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Denim & Steel Interactive
Est. 2011
4643 Main Street
Vancouver, BC V5V 3R6
Even work that happens in the nowhere/everywhere of the Internet comes from a physical place. The place where we work and live is the unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
We live and work on stolen land.
There are many ways to word a land acknowledgement. Why did we choose these words, exactly?
Once arresting, land acknowledgements are now familiar in many public spaces and gatherings. The repetition works, but the paradox is that it can dull the poignancy of these important statements. Online we often see land acknowledgements shuffled into footers and About pages, more of a checkbox than a felt statement.
Stolen land isn’t a phrase we came up with, and it is strong wording. We invoke it here to keep our own awareness of Reconciliation sharp. In our design work we take conscious steps to ensure land acknowledgements are more than easily overlooked boilerplate. These are small steps in a long process; they’re made to remind us and others of the work ahead.
The area now called Metro Vancouver is a study of dramatic contrasts: sea level breaks to the sharp rise of mountains, wealth and hardship abut and overlap, and a gentle climate belies a fitfully slumbering tectonic monster.
Everywhere we look here we find life and change at different scales. Living here means being alert to confluences and conflicts, and being careful not to fall into anxiety or whatever-ism. It’s a place that challenges and inspires, and makes evident the many types of edges that we live along. That awareness is infused in our way of working, and makes our work something that couldn’t be the same were it from anywhere else.
To us, this is an inspiring place in many ways. But those inspirations come with a responsibility to recognize the historical wrongs that led to our presence here.