The Matchstick

Created by and for youth, The Matchstick is Amnesty Canada’s Arts & Human Rights magazine, dedicated to amplifying the perspective of young activists who use art as a tool to resist injustice in all its forms.

Collective Statement

Reclaiming the Narrative

For too long, those in power have attempted to dictate whose histories are told, whose struggles are recognized, whose pain is worthy of mourning.

We Refuse...

…to be shaped by the hands of those who erase, distort, and disfigure.

We create..

…to survive, to expose, to imagine a world beyond the enforced reality of power.

We wield...

…art as resistance, as rebellion against the false constructions imposed on us.

We believe that art and poetry, in their rawest form, will always exist beyond the grasp of control. They are a sign of our living culture, and a force that breaks through the silence imposed by oppression. Art cannot exist in isolation—it is always a dialogue, a confrontation, a refusal to let fear dictate the next step in time.

We are the friends of all Indigenous peoples fighting against oppression. We are students and activists, artists, immigrants, and children of immigrants, living and working on stolen land — horrified and wide-eyed, paying close attention as those in power choose cowardice, violence, and performative diplomacy when the future demands more.

We must always be in the process of creating and reclaiming because they are always in the process of stealing away those rights — our stories, our agency, our right to define who we are and what we expect from the world. Each word and chosen shade in this volume is a declaration of our presence, our concerns and our hope for a better world.

The latest issue

Volume 004

Volume 003

Volume 002

Volume 001

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Masthead

Managing Editor

Saadet Serra Hasilgolu

VA Editor

Erica Luo

Literary Editor

Jasmin Smith

Social Media Coordinator

Natalie Khallouf

Creative Director

Rachel Lim

Editor in Cheif

Laila Jafri

We acknowledge this sacred land on which we, The Matchstick editorial team, live, work, and operate. It has been a site of human activity for 15,000 years and is known today by its colonial name of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. This is the sacred territorial land of the Anishinaabeg, Haudenosaunee, Wendat, Petun First Nations, Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River.

The territory was the subject of the Dish with One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement between the Iroquois Confederacy and Confederacy of the Ojibwe and allied nations to peaceably share and care for the resources around the Great Lakes. As activists and artists, we at The Matchstick take this opportunity to commit ourselves to work against systems of oppression that have dispossessed Indigenous people of their lands and denied them their rights to self-determination. We believe that this work is essential to broader human rights work across the world. Each day we are honored to pursue our goals together on this land.

Support Actions in Solidarity with Threatened Defenders of Land, Water, Forests and a Healthy Environment