What is OPIRG Guelph?

OPIRG is the Ontario Public Interest Research Group A network of PIRGs currently exists across much of Turtle Island in so-called Canada and the U.S. The PIRGs were launched by “public interest” activist Ralph Nader in the early seventies as a means to harness the energy and talents of students to help solve pressing social and environmental problems. The OPIRG Guelph chapter was founded at the University of Guelph in 1976 following a visit that Nader made to Waterloo.

OPIRG Guelph works on a variety of environmental and social justice issues of public interest by conducting research, developing education materials, and engaging in activism/organizing/direct action. We help individuals to become active in their community by providing information through our Radical Resource Library, hosting consciousness raising events and providing hands on training regarding anti-oppression, anti-racism, non-hierarchical forms of decision-making & activism. We also provide funding and support opportunities to individuals and groups wishing to undertake new initiatives related to social and environmental justice.

For more information about OPIRG Guelph, visit our website.

 

Acknowledging the land:

We acknowledge that within Guelph we are currently occupying the ancestral lands of the Attawandaron/Chonnonton, Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples and the treaty lands and territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit. We recognize the significance of the Dish with One Spoon Covenant to this land and offer our respect and gratitude to the Indigenous stewards of these lands who have been protecting the land and waterways for centuries.

This is a time to reflect on the ongoing history of colonization that has brought people to settle on lands that are not their own and to seek to understand our place within that history. A land acknowledgement does not exist in past tense because colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to be mindful of our present participation in that process. Acknowledging relationships to space and place has been an Indigenous practice since time immemorial, it is not something new.