Land and Labor Acknowledgement

It is essential to recognize that Portland, Oregon today is a community of diverse Native peoples who continue to live and work here. As such, we must acknowledge and honor all Indigenous communities—past, present, and future. Their ongoing and vibrant presence is not something to be taken lightly.

It is also vital to acknowledge the systemic policies of genocide, relocation, and assimilation that have impacted many Indigenous families to this day. As settlers and guests on these lands, we must respect the work of Indigenous leaders and families and pledge to make ongoing efforts to recognize their knowledge, creativity, and resilience and the complexity of what this word means.

We must approach this with a sense of urgency and a commitment to change. We cannot simply pay lip service to these issues; we must take action to ensure that Indigenous communities are given the respect and recognition they deserve.

We respectfully acknowledge and take ownership of the traumatic history of forced labor of Black Americans who have advanced our country. We would like to recognize the remarkable contributions of Black Americans who have played a critical role in advancing our country despite facing tremendous adversity. We will be forever indebted to the enslaved and exploited African Americans who were established in our U.S. infrastructure and economy, advanced civil rights, and continue to influence popular culture. It is our solemn responsibility to continuously recognize the historical horror of the transatlantic trafficking of their people, chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and current systemic oppression and injustices placed on Black Americans and to work towards a better future for all actively. We are grateful for the sacrifices made by their ancestors, who have paved the way for us to be where we are today.

We must consider how the education system as a whole has not been a place of safety, support, and reformation for all students and educators especially in higher education. For many BIPOC and other marginalized educators they have had to carve and push into spaces that were not created for them or the students in the classroom or communities. Their histories are still being told are not real or appropriate to share with all students. When in reality their history is our history and has been whitewashed to make some people in power comfortable.

Our knowledge has been stolen and renamed under a more digestible image or told that it does not come from “credible sources” however the people who are choosing the criteria of those sources come from one perspective not allowing intersectionality to come into play which allows bias to be the only lens to be used. Challenge and debate is central to education and that is what you will be asked to do everyday over the week not only over the time of this course but over your life. Challenge the notion of what is established as how we have always done things.

I invite you to visit the following websites to learn more, explore or get involved.

The Sogorea Te’ Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people.

LANDBACK is a movement that has existed for generations with the purpose to get Indigenous Lands back into Indigenous hands.

The Native Land Digital Map allows you to go beyond learning about the indigenous land where you are now, but all over the world.

Beyond Land Acknowledgement asks organizations to move past words of land acknowledgments into concrete steps, including a call to action for those audience members who are reading the land acknowledgment and not just asking for free labor from Indigenous people with no tangible steps for action.