We gather every Sunday in the summer time to play the game of ball, a very old game that asks us to reflect upon the journey of leaving and coming home. In order to recognize our relationships with the land on which we play, we take a moment before our games to reflect upon the journeys that we as players and our families took to arrive upon these territories.
As both Indigenous and non-Indigenous players on this field:
We want to thank and honour the peoples of the Three Fires Anishinabek Confederacy, the Haudenosaunee confederacy, and the Huron-Wyandot nation for their longstanding and continued tending to relationships with this land. Tkaronto in Mohawk means “where there are trees standing in water” and is a phrase to describe this place we call home. We are situated near the Great Lake Ontario at the confluence of the Credit, Don, Humber, and Rouge Rivers. These are the four houses of our league. These names remind us of our responsibilities to these territories and to the land on which we play. While we are sorted in different houses, we are connected together through the goals, aspirations, and principles that guide our league.
Each week we put down tobacco to thank the land for gifting us this field of play.