Wai, iskwis (my name is) Percy Lezard. I am outma sqilxw, and my relations are the Lezard's in Sn'pinkton, the Kruger's from Arrow Lakes and the Baptiste's from Chopka. As part of my sqilxw cultural practice, I want to begin my introduction with an acknowledgement of my positionality and responsibilities, in an era across the Academic Industrial complex of race shifters and pretendians it’s important to identify ""who I am, who are my people and who claims me."" My family and I are all full status and registered members under the Indian Act and under OUR nations custom membership code, we/I are members of the Penticton Indian Band my people, the sqilxw, have lived on the territory known as the Okanagan Valley since the beginning of people on those lands. Our traditional territories stretch from Mica Creek, just north of modern-day Revelstoke, BC and east to Kootenay Lake, south to Washington state and west into the Nicola Valley. I continue to live as an invited guest on the lands of the Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee peoples for the past twenty-five years and am responsible to upholding the Dish with One Spoon treaty in my nation-to-nation relations with the caretakers of these territories. I am an Assistant Professor in the Indigenous Studies Program at Wilfrid Laurier University. I have been an academic for 15 years and helper for 38 years.