Lansing Community College Land Acknowledgement
Lansing Community College occupies the ancestral, traditional and contemporary lands of the Anishnaabeg - Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi peoples. In particular, the City of Lansing and LCC reside on land ceded in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw.
What is a land acknowledgment statement?
To aid in promoting and creating awareness of Indigenous peoples' cultural erasure, land acknowledgment statements serve as a small way to recognize their history and presence along with their traditional homelands. Land acknowledgment statements also serve to acknowledge the processes of colonization and subjugation that have contributed to that erasure. Additionally, Land acknowledgments can do as an approach to honor the indigenous peoples who have occupied initially and stewarded the land we live on.
Using Land Acknowledgement Statements are also a method to engage cultural awareness in learning about the Native and indigenous communities and can serve as a build to strengthening relationships with tribal nations and their members. San Diego University defines a Land Acknowledgement as a formalized recognition through a statement that respects Indigenous peoples and publicly affirms them as traditional stewards of given geographic areas and the enduring relationship between Indigenous Peoples and their ancestral territories.
Why do we recognize the land?
Recognizing the land is a practice that honors and respects contemporary Indigenous peoples’ connection to their land since time immemorial. Using a Land Acknowledgment is a way to express gratitude and appreciation for those whose territory one resides or works on. From an Indigenous perspective, people need to understand the history that brought them to the land and that people seek to comprehend their place within that history. Understanding the history of Indigenous people is especially important since most Indigenous peoples were violently removed and dispossessed of their lands through deceptive processes.
Many Indigenous people consider colonialism as a current and ongoing process. Land Acknowledgments build mindfulness and awareness of colonialism, both past, and present. Acknowledging the land is also a standard protocol practiced by Indigenous peoples and allies worldwide.