LibGuides: Anti-Racism: a Learning Guide: Indigenous Peoples

Land Acknowledgement for Pierce College

Adopted by the Diversity Committee on Feb. 10, 2022

Presented to the Pierce College Council on March 24, 2022

Land Acknowledgement Statement

We, the community of the Los Angeles Pierce College, acknowledge that we reside, or work, on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, and the neighboring homelands of the Gabrieliño/Tongva/Kizh ancestors. The original people of Los Angeles defined their world as Tovaangar (To-VAA-ngar), which extended over the entire Los Angeles basin including the four southern Channel Islands. The Tongva/Kizh were enslaved to build the San Gabriel Mission in the City of San Gabriel and the San Fernando Mission in the City of Los Angeles. The Spanish hispanicized Kizh to Kicherenos, and then used Gabrieleños, after relocating the San Gabriel Mission in 1774.

On the western edge of Tovaangar, the San Fernando Valley was at the crossroads of cultures and languages, including Tongva, Fernandeño (Tataviam), and Chumash. The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians is the historic tribe of ancestral villages from San Fernando, Santa Clarita, eastern Simi and Antelope Valleys. Reflective of this indigenous heritage, we still use Tongva words such as Topanga, Cahuenga and Azusa; Tujunga and Pacoima are words from the Tataviam, to name a few examples. In 1994, the State of California officially recognized the “Gabrielino-Tongva” Tribe. The Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians is recognized by the State of California as a sovereign Indian nation but has yet to receive full federal recognition. Los Angeles now has the largest population of Native American and Indigenous people of any city in the United States and was a relatively early adopter (2017) of “Indigenous Peoples’ Day.”

We acknowledge that the land of California belongs to nearly 200 tribal nations. We recognize the past and present resilience of all indigenous communities, in the face of systemic dehumanization and settler colonialism. A land acknowledgment is a humbling first step towards public intervention, decolonization, and reconciliation. We commit ourselves to honor Native land (#HonorNativeLand), and build meaningful relationships with indigenous peoples, to restore their cultural heritage and sovereignty.

Abbreviated Version

We, the community of the Los Angeles Pierce College, acknowledge that we reside or work on the ancestral and unceded territory of the Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians, and recognize the neighboring Gabrielino Tongva, Kizh, and Ventureño Chumash Tribes. A land acknowledgment is a humbling first step, but through "AcknowledgeRent" you can help undo the historical harm by donating to the Tribal operations, revitalizing programs, and federal recognition efforts. We must commit ourselves to honor Native land (#HonorNativeLand), and build meaningful relationships with the local Tribes to preserve their cultural heritage and sovereignty. To learn more, visit our Anti-Racism Guide

For more, please visit: Government – Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians (tataviam-nsn.us)

You can also donate to Pukúu, Cultural Community Services, at

https://www.pukuu.org/causes/

This statement, which may change as we consult with the Tataviam people, was composed by Mario Macías, as co-chair of the PCC Diversity Committee.

Statements of Land Acknowledgement

U.S. Dept. of Arts and Culture

Honor Native Land: A Guide and Call to Acknowledgment

We call on all individuals and organizations to open public events and gatherings with acknowledgment of the traditional Native inhabitants of the land.

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.

The following Land Acknowledgment statement was published by the ArtCenter Library of the ArtCenter College of Design

"We recognize that ArtCenter College of Design is situated on Native land belonging to the Gabrielino-Tongva Tribe. As we are existing remotely in 2020— there are many of us that are working, living, and occupying other Indigenous territories. These other territories adjacent to ArtCenter belong to the Chumash, Fernandeño Tataviam, Serrano, Micqanaqa’n, Tongva, and Kizh peoples. We also acknowledge that the land of California belongs to nearly 200 tribal nations. We recognize the incredible resilience in the face of systemic dehumanization and oppression that indigenous communities both local and worldwide have endured, as well as the enduring strength of spirit that their communities have shown in the wake of colonization and violence. It is our hope that this land-acknowledgement is a first step towards rebuilding our relationships with these communities, and to work together in an inclusive and equitable way towards protection of their lands, culture, as well as communities."

