A Land Acknowledgement on Native American Heritage Day

In November 2018, National Geographic reported that Indigenous People make up 5% of the world’s population and protect 80% of the world’s biodiversity on just 22% of the world’s land mass. One month prior to the release of this article, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report warning that the world only has 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe and mitigate irreversible global warming devastation to the planet, animal life and humanity.

Indigenous communities around the world continue to bear the burden of addressing climate change and saving humanity and the planet, while still having to fend off attacks of state sanctioned violence, broken treaties and ongoing colonization and imperialism. And yet, they continue to show up for mother earth and all of us, while demonstrating what it means to live in right and just relationship with the natural world.

Today is Native American Heritage Day. It is a day to honor and celebrate our Native American brothers and sisters. As we support and stand in solidarity with the Anishinaabe Water Protectors in Northern Minnesota fighting the development of another oil pipeline, we are once again reminded of the appreciation, honor and respect due to Native American communities across the country, and Indigenous People around the world.

One of the practices we are committed to as foundation, is acknowledging the Indigenous People who’s unceded land we have the privilege to work on and resourcing their efforts to exercise their inherent rights, maintain and practice their language, and develop their communities rooted in their cultures and traditions.

During our launch webinar last month, Kataly’s Environmental Justice Resource Collaborative consultant, Marni Rosen, led us through the following land acknowledgement:

Kataly is based in the San Francisco Bay Area. So, we want to take a moment to acknowledge this land we are on. The traditional and unceded territories of the Ohlone, the Ramaytush, the Chochenyo, the Karkin, the Yokuts and the Muwekma peoples.

Our work and that of our grantees spans the United States and US territories, unceded territories of Indigenous Peoples.

We invite webinar attendees to add to the chat box right now the name of the Indigenous peoples on whose land you are currently joining us from.

Across all regions we acknowledge and pay respect to the Indigenous nations and ancestors, and we acknowledge the ancestral and present land stewardship and place-based knowledge of the peoples of these territories.

We offer deep gratitude for the stewardship of the past and for the current struggles to bring us into right relationship with each other and with the land.

We recognize that land acknowledgements are just the starting place for acknowledging the ongoing colonialism Native Americans experience. We must take the next steps to commit ourselves to our own process of decolonization in service of restoring Native American communities and our collective healing.

Use Whose Land or Native Land to research and learn more about the Indigenous pPeoples on whose land you live, work and play on. Consider supporting local, national and international organizations like the Indigenous Environmental Network, NDN Collective, Native Women Lead, Native Voices Rising, Cultural Survival, Native Organizers Alliance and more. In the San Francisco Bay Area, you can support the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust by paying the Shuumi Land Tax to support their rematriation work.

At Kataly, we truly believe our fates are intertwined and ensuring self-determination for communities of color is in service of our collective liberation. The starkest example of this is in the ways that Indigenous communities continue to show up to the frontlines to fight climate change, protect their lands and waters, and save all of us.

The first step is acknowledging the lands we have unduly inherited. The next step is supporting their inherent rights to self-determination and sovereignty through land rights. Then, reinvesting in their communities through financial support from extracted natural resources, and eventually solidarity actions, where we show up and share the burden before us all.

Let this be work that we commit ourselves to over and over again. Let this be a practice that becomes ingrained in us as part of our collective way of being. Our collective healing is part of our collective liberation. Acknowledgement is the first step that we hope you take today, on Native American Heritage Day.