LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
My region is the ancestral homelands of three Anishinaabe nations of the Council of Three Fires (Ottawa, Ojibwe, & Potawatomi). Waawiyaatanong is the Anishinaabe name originally given to what we now call the Detroit Region.
I acknowledge that Detroit is among the largest majority Black cities in the USA and that this country was built by the atrocities and inhumanity of many broken treaties with the native peoples and the genocide and oppression of the First Nation peoples. The slave trade which was brutal human exploitation and trafficking is how the wealth of this country was built. I also acknowledge that systemic racism continues to this day and although it has morphed over the centuries in different forms of injustice - sharecropping, Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, and white supremacy's many forms - police brutality, food deserts, lack of medical access to care, lack of equal access to employment and housing, and many other inhumane atrocities and cruelties. We have much to grieve and lament and fight against in this world - and the work will not be complete in our lifetime.
I acknowledge that Detroit is among the largest majority Black cities in the USA and that this country was built by the atrocities and inhumanity of many broken treaties with the native peoples and the genocide and oppression of the First Nation peoples. The slave trade which was brutal human exploitation and trafficking is how the wealth of this country was built. I also acknowledge that systemic racism continues to this day and although it has morphed over the centuries in different forms of injustice - sharecropping, Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation, and white supremacy's many forms - police brutality, food deserts, lack of medical access to care, lack of equal access to employment and housing, and many other inhumane atrocities and cruelties. We have much to grieve and lament and fight against in this world - and the work will not be complete in our lifetime.