aggressively erase Indigenous identities and cultures, as well as sever connections to family, community and the land.  These historical acts of violence have irreparably disrupted Indigenous ways of being on these lands and continue to inequitably benefit colonial settlers to the ongoing detriment of Indigenous Peoples today. 

We support calls by First Nations communities for the immediate funding of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada Calls to Action Numbers 71-76 regarding missing children and burial information.  The offers of condolences and acknowledgement of the Kamloops Indian Residential School discovery by all levels of Canadian government must match action.  The uncomfortable truth revealed on Thursday May 27^th, 2021 is not an isolated incident.  As articulated in the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 4, Survivors confirm atrocities such as that at Kamloops Indian Residential School took place at many of the Indian Residential Schools.  Locating and identifying the missing children requires immediate action that must be led by the First Nation communities affected. 

We join Indigenous nations and communities in calling for the urgent implementation of the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.  The historical and ongoing impacts and processes of colonization, including the Indian Residential School System, continue to discriminate, disadvantage and dispossess Indigenous Peoples.  Reconciliation is a process that requires immediate and sustained action and investment by all levels of Canadian government as well as Canadian citizens.  Canada’s response to the 2015 release of the TRC Calls to Action has been shamefully inadequate and fails to meaningfully address the legacy of Indian Residential Schools. 

We join calls from across the lands for the Canadian government to end its legal battle with Indian Residential School survivors and their families.  The $3.2 million spent on legal fees to withhold the truth from St. Anne’s residential school survivors and the Canadian public is one example where the federal government continues to actively diminish and impede reconciliation efforts. The Canadian federal government must immediately release all Indian Residential School documents (unredacted) so that truth and justice can be achieved in the process of reconciliation. 

We recognize SOGS has a distinct role to play in advancing reconciliation through Indigenous-specific advocacy and education efforts.  To advance reconciliation, we commit to immediately reviewing SOGS supports to ensure our supports appropriately match the needs of Indigenous graduate students at Western.  We further commit to an internal and ongoing review to examine how SOGS operations and policies can better align with and advance reconciliation efforts at Western and in the surrounding communities. 

As allies to Indigenous Peoples and key actors in reconciliation, we will continue to share relevant resources and opportunities for non-Indigenous graduate students to support responses to the Kamloops Indian Residential School tragedy and engage in ongoing reconciliation efforts. 

Resources to learn more about Indigenous Peoples, our Shared Histories and Reconciliation: 

• The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action & reports
• Progress report on Canada’s implementation of the Calls to Action 
• Indigenous Studies Program at Western
• Office of Indigenous Initiatives: Indigenous History Month Challenge

List of SOGS, Western and Community resources for Indigenous students: 

• Indigenous Elders: advising@uwo.ca
• Art Therapist Tisha Summers and Elder Myrna Kicknosway: staff@uwo.ca 
• SOGS Indigenous Commissioner: E. Victoria Bomberry, indigenous@sogs.ca
• ATLoHSA 24-hour Crisis Line: 1-800-605-7477 
• National Indian Residential School Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419 
• StudentCare Indigenous Bursary 

In solidarity,  SOGS Executives, Commissioners, and Staff

*read the PDF version HERE

The Society of Graduate Students (SOGS) Declaration of Climate Emergency

Climate change poses an imminent, monumental threat to peoples’ livelihoods both on Western University’s campus and within the greater City of London community. Meanwhile, the ongoing collapse of biodiversity and loss of species here in Canada and abroad risks unprecedented devastation to the natural world. Continued environmental decline will leave behind a poorer, more fragile state of life on our planet for future generations: mass extinction will permanently reduce the capacity of our planet to grow food, to regenerate landscapes and to provide ecosystem services which we, and all other life depend on to survive. Today, it is still possible for humanity to prevent mass extinction by changing our behaviours.

The changes to our planet, being induced by anthropogenic climate crisis and biodiversity loss, disproportionately affect historically oppressed groups, who pay the greatest cost in food insecurity, loss of natural resources, and displacement. Continued inaction by governments and institutions to address the root causes of climate change and biodiversity loss constitutes unacceptable environmental injustice.

In accordance with the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Paris Agreement and Production Gap Report, Western University signed the Sustainable Development Goals Accord Global Climate Letter. With their signature, Western pledged to perform the following actions by the year 2025:

1. Mobilize more resources for action-oriented climate change research and skills creation;
2. Pledge to reach net-zero by 2030, or 2050 at the very latest;
3. Increase the delivery of environmental and sustainability education across curriculum, campus and community outreach programmes;
4. Produce a plan on how they will achieve net-zero, with interim targets, and make this publicly available and update on an annual basis.

For Western University to stay true to their pledge to the SDG Accord, it must strive towards setting and meeting more ambitious sustainability targets.

In the Fall semester of 2020 the SOGS Sustainability Committee sent out a survey to all Western graduate students to collect information about their perceptions of sustainability issues involving SOGS, Western University, and the London community at large. The survey found that 90% of respondents feel anxious about their future because of climate change. Graduate students expressed overwhelming support for Western University to renew its commitment to environmental sustainability, with 90% of responses indicating Western should do more to address climate change and suggesting that Western should increase promotion of its existing sustainability programs on campus. In summary, the majority of SOGS members who completed the survey want Western to recognize climate change as an emergency (see Appendix X).

In keeping with similar efforts led by the Canadian Federation of Students’ Climate Justice and a Liveable Planet Campaign, University of British Columbia’s Climate Emergency Declaration, and

City of London’s Climate Emergency Declaration, the Sustainability Committee is calling on SOGS to demonstrate support for swift and ambitious climate actions within our Society and Western University by endorsing the present declaration that we are in a state of climate emergency.  This declaration is necessary (1) as a direct response to SOGS members’ concerns about climate change, (2) to refocus our institutional leadership’s priorities around the crisis we face, and (3) to stand in solidarity with the 2019 City of London climate emergency declaration. By endorsing this declaration, SOGS will prepare to support efforts on campus and within the community to address unprecedented societal challenges.

In declaring a climate emergency, SOGS recognizes:

1. That climate change is an urgent, monumental threat that is of great concern to SOGS members.
2. That the Society bears a responsibility to meet environmental concerns of its members with strategic actions.
3. That as a public institution, Western University has a fundamental, ethical responsibility to become a leader in actively combating climate change through adaptation, mitigation, and resiliency both within and beyond its institutional boundaries.
4. That given Western’s reputation as one of Canada’s most distinguished research institutions, the declaration is consistent with the university’s scientific integrity and academic rigour.
5. That conserving natural features and biodiversity on Western’s campus grounds is of high importance to graduate students.

READ THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY DECLARATION  HERE.

Dear SOGS members,