About ELK

ELK is intended to exist as a grassroots, community collective composed of people following these 3 agreements:

1. We envision the radical goal of total liberation for all species. This means we promote anti-oppressive community empowerment and species-inclusive social justice for humans & non-humans alike.
2. We manifest this radical goal through transformative justice. This means we are creating and supporting solutions that both address underlying cycles of violence and which offer potential to collectively transform our communities away from dependencies of violence against all humans, animals, and our Earth.
3. We reject single-issue, superficial, inaccessible, tokenizing and otherwise non-intersectional responses to the oppression of humans, animals and our Earth. This means we do not support or make space for any & all efforts that ignore, dismiss or simply fail to account for the complexities of power and privilege.

Originally called ALO, when we operated on occupied territory of the Attawandaron (Neutral) peoples (the colonial name being Guelph, Ontario, Kanada), we now call ourselves ELK.

We are currently based on unceded and occupied Coast Salish territories – specifically of the Lekwungen and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples. The term Coast Salish is used to encompass a number of Indigenous peoples, including Esquimalt, Hul’qumi’num, Klahoose, Lekwungen (Songhees), MALAXEt, the xʷməθkwəy̓əm (Musqueam), OStlq’emeylem, Pentlatch, Scia’new (Beecher Bay), Sliammon, Shishalh, Skxwú7mesh-ulh Úxwumixw, Stó:lo, Straits, Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh), T’Sou-ke, W̱SÁNEĆ (Pauquachin, Tsartlip, Tsawout, Tseycum), and Xwemalhkwu (the colonial name being Vancouver Island, British Columbia, Kanada) [1].

• E is for Earthling, the inhabitants of our Earth, and who we wish to collectively empower because the liberation of each human is bound in the liberation of each animal and our natural world.
• L is for Liberation, the freedom and sovereignty of all our bodies – from cultures of patriarchy and racism, from prisons, from tanks, cages, factories and farms – and minds – through unlearning oppressions, recognizing privileges, acknowledging stolen land, empowering through knowledge and skills, and manifesting solidarity through genuine accountable allyship – and spirits – by finding identity, meaning and love in ourselves, in our communities, in our Earth, and in the daily struggle.
• K is for Kollective, the non-hierarchical and consensus-based process for our priorities and decision making as a group. Our collectives will grow as ELK grows, learning from and helping one another as we balance creation – of radical ideas, resources and support – and destruction – putting our politics into existence to end oppressive language, behaviour and politics.

ELK is an open collective for people to join and contribute however you feel comfortable, wherever you are residing, whenever you have time and energy available, and with whatever knowledge or skills you can offer.
Contact us if you want to connect.

Total Liberation,

ELK

[1] This Acknowledgement of Territories was produced by VIPIRG