Example from Mt. San Antonio College, Eva Rios-Alvarado

Mt. SAC is located on Tongva lands/territories. They are the traditional caretakers of Tovaangar (the Los Angeles Basin, So. Channel Islands), what we now call home and where Mt. SAC is geographically situated. Much respect to the Honuukvetam (Ancestors), ‘Ahiihirom (Elders) and ‘Eyoohiinkem (our relatives/relations) past, present and emerging. For more information about land/territory acknowledgements read SDSU’s “What is a Land Acknowledgement.”

Short, general, draft for the Pierce community

We, residents of northern Los Angeles County, acknowledge that we reside on the traditional territory and homelands of the Fernandeño Tataviam people. Fernandeño Tataviam Band of Mission Indians is the historic tribe of ancestral villages from San Fernando, Santa Clarita, eastern Simi and Antelope Valleys.
We are guests on this land and will commit ourselves to support indigenous people. Learn more: www.csusm.edu/cicsc/land.pdf

E-books from Pierce Databases

An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz
Now, for the first time, acclaimed historian and activist Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz offers a history of the United States told from the perspective of Indigenous peoples and reveals how Native Americans, for centuries, actively resisted expansion of the US empire. With growing support for movements such as the campaign to abolish Columbus Day and replace it with Indigenous Peoples' Day and the Dakota Access Pipeline protest led by the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States is an essential resource providing historical threads that are crucial for understanding the present.
How Indians Think: Colonial Indigenous Intellectuals and the Question of Critical Race Theory by Gonzalo Lamana
This book shines light on Indigenous perspectives through a novel interpretation of the works of the two most important Amerindian intellectuals in the Andes, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala and Garcilaso de la Vega, el Inca. Building on but also departing from the predominant scholarly position that views Indigenous-Spanish relations as the clash of two distinct cultures, Gonzalo Lamana argues that Guaman Poma and Garcilaso were the first Indigenous activist intellectuals and that they developed post-racial imaginaries four hundred years ago. Their texts not only highlighted Native peoples' achievements, denounced injustice, and demanded colonial reform, but they also exposed the emerging Spanish thinking and feeling on race that was at the core of colonial forms of discrimination. These authors aimed to alter the way colonial actors saw each other and, as a result, to change the world in which they lived.
Native American DNA: Tribal Belonging and the False Promise of Genetic Science by Kim TallBear
In Native American DNA, Kim TallBear shows how DNA testing is a powerful--and problematic--scientific process that is useful in determining close biological relatives. But tribal membership is a legal category that has developed in dependence on certain social understandings and historical contexts, a set of concepts that entangles genetic information in a web of family relations, reservation histories, tribal rules, and government regulations. At a larger level, TallBear asserts, the "markers" that are identified and applied to specific groups such as Native American tribes bear the imprints of the cultural, racial, ethnic, national, and even tribal misinterpretations of the humans who study them. TallBear notes that ideas about racial science, which informed white definitions of tribes in the nineteenth century, are unfortunately being revived in twenty-first-century laboratories. Because today's science seems so compelling, increasing numbers of Native Americans have begun to believe their own metaphors: "in our blood" is giving way to "in our DNA." This rhetorical drift, she argues, has significant consequences, and ultimately she shows how Native American claims to land, resources, and sovereignty that have taken generations to ratify may be seriously--and permanently--undermined.
The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism by Jodi A. Byrd
In The Transit of Empire, Jodi A. Byrd explores how indigeneity functions as transit, a trajectory of movement that serves as precedent within U.S. imperial history. Byrd argues that contemporary U.S. empire expands itself through a transferable "Indianness" that facilitates acquisitions of lands, territories, and resources. Examining an array of literary texts, historical moments, and pending legislations--from the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma's vote in 2007 to expel Cherokee Freedmen to the Native Hawaiian Government Reorganization bill--Byrd demonstrates that inclusion into the multicultural cosmopole does not end colonialism as it is purported to do. Rather, that inclusion is the very site of the colonization that feeds U.S. empire. Byrd contends that the colonization of American Indian and indigenous nations is the necessary ground from which to reimagine a future where the losses of indigenous peoples are not only visible and, in turn, grieveable, but where indigenous peoples have agency to transform life on their own lands and on their own terms.
