CRC Land Acknowledgement Page
The Center for Religion and Cities (CRC) honors the Susquehannock and Piscataway whose ancestral lands include Baltimore and the Chumash, Tataviam, and Tongva whose ancestral homelands include Los Angeles. We acknowledge that every city is built upon Indigenous homelands. As an organization, the CRC is exploring how the histories of colonialism and legacies of Indigenous resistance, survival, and sovereignty shape our scholarship and community work. We also acknowledge that the physical and economic development of many cities in the US was built upon the unpaid labor, enslavement, and exploitation of Africans and their descendants.
As a starting place, we invite you to learn about the Indigenous peoples of the land you reside on through Native Land Digital.
On Land Acknowledgments
The statement above is an example of a land acknowledgement. Land acknowledgments naming the original peoples of a place before events is increasingly common across what is now the United States. These are moves of respect to the original care-takers of the land, but also a way to re-mapping Indigenous peoples onto a place. As many Indigenous leaders have stated, these acknowledgements are just a starting place for nurturing deeper relationships and reflection on:
- Indigenous history, presence, and continuity in a place
- Histories of colonialism and displacement
- Legacies of Indigenous resistance, survival, and sovereignty
- Material ways to support Indigenous Nations and communities in the places where you live.
Land Acknowledgement Resources
A Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgement – Native Governance Center
Beyond territorial acknowledgments – âpihtawikosisân
Land Acknowledgement: You're on California Indian Land, Now What? - Acknowledging Relationships to Space and Place: A Tool Kit - California Indian Culture and Sovereignty Center & CSU San Marcos, American Indian Studies
What Good is a Land Acknowledgement? - Dr. Cutcha Risling Baldy
Indigenous Peoples, Religion, and Cities
Every city is built on Indigenous land. Some Indigenous peoples continue to reside on their ancestral lands. Others have been displaced far from their home. Most Indigenous peoples today live in cities. In what is now the United States, many Indigenous peoples live in cities as a result of the Indian Relocation Act of 1956. This law sought to assimilate Indigenous peoples by moving them from reservations to cities. Many relocated people experienced racism and discrimination in housing and employment. These issues along with several others led to the founding of the American Indian Movement in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Očhéthi Šakówiŋ homelands) in 1968. Indigenous people created organizations, urban Indian centers, and powwows, many of which continue to serve the local community. These spaces allowed urbanized Indigenous peoples to continue their specific cultural and ceremonial practices as well as participate in pan-Indian practices. Today, there are also many Indigenous migrants from Latin America that live in American cities.
Suggested Reading
Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future By Patty Krawec
Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization by Kent Blansett
Native Hubs: Culture, Community, and Belonging in Silicon Valley and Beyond by Renya K. Ramirez
Tradition, Performance, and Religion in Native America: Ancestral Ways, Modern Selves by Dennis Kelley
The Urban Indian Experience in America by Donald Lee Fixico
Beyond Land Acknowledgements
“Today we go across to many different territories whenever we get in our car or on a plane or on a bus, and never acknowledge the thousands of ancestors that were there and whose territory we’re on because we have no relationship. Land acknowledgment must begin with a relationship with the people on whose land you are on. We can say words. Many universities right now, UC System and other places are looking for the words. ‘Give me the words that I can say at the beginning of each meeting, at the beginning of each graduation.’ Corporations, ‘tell us the words that we’re supposed to say to acknowledge your ancestors.’ But are those corporations or universities or community centers doing work with the original people of the lands? And that’s where it comes for me, the deep meaning, is to really acknowledge that you’re on someone else’s homeland.”
-Corrina Gould (Chair, Confederated Villages of Lisjan/Ohlone and co-founder of Sogorea Te’ Land Trust), from a workshop on land acknowledgements at San Francisco State University (Ramaytush Ohlone territory)
Additional questions to consider:
- How did you or your family come to the place you now call home?
- Who are the Indigenous peoples of the place where you live? Are they still there, if not, where are they now?
- How have you, your community, and/or organization benefited from stolen Indigenous lands?
- What is the relationship between histories of African enslavement and Indigenous colonization on the land you now call home?
- Who might the words your land acknowledgement serve? How can you use a land acknowledgement as a call for collaboration with local Indigenous communities?
- What resources, employment, or opportunities might you (or your organization) offer to local Indigenous communities?
We invite you to read and work through How to Come Correct, a guide to protocols, guidelines, and invitations for collaboration with Indigenous peoples, offered by Sogorea Te’ Land Trust, an Indigenous woman-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area (Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone homelands).