Land Acknowledgement
St. Francis Xavier University stands on the lands of Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded home of the Mi’kmaw. We express our deep gratitude and appreciation to the generations of Mi’kmaw who, since time immemorial, have loved and stewarded these lands and the beings who call them home. Colonization is not just history; it exists in the present. While we strive to decolonize ourselves and our institution, we know there is still much for us to learn. We are committed to doing the hard work of self-reflection and to repairing relationships with the Mi’kmaw on whose lands we reside, including embracing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada Calls to Action and embodying their spirit in our day-to-day lives.
Treaty Responsibilities
As a community, StFX is committed to meeting our ongoing treaty obligations and to recognizing that after ten years of the TRC, only 15 of the 94 Calls to Action have been completed. We still have much work to do to continually work towards reconciliation and treaty responsibility, in research and in all aspects of our campus community life. As part of our commitment to reconciliation, we have named our plan Teliaq ta’n Teluek (What They are Saying is True), a Mi’kmaq translation of our Latin university motto, Quaecumque Sunt Vera or Whatsoever Things are True. This name will help us conduct our research in the spirit of truth and reconciliation and will ground the guiding principles of this plan in Mi’kmaq knowledge, teachings, and understanding.
Ms’t wiaqpulti’kl ankukamkewe’l | We are all treaty people
Maw-lukwitiek: We are working together
StFX’s Strategic Research Plan is informed directly by a campus-wide feedback process initiated by the new Associate Vice President Research, Graduate & Professional Studies in the fall term of 2025, and voted on and approved by the Research Advisory Committee and our University Senate. We have also sent the SRP for feedback to the Committee on Reconciliation, the President’s Action Committee on Anti-Racism (PACAR), and the Accessibility Advisory Committee. Using the guiding principle of mawlukwitiek, the Mi’kmaq concept of working together, our objective in this SRP is to be guided by our own community in our research. During this feedback process, hundreds of StFX community members came together to provide ideas about the future direction of our shared research ecosystem. We ran targeted engagement sessions with Deans, research chairs, labs, programs, departments, schools, and faculties. We organized a campus-wide Town Hall on Research Futures, a Senate Forum on Research, open office hours, online surveys, and feedback modules to capture all voices on campus.
Ksikeltaqn: What we value
StFX’s Strategic Research Plan 2025–2031 will continue to cultivate the research ecosystem reflected in the Research and Creative Works Plan from 2018–2025 enabling high-quality, impactful, and ethically grounded research and work in creative fields. These principles will continue to guide future research by integrating research with teaching and student mentorship, valuing diverse forms of scholarship and creative works, and advancing a more equitable, diverse, inclusive, and accessible world through the community-based and collaborative research that helps StFX to shape public trust and create innovation that benefits society as a whole. We will let our principles and core values of integrity, dignity, truth, and respect for all — shaped by our university motto, Teliaq ta’n Teluek — guide our research initiatives over the next five years. We’re also compelled to respond to the need for a more just, sustainable, and equitable future through creative innovation to address the challenges posed by rapidly advancing technology, a changing climate, and the need to think critically about the world around us.
The core values include:
- Integrity – Our moral compass in research excellence
- Creativity – Our incentive for making new things and solving big problems
- Innovation – Our desire to produce novel solutions with tangible societal and economic benefits
- Sustainability – Our responsibility to prioritize long-term well-being over short-term results
- Respect – Our motivating force in building community trust
