Acknowledgement: Native Presence and the Guilford College Landscape

Acknowledgment is a simple, powerful way of showing respect and a step toward correcting the stories and practices that erase Indigenous people’s history and culture and toward inviting and honoring the truth. Imagine this practice widely adopted: imagine cultural venues, classrooms, conference settings, places of worship, sports stadiums, and town halls, acknowledging traditional lands. Millions would be exposed—many for the first time—to the names of the traditional Indigenous inhabitants of the lands they are on, inspiring them to ongoing awareness and action.
~ From the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture Honor Native Land: A Guide and Call to Acknowledgment

A Land Acknowledgment can be the opening of a conversation and not an ending. It is an ongoing process. Posting an acknowledgement statement is an invitation to engage further and should not be seen as a replacement for deeper reparative actions. This guide is a resource for learning more about the concept land acknowledgements more broadly as well as land and relationships with Native Americans -- past and present -- here at Guilford College.

Guilford College — as all institutes of higher education in the United States — sits on Native land. In our case, it is land previously cared for and claimed, at various times, by the Keyauwee, Saura, and Saponi Peoples, some of whom such as the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, maintain a strong presence in the area, caring for it still. While Guilford College as an institution has not done all it could to respect and maintain its relationships with Native People, it is important to acknowledge these Peoples’ survivance, and their care for the land in the past and the present and the future. Doing so in a syllabus is an early and critical step in a larger process of relationship-building. Guilford is undertaking that work deliberately, working both to build and nurture relationships with the region’s Indigenous People in ways that respect their claims to sovereignty, as well as ensuring that as a campus community we are as supportive of Native Students as we can be.  Drafted August, 2021

• Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, ““Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, Vol. 1, No. 1, (2012): 1–40.

• Kim Tallbear, “Caretaking Relations, Not American Dreaming,” Kalfou: A Journal of Comparative Relational Ethnic Studies, v.6 (2019) 

• Ched Myers, Roll Like a River. 

• Native Governance Center is an organization led by and for Native people

• https://indiancountrytoday.com/opinion/learning-the-land-walking-the-talk-of-indigenous-land-acknowledgements

• U. Southern California, Department of History’s land acknowledgement. A somewhat different approach.

• Cal State San Marcos Land Acknowledgement Tool Kit

• Beyond Land Acknowledgement: New Models of Support & Reparation for Indigenous Communities webinar from USC, http://civicmemory.la/

• Acknowledging Native Lands featuring Luhui Whitebear, Assistant Director of the Native American Longhouse Eena Haws at Oregon State University, in The Corvallis Advocate
• "What are land acknowledgements and why do they matter?" and "Land acknowledgements are a good first step, but there’s a lot more work to be done" by indigenous writer Selena Mills
• "Why Land Acknowledgments Matter" by Chip Colwell, founding editor-in-chief of SAPIENS
• Guide to Indigenous Land and Territorial Acknowledgements for Cultural Institutions Developed by: Felicia Garcia (Chumash), M.A. Museum Studies, New York University, 2018 with Jane Anderson, Museum Studies, New York University.
• OSU Extension Service and Outdoor School: Territorial Acknowledgements
• "'I regret it': Hayden King on writing Ryerson University's territorial acknowledgement" by Hayden King, an Anishinaabe writer and educator who works at Ryerson University
• "Are you planning to do a Land Acknowledgment?" American Indians in Children's Literature March 2019 blog post
• "Land-grab universities: Expropriated Indigenous land is the foundation of the land-grant university system" by Robert Lee and Tristan Ahtone, with the OSU related information here: OSU Land Grant History and Indigenous Land
• The US government took the land of Oregon’s native people 170 years ago this week By John Notarianni (OPB), Sept 27, 2020