Land Honouring

All EYA educators identify as Indigenous, Black, or People of Colour. Our programs for Indigenous youth are run by Indigenous youth educators. You can meet our educators here.

We value Indigenous and Western knowledge of land stewardship equally, and the curricula for our land-based youth programs incorporates Indigenous science, cultural teachings and protocols, and worldviews alongside Western understandings. Some of the teachings that EYA youth participants receive include honourable harvest; reciprocity with plant relations; identifying native plants; making plant medicines; and Indigenous perspectives on ecological restoration. All cultural teachings related to Indigenous knowledge are led by EYA Indigenous educators or Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers.

We include visits from Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers from different Nations, including the host Nations, in each EYA program. These Indigenous guests share land-based teachings and protocols from their cultures with EYA youth through workshops and storytelling. For a list of the Elders and Knowledge Keepers who support our programs, click here.

Each EYA program includes an activity called ‘Deconstructed Land Honouring’ that supports youth to develop the confidence to lead a land acknowledgement with meaning and intention, including authentically expressing gratitude, acknowledging how they are benefiting, and sharing their relationship to these lands. Youth also explore their own ancestral roots and the journeys they and their relations have travelled to arrive on the territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nations.

Through program activities, EYA youth participants help to decolonize urban green spaces by removing invasive plant species like Himalayan blackberry and English Ivy, and planting native species like salmonberry, thimbleberry, Nootka rose, fireweed, yarrow, woodland strawberry, nodding onion, kinnikinnick, and serviceberry. Many of the native herbs and shrubs planted by EYA youth provide traditional foods and medicines.

Every year, EYA youth pour curiosity and love into growing thousands of native plants in our nursery in Strathcona Community Gardens. These youth-grown plants are gifted to the community each spring, with priority given to Indigenous-led restoration projects and food and medicine gardens.

Through program activities, EYA youth grow, harvest, and process medicinal plants into teas, salves, and tinctures. These medicines are gifted to Indigenous folks in the community through local organizations like the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre, Urban Native Youth Association, and Kilala Lelum.

As part of our ongoing work to decolonize our fundraising practices, EYA has adopted a policy to value and recognize gifts of time and knowledge equally to financial gifts. We also recognize all financial gifts equally, regardless of their size. Our website and annual report list gifts of time, knowledge, and money and all supporters are listed in alphabetical order.

At EYA, all staff receive Indigenous People’s Day and Orange Shirt day as paid days off. This recognizes the significance of these days and is a small effort to decolonize workplace holidays that typically recognize colonial / European cultural traditions and events.