Land Acknowledgements

Boston University :

The faculty, staff, and students of Boston University acknowledge that the territory on which Boston University stands is that of The Wampanoag and The Massachusett People. BU’s campus and classrooms are places to honor and respect the history and continued efforts of the Native and Indigenous community leaders who make up Eastern Massachusetts and the surrounding region. This statement is one small step in acknowledging the history that brought us to reside on the land and to help us seek understanding of our place within that history. Ownership of land is itself a colonial concept; many tribes had seasonal relationships with the land we currently inhabit. Today, Boston is still home to indigenous peoples, including the Mashpee Wampanoag and Wampanoag Tribe of Gay Head (Aquinnah). For more information, please visit the North American Indian Center of Boston and the Commission on Indian Affairs of the State of Massachusetts.

Florida International University:

We acknowledge that the territory now known as “South Florida” has been the traditional homeland of Native nations, including the Calusa, the Tequesta, and today the Miccosukee and the Seminole. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this land and their Elders, both past and present.

University of Michigan:

The University of Michigan is located on the territory of the Anishinaabe people. In 1817, the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Bodewadami Nations made the largest single land transfer to the University of Michigan, ceded in the Treaty of Fort Meigs so that their children could be educated. We acknowledge the history of native displacement that allowed the University of Michigan to be founded. Today we reaffirm contemporary and ancestral Anishinaabek ties to the land and their profound contributions to this institution.