What is a land acknowledgement?

A land acknowledgement is a statement that recognizes the history and presence of Indigenous peoples and their enduring relationship to their traditional homelands. Land acknowledgements help create awareness of the cultural erasure of Indigenous peoples and the processes of colonization and subjugation that have contributed to that erasure.

For more information

Associated Students Senate External Affairs Resource Page
Native American Opportunity Plan
American Indian Graduate Student Alliance
Current UC Native American Cultural Affiliation and Repatriation Policy
American Indian and Indigenous Cultural Resource Center (AIICRC)

 

Land Acknowledgement Statement
 

 

 

This opening statement from the 2021 Graduate Division Virtual Commencement is published with permission from Delores Mondragón, a UCSB Religious Studies PhD student who focuses her scholarly research on Native American & Indigenous Religious Traditions with an emphasis on rematriation, rites-of-passage, ceremony, militarism, Two-Spirit ways of being, and QWOC Chicana/o/x histories. This is an excerpt from the 2021 Commencement Livestream on June 12, 2021.