All Our Relations by Winona LaDuke
Haymarket Books proudly brings back into print Winona LaDuke's seminal work of Native resistance to oppression. This thoughtful, in-depth account of Native struggles against environmental and cultural degradation features chapters on the Seminoles, the Anishinaabeg, the Innu, the Northern Cheyenne, and the Mohawks, among others. Filled with inspiring testimonies of struggles for survival, each page of this volume speaks forcefully for self-determination and community.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. Drawing on her life as an indigenous scientist, and as a woman, Kimmerer shows how other living beings--asters and goldenrod, strawberries and squash, salamanders, algae, and sweetgrass--offer us gifts and lessons, even if we've forgotten how to hear their voices. In reflections that range from the creation of Turtle Island to the forces that threaten its flourishing today, she circles toward a central argument: that the awakening of ecological consciousness requires the acknowledgment and celebration of our reciprocal relationship with the rest of the living world.
Tending the Wild: Native American Knowledge and the Management of California's Natural Resources by M. Kat Anderson
Marvelously detailed and beautifully written, Tending the Wild is an unparalleled examination of Native American knowledge and uses of California's natural resources that reshapes our understanding of native cultures and shows how we might begin to use their knowledge in our own conservation efforts. M. Kat Anderson presents a wealth of information on native land management practices gleaned in part from interviews and correspondence with Native Americans who recall what their grandparents told them about how and when areas were burned, which plants were eaten and which were used for basketry, and how plants were tended. The complex picture that emerges from this and other historical source material dispels the hunter-gatherer stereotype long perpetuated in anthropological and historical literature. We come to see California's indigenous people as active agents of environmental change and stewardship. Tending the Wild persuasively argues that this traditional ecological knowledge is essential if we are to successfully meet the challenge of living sustainably.
500 Years of Indigenous Resistance by Gord Hill
Publication Date: unlimited access
Much more than a history of European colonisation of the Americas. In this slim volume, Gord Hill chronicles the resistance by Indigenous peoples, which limited and shaped the forms and extent of colonialism. This history encompasses North and South America, the development of nation-states, and the resurgence of Indigenous resistance in the post-WWII era.
Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Research Methodologies : Local Solutions and Global Opportunities by Elizabeth Sumida Huaman and Nathan D. Martin
Bringing together researchers from geographically, culturally, and linguistically diverse regions, Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Research Methodologies offers guidance and lessons learned from research projects in and with Indigenous communities around the world. This edited volume explores issues of power, representation, participation, and accountability in studies involving Indigenous peoples and draws on contributors' reflections of their own varied experiences conducting collaborative research in distinct yet related fields. Anchoring the book are several key aims: exploring decolonizing and decolonial methodological paradigms, honouring Indigenous knowledge systems, and growing interdisciplinary collaboration toward Indigenous self-determination.
Say We Are Nations by Daniel M. Cobb
In this wide-ranging and carefully curated anthology, Daniel M. Cobb presents the words of Indigenous people who have shaped Native American rights movements from the late nineteenth century through the present day. Presenting essays, letters, interviews, speeches, government documents, and other testimony, Cobb shows how tribal leaders, intellectuals, and activists deployed a variety of protest methods over more than a century to demand Indigenous sovereignty. As these documents show, Native peoples have adopted a wide range of strategies in this struggle, invoking "American" and global democratic ideas about citizenship, freedom, justice, consent of the governed, representation, and personal and civil liberties while investing them with indigenized meanings.
Recognition, Sovereignty Struggles, and Indigenous Rights in the United States by Amy E. Den Ouden (Editor); Jean M. O'Brien (Editor)
This engaging collection surveys and clarifies the complex issue of federal and state recognition for Native American tribal nations in the United States. Den Ouden and O'Brien gather focused and teachable essays on key topics, debates, and case studies. Written by leading scholars in the field, including historians, anthropologists, legal scholars, and political scientists, the essays cover the history of recognition, focus on recent legal and cultural processes, and examine contemporary recognition struggles nationwide.